Dr. Jordan Peterson (Clinical Psychologist) GOES THERE!

05 Friday May 2017

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For those following my blog, you will know that I have been following the work (as posted in videos on YouTube) of Dr. Jordan Peterson. And as you know, I have been recognizing patterns that support PROCESSES that are taking place inside and outside of the Catholic Church. I have termed these as CONVERGENCE PROCESSES.

The patterns that I have noticed in turn can be summed up as follows: a return to Thomism. As my loyal reader know, Thomism is the philosophical framework (and not just) that was developed by the 13th century Scholastics and served as foundation of Catholic doctrine until it was brutally suppressed by the neo-Modernists in the middle of the last century.

What I have been observing on the secular side of human endeavor, especially in some areas of academia, is that serious scholars, let’s call them EMPIRICISTS, are returning to what can be called the classical scholars and picking up where these scholars left off.

In the video at the top of this page, you will notice (at about the 1:46:00 mark) that Dr. Peterson talks about morality and Fredric Nietzsche’ critique of Christianity. He goes on to say that Nietzsche, who created the “overman”, someone who was able to create his own “values” was wrong and that Carl Jung corrected Nietzsche. What Jung corrected was the notion that “values”, i.e. morality is inherent in man. Now Carl Jung was no St. Thomas Aquinas, but Dr. Jordan Peterson is quickly closing the distance. But I digress… When I first heard this, the first thing that came to my mind is the following discussion of Natural Moral Law here: (Romans 2:14-15)

For when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law; these having not the law are a law to themselves: Who shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing, or also defending one another.

Notice the CONVERGENCE PROCESS or is it just me?

Now to the subject at hand and more CONVERGENCE PROCESS. What I have done below is transcribe the summary that Dr. Peterson gave starting at the 1:06:00 mark. I will repost and comment.

And so I will repeat the outline and end.

Now I was talking about the boundaries of free speech. And I believe that speech should be untrammeled because it is too dangerous to encapsulate it, but that does not mean that I believe that speech, free speech comes without responsibility. I believe quite the contrary, that free speech carries with it the highest responsibility because if you wish the right to free speech, so that the responsibility of speaking, then you have to contend with the fact that your words are the force that shapes the world. And that with every word you utter, things tilt slightly heavenward or slightly hell ward and that responsibility rests firmly on your shoulders. And it’s inescapable.

After you have digested the above, please go into this video here (time permitting) and see what inferences you can draw from that material.

But back to the Peterson video:

And that’s a terrible thing to realize although it is a meaningful thing to realize. And people say that they would like their life to be meaningful and that’s a questionable claim because to recognize your life as meaningful, is to understand that everything you do matters and that what it means for things to matter is that your deciding in some sense between heaven on earth and hell on earth with every decision that you make. And that the decision that you make echo far beyond you in ways that are almost incomprehensible and that the destiny of the world is determined by the collective decisions of the individuals that make up the world. And that we’re all locked together deciding in which metaphysical direction our little planet will go.

So free speech carries with it heavy responsibility but the responsibility is something you want because it justifies the suffering of existence.

Life is suffering.

Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated.

Truth is the handmaiden of love.

Dialogue is the pathway to truth.

Humility, that’s recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn.

To learn is to die voluntarily. And to be born again in great ways and small.

So speech must be untrammeled so that dialogue can take place. So that we can all humbly learn. So that truth can serve life. So that suffering can be ameliorated. So that we can all stumble forward.

Towards the Kingdom of God.

Notice the above. Sound familiar, yes.

And what is surprising is where Dr. Peterson’s logical progression terminates. Aside, please listen carefully to the part about Pinocchio’s FATHER, Geppetto and how he relates to the classics. But I digress…

Now, Dr. Peterson doesn’t differentiate between the kingdom of God (a proposed secular construct) and the Kingdom of God as per Quas Primas, but the differentiation can be extracted from this lecture.

I will end here, since there is a lot of watching.

But one final request. As you are watching this video, always please keep in mind that you are listening to a clinical psychologist.

The Fight Is On – Prayer Request.

05 Friday May 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Of Interest

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In yesterday’s post, your humble blogger laid out some thoughts about how to go about implementing the Benedict Option. As we all know, this strategy is built on the idea that small groups of Faithful will band together and form pockets in which the Catholic Faith and wider Western Civilization can survive. One of my suggestions was that these Benedict Option communities should be organized around the Mass of All Ages, i.e. the Latin Mass according to the 1962 Missale Romanum, or as we call it here on this blog: The Mass.

Today we check into one community that can be seen as a case study for the implementation of a Benedicts Option community. This community is based in the city of Utrecht in The Netherlands. The background is that the faithful have been using a beautify church that they have been renting from the Utrecht City Council. Last year, they made an offer to purchase the church and have been waiting for a final decision. The last that I published on this matter can be found here.

Today, I am republishing a post from Dome Nico’s Face Book page. Dome Nico is the organist at St Willibrords Church in Utrecht and brings us up to date on the latest purchase news: (emphasis added)

WE NEED YOUR HELPFUL PRAYERS!

As you all might know, the Society of St. Pius X offered a decent amount for this abandoned church (in the City of Utrecht, the Netherlands) in November 2016. We have been celebrating Latin Masses since 2015 with a visible growth of literally 300% of the faithful last week. All coming from the neighboring Novus Ordo parishes. The municipal delegation has signed a principal agreement last month. All we need is the green light from the city council, which will be given End of June 2017. Deo Gratias.

