Get Out and VOTE!

https://blog.herbthiel.com/2022/11/08/get-out-there-and-vote-americans/

‘Nuff said.

Still As Dumb As Ever – Get Rid of DST!

It’s that time of year again when everyone has to mess with any clocks that are not synchronized to some satellite to “wake up” an hour earlier.  There are very few things our Congress has done that are dumber than Daylight Saving Time.  However, Senators Mark Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida have devised one to up the ante!  They introduced and the Senate passed the “Protect the Sunshine Act” last spring, 2022.

The hubris of the name of this proposed law rivals the efforts of King Canute who sat his throne by the Aegean Sea and commanded the tide to stop coming in.  And we know how THAT turned out.  The King finally relented and declared, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”  If he were alive today, he would have simply moved the high-tide markers and declared, “There, I stopped the tide,” much as Congress does with our clocks: “There, we gave you an extra hour of sunshine.”  🤪

But that did not stop the idiots in the Senate from passing this absurd bill on March 16, 2022.  The bill is intended to make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent as of November 5, 2023.  That is the day before we are supposed to return to normal standard time.

The asininity of this proposed law boggles the mind!  Are Floridians, and by extension, all Americans, so lame-brained that we cannot just get up an hour earlier if that is what we wish to do!?  How does this law “protect the sunshine!?”  AND why are our Senators and Representatives wasting time messing with our clocks, instead of addressing inflation, illegal immigration/oppressive visa constraints, fuel regulation, voter integrity/freedom of voter access, and concerns of normal Americans?  While many of Senator Rubio’s and Scott’s proposals and views line up well with conservative values, this one came out of the wild blue yonder as inane government overreach.  If you are an American citizen, let me encourage you to write to your Congressperson in the House of Representatives and urge common sense!  The Senate abdicated any measure of sanity and passed this already.

To find your representative, try this link: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative.  To assist you in your effort to get the House to use common sense, here is a sample letter.  Feel free to copy and paste or develop your own appeal to your Representatives to use their brains for a change.
____________________________________

Dear Representative Barr,

In March, 2022 the Senate passed a bill to make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent!  This is one of the dumbest things Congress has attempted to do since instituting DST in the first place.  It is true that most normal Americans and Europeans hate moving our clocks back and forth with the seasons, and the loss of productivity for the weeks after each change is substantial.

However, rather than make DST permanent, PLEASE, now that we have changed back to UTC+/-, the “normal time” most of the world uses, stop DST from ever plaguing us again!  Primarily, the US and Europe are the only ones dumb enough to use DST.

You have much more important issues facing our nation than some idiot’s idea to force our clocks out of sync with the rest of the world.  If we are going to mess with the clocks this way, why not move them BACK FIVE HOURS?  That way we could all sleep in until noon and go to work “later” in the day.  This makes as much sense as making DST permanent!!

I will be watching for your vote or non-vote on this issue next spring before the 2024 election cycle kicks in.
yours truly,
c.a.post
________________________________
“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Prepare for Persecution via Your CBDC

Whoever wins in the elections in two-and-a-half weeks will probably not make a lot of difference – Christ-followers are in for a rough ride over the next six years.  I am not a foretelling prophet, just an observer of the directions of our society and our world; perhaps you could call me a “forth-telling” prophet. 😉

When I was a pre-teen in the middle of the last century, preachers who studied Bible prophecy predicted a world monetary system that would be trackable for every purchase.  They were laughed at by those who did not read the Bible, yet now, it is falling into place with the WEF (World Economic Forum) wanting to digitize currency to central national banks.  Beyond this, the WEF advocates a world-wide currency, again a subject that caused smirks when Bible-teachers brought it up in the 60s and 70s.

Executive Order 14607
President Biden signed executive order 14607 (which takes on the force of law, even without Congressional oversight) directing a huge host of government agencies to investigate establishing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) by the National Security Council.  They are to begin taking “strong steps to reduce the risks that digital assets could pose to consumers, investors, and business protections; financial stability and financial system integrity; combating and preventing crime and illicit finance; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and climate change and pollution.” 

