Vote for Joe

Catching up on the last couple weeks… I’m pictured here at the Pilot Travel Center in Beaverdam, Ohio, where I stopped to stump. Think about it. You’ve got people from all over the country stopping at these kinds of places. So if you can get the campaign cards into just the right hands… Well, it’s either this or millions of dollars in advertising… I covered the Ada Village Council meeting the other night for the newspaper. The fiscal officer reported that, surprisingly, Ada was only 6% below projections for village tax collection, even with the pandemic. While acknowledging this, indeed, was optimistic, one councilmember cautioned that there was still need for prudence in spending because things still could go south, so to speak. It’s this kind of small town fiscal common sense that we need with economic matters in D.C... I also did a feature story about a local Bluffton bicycle story owner. He said the shop has been going gangbusters since the pandemic hit. He said families are opting for semi- “staycations” in the form of day long, weekend, etc., bicycle trips, and such. [Never let a crisis go to waste.] Way less plane, bus, train… travel. Way less pollution, global warming gases, and so on. And it took a pandemic for us to realign and start doing more of the right thing. Hmm… Note: At my son Jonathan’s soccer match the other night at Elida (Ohio) High School, the booth announcer, after the perfunctory sportsmanship and social distancing warnings, then asked that people refrain from “talking politics” in the stands as well. Have we actually gotten to that point? Wow.

On my recent campaign tour down Old Rte. 30, I stumped in Cairo, Ohio. (Something I’ve done in hundreds and hundreds of towns over the years.) Cairo is a small, rural town made up, primarily, of working class folks. I also captured this sunset that evening. Meanwhile, across the country in California, the sky looks somewhat like this as well in many parts. But this orangish red is from flames. California is on fire. As I type this, 2 million acres have already burned, which is a record — and the state is just now moving into the main part of the fire season. The confluence of natural elements: extended drought, drier air, higher than normal temperatures, more Santa Anna winds than usual, a phenomenal 11,000 lightening strikes in just a couple day period to spark a lot of the fires… Pictures coming out of California make it look like, well, Hell. Question(s): Global warming? Yeah, to an extent, sure. But also, is it God’s warning? California, which often sets the trends for the rest of the country, over time, is now steeped in progressiveness that’s allowing for whole sale abortion, anything goes queer lifestyles, off the charts immodest dress, drugs… This stuff, all of it, is tremendously antithetical to what’s taught in God’s Bible. And to continue in all this is a ticket to a place that’s even hotter than California, for eternity. Wouldn’t you think God would step in to try to get peoples’ attention, before it’s too late? I do. Note: In fact, I believe God might be giving all of America a Nineveh Moment, before it’s too late.

This week I wrote a piece for the newspaper on a Youth For Christ (YFC) outreach in a hardscrabble area of Lima, Ohio. This place, as you see here (pre-pandemic), is usually bustling with youth activity, especially with it being a “safe space” in the neighborhood. However, it closed for awhile. And now only 10 youth are allowed in the building at a time. The director told me they recently got a grant for some nice outdoor picnic tables, umbrellas, plants… for a court yard. Kids now do Bible studies, art projects, homework, board games… at the tables. And Rally Point is currently trying to solicit a local volunteer electrician(s) to put some flood lights up so the youth can stay later in the evenings. The director said incidence of youth depression, drug use, suicides… are up since the pandemic hit. And places like Rally Point are scrambling to try to help. Note: Rally Point also has a fence-enclosed, outside basketball court. And a couple years ago, my son Jonathan (who plays on the Bluffton High School basketball team) undertook fundraising efforts, then joined with a master electrician who volunteered his time to put up a flood light for the court. It all went well. Note 2: Several years back, we intentionally moved to a hardscrabble area of Cleveland (the poorest city in the country at the time) to join with a Catholic Worker group to do regular outreach into the neighborhood. We saw, first hand, how desperate some kids can become in atmospheres like this. Trump never lived in this type of environment. And for all his “working class Joe” Scranton rhetoric, most likely Biden never lived in this type of desperate environment either.

What’s starting to dot towns around the area is what’s called: “blue line flags.” I just wrote a story for one of the local newspapers about this. The flag is meant as a show of solidarity with the police all over the country. And the blue line is symbolic of the “thin blue line” between law abiding citizenry, and lawlessness/chaos. While there are, indeed, a few bad police, as there are a few bad people in virtually every profession, overall police are, not only upstanding, but a tremendous benefit to the community. But now they feel like they’re constantly under a microscope, often have their hands tied when responding, and so on. And given all this, how many are simply going to get out of the profession, and how many younger people are not going to want to get into the profession? A climate of lawlessness is growing in our metropolitan areas, and the next venues will be suburbia and rural America. If I were president, I’d step in to immediately quell this — through a number of different, and assertive, channels.

I’ve been reading this rather voluminous book the past several weeks on and off. Churchill’s was virtually the lone voice, during most of the 1930s, trying to warn England, France, et. Al., about Hitler and his real intentions. But virtually everyone else stayed in denial about it, wanting to believe Hitler was really, for the most part, benevolent. Churchill knew better. Behind the scenes, Hitler was feverishly building the Nazi war machine, but on the surface he presented as merely a charismatic diplomat. Yet we all know the rest of the story, huh. However, what’s not known as well is this: In 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three children in Fatima, Portugal. She had a series of “messages” for them. (This apparition, by the way, has been approved by the Catholic Church.) One of the things she said is that World War I would end shortly . But if mankind kept “offending God” (with the sins of the day), a second World War would occur as a “punishment” from God. And if, in fact, this second world war was going to happen, there would be an “unknown light” that would appear in the sky just before the start of the war as a sign from God that the war was imminent. And on Jan. 25, 1938 this mysterious light thing did, indeed, happen — and was in newspapers all over the world. World War II started shortly after… When you connect the dots, mankind’s ongoing collective sinning (vs. repenting and changing) gave rise to Hitler. And so it is now… The Blessed Virgin Mary has returned and is appearing to people around the globe trying to warn us of a Third World War (this time with nuclear weapons), if we don’t change, quick. Objectively, mankind, overall, is many times worse spiritually (abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, internet porn… to name just a few), than people of the 1920s and ’30s were. And in ‘Churchill fashion,’ if you will, I, too, have been trying to warn people of all this — instead of Hitler, it will be the rise of the actual anti-christ this time, as an example — through a series of videos and writing that I refer to as America’s “Nineveh Moment(s).”