Under the guise of “protecting United States and global financial stability and mitigation of systemic risks,” this order authorizes agencies from the State Department to Treasury, DOD, DOJ, EPA, OMB, the Fed, National Intelligence, and others to explore “the actions required to launch a United States CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency] if doing so is deemed to be in the national interest.” (See Section 3 for the full list of agencies NAMED; others may be invited to participate, leaving it open to any agency with a vested interest, and what agency will not be vested with interest in taxpayers’ money!?)   

“Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Director of National Intelligence, and the heads of other relevant agencies, shall submit to the President a report on the future of money and payment systems, including the conditions that drive broad adoption of digital assets…”

Signed on March 9, 180 days passed on September 5, 2022.  Other deadlines are included in the 180 days, as well as some deadlines at 90 days (June 7, 2022), 210 days (October 4, 2022) and some at one year (March 9, 2023).

The rush to develop a CBDC is to avoid getting left behind by the establishment of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Etherium. “…Non-state issued digital assets reached a combined market capitalization of $3 trillion, up from approximately $14 billion in early November 2016.”  Basically, governments fear being left behind in the new digital economy that used to be the stuff of science fiction.  Governments want to be involved in the flow of assets, goods, and services so that they can be taxed… or controlled.

For Your Protection?
Enter the digital currency age and someone somewhere will be able to track every penny you spend.  Of course, the advocates say, “This is for your protection,” when what it does is open the door to regulation based on your choices.  Think of how Facebook, Twitter and Google have been trying to control the narratives about abortion, election integrity, LGBTQ interests, etc..  Now, put that kind of control in the hands of the government, and if you agree/disagree with mRNA “vaccination” and become labeled as “misinformation,” the government can stop your payments or collections to and from any source.

If the government decides abortions must not be allowed, your dollars to Planned Parenthood might never see the light of day.  Or if the government thinks abortion must be allowed, you will not have a choice to donate to mother/baby care services that deny abortions.  Orwell’s Big Brother has arrived, and it is in the form of what some are calling Biden Bucks, although actually, the US is a little behind the curve.

Behind the Curve
China became the world’s first major economy to pilot a digital currency in April 2020 that is being offered in 15 provinces and cities across its country and already has passed 100 billion yen ($13.9bln) in transactions.  And one only need to look at China for a model of why a government would want a CBDC.  Smile for the Social Credit camera, please!?

The Sand Dollar was issued by the Central Bank of the Bahamas in October 2020.  It was the first nationwide CBDC in the world.  Nigeria became the first country in Africa to launch a CBDC in October, 2021.  Countries in the Eastern Caribbean Union rolled out their own form of digital currency in March, 2022, meant to help speed transactions and serve people without bank accounts.  The seven countries involved are Antigua/Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts/Nevis, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent/Grenadines.  India is launching next year.  Sweden, Jamaica, Ukraine and the Eurozone are all looking into CBDCs within the next year to two years!

“Analysts think it could still take years to develop and introduce a digital dollar,” unless it becomes the interest of our financial institutions, Big Tech, and Congress and/or the President to roll it out more rapidly.  Remember the first crashes with self-driving cars?  The developers all thought they were ready and the public would embrace them.  But these were all manufactured by private companies, not the government… which does not make mistakes (said the Wizard of Ahs.) 🙄

If you are planning to take over the world and institute a forced worship of one particular person, what better way than to require everyone to use your Biden Bucks, Digital Yen, or the WEF’s World Wide Currency Web.  It may not happen this year; it may not happen for a decade or two, but it will come.

How Do You Print “In God We Trust” On The Computer?
In what are you putting your trust?  Who will you believe when conflicting reports keep coming at you on Twitter, Fox or CNN?  There is One who is fully trustworthy, and He has revealed what will happen in the Last Days, which we appear to be approaching at roller-coaster speeds.

Jesus most intense teaching about the last days was, “Do not be afraid and do not be deceived.” (Mark 13:5-9)  He never told anyone to “Get ready” to meet The God Who Is.  He only told His followers, “Be ready.” (Luke 12)  Being ready removes the fear!  Are you ready?
I am.  Are you?

Next week, I will share Andrew Brunson’s view on persecution that he believes is coming to American Christ-followers.

 

For the First Time in 69 Years the President Has NOT Designated a National Day of Prayer

In 1775, the U.S. Congress first called for a national day of prayer, but it was not recognized as a formal celebration until 1952.  However, for the first time in 69 years, no prayer service will be conducted at the U.S. Capitol as the use of the “People’s House” for prayer has been denied by President Biden.  But barricades, security, and politics in Washington, D.C. cannot stop Americans from observing this day and praying for our nation.
On April 17, 1952 a bill initiated by Mr. Conrad Hilton and Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas was passed (Public Law 82-324) that the President of the United States was to set aside an appropriate day each year, other than Sunday, as a National Day of Prayer.  Harry Truman signed it into law.
Wednesday, May 7, 1988 – Senator Strom Thurmond’s bill to designate a day for the National Day of Prayer passed unanimously in the Senate (later in the House).
Thursday, May 8, 1988 – Ronald Reagan signed Public Law 100-307 designating the first Thursday in May as the annual observance for the National Day of Prayer.
August 12, 1998 – Bill Clinton signed Public Law 105-225: The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.
There’s is no law prescribing the National Day of Prayer be be celebrated only by members of one faith.  As America has grown as a multicultural, multi-religious nation, it is widely celebrated by more than those in the Christian community.
Even though our President and Vice-President do not seem interested in building people in faith in Someone bigger than themselves, we do not need a specific place or time to pray for them and for our nation.  So tomorrow, the first Thursday of May is STILL a day for the nation to come together to pray.

Join here with hundreds of thousands tomorrow to pray, and consider making this your daily habit, to recognize there is a Higher Power that can free people from sin, deliver from addictions, preserve the most vulnerable lives, and that even “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will.” (Proverb 21:1)

Intermezzo Guest Blog: Dr. Victor Hanson on Biden’s Amerika

Razor wire and fences still surround the U.S. Capitol at sunrise. (Photo: Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)

The World Goes On While America Sleeps
Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson/ February 12, 2021
Dr. Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.  You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.

The Democrat-controlled Senate spends thousands of collective hours conducting an impeachment trial against a citizen who is no longer president.  The acquittal is predetermined, as in the first impeachment effort a year ago — and known to be so to the Democratic prosecutors.  The constitutionally mandated presiding judge — the chief justice of the Supreme Court — refused to show up.  Chief Justice John Roberts apparently believes an impeachment trial of a private citizen is either a waste of time or unconstitutional — or both.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is busy ferreting out purportedly extremist Republican House members.  For the first time in memory, one party now removes committee members of the other.  Yet for each Republican outlier, there is a corresponding Democratic firebrand member who has either called for violence or voiced anti-Semitic slurs — and yet will not be removed from House committees.  So the asymmetrical tit-for-tat continues.

The subtext to this madness is that the Democratic Congress, the new administration, the administrative state, and the political left are obsessed with dismembering the presidential corpse of now citizen Donald Trump.  Apparently they fear that one day he will rise from the infernal regions to wreak his revenge.  Meanwhile, life in America goes on.

Yet few of our leaders are very worried about the existential crises left unaddressed by their obsessions with the ghost of Trump.  Take the debt.  It is now nearly $28 trillion, and it is growing by almost $2 trillion a year.  No one in Washington talks about reducing the annual budget deficit.  Nor do officials find ways to balance the budget.  The idea of paying off the monstrous debt remains a fantasy.  Instead, our elected representatives argue over whether to borrow another $1 trillion, or more likely $2 trillion, without worry of where it comes from or how it will be repaid.

But money is not completely a construct.  We will eventually pay for our profligacy either with steeper taxes, higher inflation, 1970s-like stagflation, or permanent zero interest.  Or eventually America will renounce its debt and destroy the credibility of the U.S. government.  Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars and countless hours of once-productive labor are diverted to unproductive ideological censorship, career canceling, and indoctrination.

Our allies, such as democratic France, warn America that it is cannibalizing itself — and becoming dangerous to others.  Our enemies, such as the totalitarian Chinese, are delighted with our suicidal wokeness.  The cost is not just the expense of cleaning up the billions of dollars of destruction from the summer riots, the thousands of memorials and statues destroyed and defaced, and the hundreds of schools and buildings to be renamed.

Far more consequential is the suppression of creative thinking — from humanistic study to scientific research.  The Islamic world, as the historian Bernard Lewis once observed, stagnated in the 19th and 20th centuries once radical Islamists began squelching all free inquiry.  Humanities and science were perverted from 1932 to 1945 in Germany by the pollution of Nazi racial censors.  What was written or advanced in communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is largely discredited, given that commissar hacks determined the rules of publication and research.  Something similarly frightening is now occurring in the United States.

Scholars, journalists, artists, and educators feel they must mouth politically correct platitudes.  They constantly hedge their public discourse in fear of career cancellation.  They strain to synchronize their research with some approved woke ideology to save their livelihoods.  When professors must write “diversity statements” and hire, promote, and fire on the basis of race, the model is not the U.S. Constitution, but something out of contemporary China.

No one pays much attention that our capital is now weaponized with soldiers in camouflage and barbed wire.  Not since the Civil War has Washington resembled such a vast police state.  Ex-military officers who once warned Trump not to deploy federal troops to ensure the safety of the White House from Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrators now are silent about a veritable army deployed in Washington.

President Joe Biden has signaled that all new pipeline construction is over.  Fracking on public lands is taboo.  The border is to become wide open.  Federal immigration law is now effectively nullified.  Americans may soon have to be tested for COVID-19 before flying into or out of the country.  But illegal immigrants will not be COVID-19-certified when — illegally — they cross the border.  Iran is bankrupt, isolated and roundly despised by most of the countries in the Middle East.  Now America is doing its best to resuscitate the most radical and anti-American regime in the world — at the expense of our allies in the Arab world, Israel, and America’s own interests.  While we are busy devouring each other, China is smiling because once-feared American capitalists have become laughable Keystone Cops.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com.

Intermezzo Blog: Prophetic Word for President Biden from Jonathan Cahn

An apology to my email followers: the other day I erroneously reposted the blog of January 21.  My old brain just seems to slip a cog every now and then, and it is too easy to click buttons on the computer.  But once the reposting went to your email there was no way to retract it.  This was the blog I intended to send.

Jonathan Cahn leads Hope of the World, a service to Gentiles and Jews examining issues of prophecy and end-time events.  While somewhat flamboyant (his website is a little ‘busy’ for my tastes), he is impressive as a Bible teacher in that he does not go beyond what the scripture says; no predictions of dates or even seasons; no announcements of “Look here is the Christ in the inner room!” (Matthew 24:23).  And he is very thorough and discreet in his exposition of what the Bible says about the second coming of Jesus.

If you have 35 minutes, you may want to check out his YouTube of the Inaugural Prayer Breakfast for Barack Obama on March 11, 2013.  I suspect someone in the president’s staff thought, “Okay, here’s a Jewish rabbi who is also an evangelical Christian; we can kill two birds with one stone and have him speak, appealing to voters from both camps.”  Boy, did he get an education! 😄

Joking aside, this is Rabbi Cahn’s recent message to our new president, who we must acknowledge is in the position because of God’s will.  I, along with any other Christ-followers, am praying FOR President Biden that he will recognize Father’s voice when He speaks and respond appropriately to the grace of Jesus, winning for himself and our nation a reprieve from the disasters that the current divisions in our county portend.

Intermezzo: Guest Blog by Jarrett Stepman

We Must Heed Lincoln’s Warning About Mob Rule

by Jarrett Stepman @JarrettStepman / January 06, 2021 /
Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. He is also the author of the new book, “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.”

Abraham Lincoln warned us: Mob rule begets mob rule.
On Wednesday, as Congress convened to certify an Electoral College vote of the 2020 presidential election, a mass of people broke into the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.  They climbed the building, smashed windows, entered offices, and even entered the House and Senate chambers.  It was a bizarre scene, to say the least.



Taking selfies and engaging in photo ops from the House speaker’s chair certainly puts a modern twist on this 21st-century reenactment of the Vandals’ sack of Rome in 455 A.D.  But it wasn’t just window-smashing and photo ops.  The intrusion also turned deadly.  A woman was shot and killed.

There will also be questions as to how a group of people, no matter how large, was able to push their way inside the Capitol and stay inside for several hours.  So, what’s to be made of all this?



The right to peacefully assemble and protest is an essential one guaranteed by the Constitution.  Breaking into and vandalizing federal property — for whatever cause — is not.  Regardless of the original message of the protests, those who orchestrated the break-in to federal property deserve condemnation.  It’s a violation of the rule of law, not to mention a federal crime.

Certainly, many on both the left and right came out quickly to condemn the violence.  It would, however, be a mistake to see what happened in isolation.






Let’s not forget that Washington, D.C. — as with many other cities across the country — had already been beset last year by mobs and waves of violent riots.  When rioters lit fires, smashed windows, toppled statues, and physically and verbally assaulted political opponents in the name of Black Lives Matter this summer, the result was that a street was named for the movement in front of the White House.



The violence wasn’t limited to just Washington.  Around the country, large swaths of cities were set ablaze as police departments became overwhelmed, and politicians did little to stop it.  A lawless “autonomous” zone was created in the middle of downtown Seattle, which led to widespread property damage and several deaths.  Many hopped aboard calls to defund the police, rather than defending the police while they were besieged.  And more than a few turned down federal aid when it was clear that things had spun out of control.



Portland, Oregon, had the highest spike of violent crime in the entire country — impressive given the nearly unprecedented national surge in violent crime.  That is the consequence of rampant lawlessness.

When Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., dared to suggest in an op-ed in the pages of The New York Times that overwhelmed police departments should have the ability to request aid from the military, the Times newsroom rebelled, and he was called an authoritarian.  Yet, Cotton aptly called the lawless riots what they were: mob rule.

Mob rule, whether conducted by members of Black Lives Matter or people wearing MAGA hats, is a threat to law and order.  Not only that, it’s a threat to liberty, too.  It violates the very essence of the Constitution, of the belief that the people ultimately rule.  And as Abraham Lincoln warned in his famed 1838 Lyceum Address, mob law when left unchecked begets more mob law.  When portions of the population think that violence is the path to victory, where the rules of the system don’t have to be followed, it is only natural for others to think that mob law is the law.  Under mobocracy, even those inclined to follow the law may eventually lose faith in the government.

Lincoln warned:
Good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed.

Even if we believe that our system has become corrupted, that injustice rather than justice has prevailed, it is still the wiser course to appeal to ballots, protest, and petition rather than violence.  The American Revolution, which ultimately ended in war and the overthrow of British rule, was for the most part an orderly affair.  Even within a system that did not provide representative government, the Founders appealed to law and negotiation first, second, and third before resorting to violence.  And once committed to revolution, they knew there was no going back.

We shouldn’t forget that the storming of the Bastille, as grave as the depredations of the French monarchy had sometimes been, led to mass violence and tyranny, not ordered liberty.

Most Americans understand this.  But make no mistake, unlike this summer’s riots — which countless media outlets distorted and misrepresented to excuse and minimize — there will absolutely be efforts to portray every Trump supporter as a violent insurrectionist.  And politicians will use that to justify curtailing the God-given rights of citizens who disagree with them.

Many have condemned the intrusion and vandalizing of the Capitol Building, as they should, but we should also not forget the fact that mob rule and lawlessness have destroyed the lives of countless Americans over the past year and has eroded our country’s attachment to the rule of law.  This should have always been unacceptable.

Lincoln’s warning in 1838 was ignored, and a generation of Americans paid a terrible price in blood for it. Let us learn from the past instead of tearing it down.  Regardless of the corruption of our institutions, the better path forward is to support the rule of law, reform old institutions or build new ones, and plan for the long term of sustaining this federal republic that we would surely like to keep.

January 2 – An Upside Down Cake for An Upside Down World

January 2 finds us anticipating virus vaccines across the US and a finalization to our November 3rd presidential and vice-presidential elections in just four days.  What ever happens, we hope it is finally over!  However, based on the last four years, it is unlikely politics will slip away into the background for a couple years the way it used to after elections.  Mid-term balloting is “only” two years away when Americans will go back to the polls to choose lawmakers for whichever Senators are coming to the end of their six-year terms, and all the Representatives, who serve two-year terms.

And no one expects a reprieve from presidential hopefuls.  Vote for ME in 2024!  I’ll give you bigger stimulus checks than the other guy and unite the country around my partisan positions on abortion, immigrant rights, LGBTQ, the environment, what to call people who gender identify, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel and Social Security.  Okay, on Social Security almost everyone actually agrees.  But otherwise the parties and the national factions are poles apart, whatever the polls say.

So I decided to make an upside down cake to celebrate our upside down world.  Variation on a theme, I made a Pineapple Almond Upside Down Cake that actually came out pretty easy to do.  Hey, if I can do it, YOU can! 🙂

It is always safest with any recipe to assemble all your ingredients before beginning.  It would be a shame to make the caramel for the bottom/top and then find out you did not have cornstarch . . . course, at that point you could always claim you wanted to make caramel!  Actually, guess no downside there! 😉

So get together the following for your Ingredients:
Topping (which will go in the bottom of the cake pan):
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter (salted/unsalted does not matter)
Pineapple slices, one 20oz can or enough fresh to cover the bottom of your cake pan
Cake Mix:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/2 cup ground almonds
(I like leaving some small chunks for crunch: I just don’t grind too finely.)
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 cup sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter (soften to room temperature)
1 teaspoon almond extract (If you are afraid of too much almond, you can substitute vanilla extract here.)
4 large eggs
3/4 cup sour cream
Pan – 8″ x 11.5″ x 2″

Generously grease the pan with butter.  You can use the stick you have for the topping, but make sure you reeeeally cover the corners and the sides up to the rim!  This butter greasing will make your cake smoothly come out of the pan when you flip it at the end.
Melt the butter at medium heat in a small saucepan and add the brown sugar, stirring until it dissolves. But after the sugar melts, STOP stirring, and let it simmer until the mixture just begins to bubble.
Pour the mixture into the pan and level it out. 
Next add the pineapple slices, arranged in a single layer to cover as much as you can of the caramel mixture.  As you can see my slices were not very pretty like the canned ones, but I was using a fresh pineapple and had not planned on the cake when I cut it up.

While making the cake mix, preheat your oven to 325⁰F.

To make the cake batter, whisk all the dry ingredients except the sugar in a large mixing bowl: flour, corn starch, almonds, baking powder and salt. 
In another mixing bowl, beat the sugar and butter and flavoring (almond or vanilla).  Use the larger bowl for this, not like I did with a small mixing bowl.  Add one egg at a time and beat each one before adding the next.
Add about half the dry mixture and mix into the butter mix, followed by half the sour cream.  Repeat this step with the remainder of the dry mixture and sour cream.  This process it to ensure smooth blending of the batter without overbeating the eggs. 
Once you have a consistent texture throughout the batter, pour it over the pineapple and caramel; smooth it out so that it is fairly uniform on top.

Bake at 325⁰F for about one hour until a tester (e.g. butter knife) comes out clean.  If you have a baking thermometer the center of the cake should reach 205⁰F.  If you stop before the tester comes out clean the center of your cake will be mushy; tastes good, but not great presentation.
Allow the cake to cool in its pan for five minutes, off any source of heat; i.e. out of the oven and not on a hot rack.
Carefully flip the cake smoothly onto a platter.  If some of the topping that was on the bottom of the pan sticks to it, start over and butter the pan more generously! 🙂  Not really.  Just scoop it out and patch it onto the top of the now Upside Down Cake.

If you use canned pineapple or cut your fresh stuff into pretty rings, you can dress it up with cherries in the center of the rings for decoration.  The cake can be served still warm from the oven or cooled.
With the fruit on top, I recommend refrigeration after cooling to room temperature unless you are eating it all within 24 hours.
Next time I am going to try overbeating the eggs.  It is delicious as it is, with the texture of a pound cake, but I think overbeating the eggs before adding the dry mixture will make it lighter.

Bon appétit or maybe “Nanea i kāu pāʻina!“
And to end the year, one of the most spectacular Christmas musical renditions I have ever heard; the caption says it all: It Will Give You Chills!

 

Intermezzo: Coming New Year’s Day

Well, it’s almost that day of the year when we turn over a new leaf (or snowflake if you’re lucky enough to live far enough north to enjoy the miraculous white powder).

In any case, lots of leaves have been turned over this year that many of us did not expect!  Job losses, especially in the service and food sectors, mandates from new czars formerly known as governors, isolation from nursing homes and hospital patients, mistreatment or murder of citizens based on the color of their skin, Marxist style riots dubiously based on claims of racial profiling, conflicts of electoral processes with questions of electoral integrity, a Supreme Court confirmation liberals detested, deaths of dear friends or relatives with the Wuhan Virus (I am NOT racist against Chinese – I MARRIED one! Wuhan was simply where the virus started.)  Yes, lots of changes none of us could have predicted.

So now there is another “leaf” to turn over.  We pray that things will begin to return to “normal” with the virus vaccine roll-outs from Pfizer and Moderna promising that we may see a flattening of the pandemic curve after a year of spikes and information overload that reported too quickly on social media what would best be left for biologists to work out over a couple years. 

The election should be finalized January 6th with Congress certifying the results of the electoral college, and we may have a politician for president who used to be a good compromiser with opponents in the Senate.  We’ll see if he is as good at getting compromises from extremists in his own party or in getting concessions from conservatives who think the election was stolen.

Conspiracy theories filled the “fake news” on both sides of the liberal/conservative divide.  They rivaled Hilary Clinton’s “vast right wing conspiracy,” but put the blame on her camp this time round with the Democracy-Alliance attempting to overthrow the next mid-term elections.  “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” = “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” 

Anita and I walked around our neighborhood and enjoyed the Christmas decorations, especially those that acknowledge Jesus’ real purpose in coming to earth.  He was uniquely born to die, not as an accident of activity or disease.  His express reason for creating a body inside Mary, using her DNA, was so that He could go to the cross and pay a penalty for our sin and selfishness, giving of Himself freely to redeem us into eternal life.  So now, though the outward man perishes the inner man can be renewed day by day until we pass from this vaporous short-term existence into the Real Life that Jesus initiated for us by rising from the dead.

Our subdivision, Copperfield, put out Luminaria by providing everyone in our 433 houses with paper bags, sand and tea lights.  Though slightly sparse (only five per house), it gave a sense of community to our neighborhood that has been missed this year with no Clubhouse activities and restricted pool use.  The display turned out very effectively to show we are all responsible for the light we shine.

Our Christmas tree has so many ornaments collected on our travels that we only use a few of the usual generic bulbs.  The tree that went up just before Thanxgiving Day will probably stay up through January.  Christmas is not even celebrated in some places until January 7, and Candlemas, the celebration of the traditional view of Jesus’ presentation at the Temple is not until February 1.  Besides, the lighted tree with all its memorial embellishments makes the dark wintry nights feel just a little brighter as the days begin to slowly lengthen since the winter solstice is past.  A friend in Johnston, Rhode Island used to leave their Christmas tree up all year long, just covering it with a sheet to keep dust off . . . unless someone came to visit; then they would reveal the tree in all its glory whether the month was May or July!  Here are a few of our “annual” ornaments.

So now another year ends and another begins, as we count the years.  (We have not always counted this way, and even now, other cultures . . . count differently.)  Several people have asked me what I do in my days now that I have officially retired.  These days, memberships, subscriptions, and a dizzying array of content to watch and listen to abound.  In fact, I still have not begun to clean my basement (now my excuse is that it is too cold 🙂 ).  Enjoy your time with your family.  Stay safe and healthy into the New Year, and we will see what Father has planned for us in 2021.

Intermezzo: President-Elect Joe Biden – Chosen By God

“The Electoral College on Monday began voting to make President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election official.” (NBC News) “According to an NBC News tally, Biden was leading Trump by 240 votes to 229 as of 4 p.m. ET. Biden will mark the occasion with an address to the country around 7:30 p.m. ET on Monday.”

Finally, after five weeks of “officially” calling the election, a major news network is finally admitting they made a mistake. Well, not in so many words, like “We’ve been lying to you all month.” But NBC News just announced the Electoral College vote which would “make Joe Biden’s 2020 victory official.”

Since the Associated Press called the “official” results on the night of November 3rd, most of the mainstream media echoed this theme, calling Trump’s contesting “baseless, without evidence, a false narrative” and other pejorative terms to make sure we all “knew” that there was “nothing to see here, folks.” In spite of significant irregularities and multiple legal affidavits affirming suspicions of voter fraud and machine tampering (subject to criminal prosecution if lying), the courts, including some judges appointed by Trump, avoided the conflict to stay out of politics.

Whether the outcome of these complaints by the Trumpers would have changed what Democrats expected to happen, it disturbs me that the media continued to pile on that he was “trying to overturn the election,” when what his legal team was trying to do was assert that the election was not over until the legal challenges had been heard.

Unfortunately, inaction is itself a form of action, and only God can assess whether the judges were just afraid of the leftist mobs that would attack if they validated any of the questions, or if they truly believed that Trump’s team had no legal basis for challenging the election processes in the contested states. I am not a lawyer and have not read any of the briefs presented to the courts. In any case, unless Trump “pulls a rabbit out of the hat” (as I have referenced his winning before), and gets Congress to refute the Electoral College, throwing the election into the House of Representatives, then Biden will have prevailed, however dubiously.

Thucydides, about 400 years Before Christ, said in his History of the Peloponnesian War, “In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.” While this is true in any democratic/republican election, it is particularly concerning that this election was SOOO close in the so-called “battle-ground states” that it is very possible there were illegal activities that delivered the election to Biden.

However, as a Christ-follower I must keep in mind that it is my Father who actually determines our leaders per Daniel and Paul in the Bible: “He removes kings [presidents] and sets up kings [presidents].”  (Daniel 2:21) “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.  Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” (Romans 12:21-31:1) Thus, whether illegal actors or incompetent officials were responsible in human terms for the outcome of this election, I must admit that God has chosen the Biden/Harris ticket for our next president and vice-president.

That does not mean Christ-followers should simply lie down now and let the pro-abortionists, the Green New Deal, and the antisemitism of the BDS congress people bowl us over into submission to ungodly activities. But we must tread carefully and make sure the places we take stands are, in fact, places Jesus would stand. We ARE supposed to be “little Christs,” the derisive term that initially got us called Christians. It may be that some of us will have to take stands as Jesus did before Pilate and the Sanhedrin and allow ourselves to be crucified. Isn’t that what being a “little Christ” means?

As a Christ-follower, I am enjoined by the apostle Paul to pray for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. NOTE: we are to pray FOR them, not against them. (See https://capost2k.wordpress.com/2020/04/05/who-are-you-praying-for-during-this-wuhan-virus-crisis/.) This may be difficult if you voted for Trump, but I did not write the rule book. You may want to check out Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa TerKeurst for some guidance on dealing with what many of us consider “unforgivable sins,” remembering that there is only one thing that goes by that ID. And Ms. TerKeurst addresses how one deals with the frustration of forgiving someone who does not want or ask for it; well worth reading.

So whether you voted for our President-elect or the current President, let your faith grow into Jesus. God did not make a mistake. Now, how will we react to what God is going to do in our nation? How will we participate in what God wants to do for our neighbor?