But like always, the devil wants to sabotage things. There is a cultural group, who wants to keep the church away from the Society to organize musical concerts, plays and operas, right in front of the high Altar! They started an online-petition and a nasty media smear campaign to provoke and to create a turmoil amongst the citzens. Calling us bigots, antisemites, intollerant sect (we all know the drill) etc.

I would kindly like to ask you to storm the Heavens with your prayers. It really can’t hurt to offer up a whole decade of Avés for this cause. Save this building from turning into a concert hall. We pray to St. Joseph, the heavenly Protector of Holy Mother Church, St. Willibrord, the name giver of the church (an English monk who brought Christiany to Holland) and ofcourse to St. Pius X, our glorious patron saint.

In Christo regis,

SSPX Utrecht

So there you have it. Faithful Catholic would like to purchase a property but diabolical elements would rather keep the status quo. Notice the similarities in interests and tactics between this “Hochkulturen” Dutch group (musical concerts, plays and operas) and the local Niedrigkultur provincial groups (guitar jam sessions, women’s poetry readings and various meet and greet socials) who are thwarting the efforts of communities of the Faithful from having access to the Sacred Mass?

We are dealing with ideologues here, sports fans!

Therefore, what I would ask you dear reader, is to offer a decade of Aves for the Utrecht Catholics so that their purchase of St. Willibrord Church is successful. And just to remind you dear reader of how beautiful this church is, I will provide some eye-candy below.

And if any of you are on FaceBook, Dome Nico’s page can be found at Dome Nico and on the SSPX Faithful page likewise.

Benedict Option And The Convergence Process…

04 Thursday May 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Context

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Reading through my Blogs I Follow list, I noticed quite a few posts pertaining to the Benedict Option (BO) of late. Therefore, I will jump into this fray with some insights, while tying them into themes that I have been addressing on this blog recently.

I see the issues surrounding the BO as twofold.

On the one hand, for any strategy that will be employed by the Catholic Faithful, like for any strategy for that matter, that strategy needs to be defined with a high degree of precision. When speaking about the BO, the idea is that small groups of Faithful will “band” together and form pockets in which the Catholic Faith and wider Western Civilization can survive. Hence the references and analogies to the monastic orders of post antiquity.

On this front, the news is quite good. Reading through the Catholic blog-o-sphere, one can notice that Faithful Catholics are organizing themselves around the Latin Mass. Specifically, these lay organizations are requesting local pastors to introduce a Latin Mass in the local parish. Now some of these efforts are more effective, some less, but the general trend is that there are more of them. And your humble blogger has been picking up this trend through the increase in the numbers of Latin Masses being reported on those same blogs and websites.

As to the “problematic” Latin Mass communities, there is a lesson to be learned here. I see the solution to many problems that might arise with the local ~~Episcopalians~~ NUCatholics as providing the answer to how the BO should be instituted and implemented. What I mean by this is that if the BO is to mirror our monastic forebears, and our monastic forbearers isolated themselves inside the walls of monasteries, then we should copy this very successful strategy and isolate ourselves within the “walls” of our Latin Mass communities inside the churches and chapels.

What I mean by this is something along the lines of a comment I wrote at the Liturgy Guy’s blog post. Here is the relevant part:

(…) you can assemble a stable group and priest and schedule the TLM at a time when no one else is in the church. Try not to come into contact with these folks. They are not nice people. They are for the most part post-modernists, so they don’t believe in dialogue. All they understand is “power”. And now they have it. So there is no need to antagonize this remnant since these folks are very ideological. Actually, from what I have seen, if it wasn’t for the ideology, they wouldn’t even be in church. Currently, they are still managing to scrape enough money to pay the bills. So if the TLM community is not seen (non-threatening), and slips the pastor some cash for the use of the premises, it might be a win/win situation for both the TLM community and the pastor.

Aside, the pastors are open since most of them are under financial strain. They are not into “power” since the laity has neutered them a long time ago. The only downside for any new money that comes into the parish is the “hassle factor”. Minimization of that is actually the key.

I think the above summarizes the lay of the land in NUChurch-land. What I would add is that when selecting a parish for implementing the BO, I would select one that is worth saving. Here is why:

As to long term strategy, what we need to do is organize. The goal should be to get each TLM community to a size where they can finance their own parish. There are a lot of churches on the market at very reasonable prices. There are also crowd funding platforms that will allow a resourceful community to raise the purchase price. So the real issue then is covering the day to day operations.

So the long-term plan should be for that BO community to raise enough funds so that they will be in a position to purchase that church/chapel from the diocese/religious order at the optimal time. And being on good terms with the pastor no doubt help facilitate, if not expedite the eventual take-over. Here is a pretty accurate representation of the state of the post-conciliar church that I have discerned from following the Restoration:

And finally, what we all have to remember is that the post-conciliar church is an organization that is being liquidated. This does not mean that we will be able to acquire parishes from the dioceses since most of them (ordinaries highly ideological) would rather give them away to Muslims then sell them to Faithful Catholics. But there will come a time when that will change. So in the mean time, try to find some nice protestant facility if one is available in the vicinity. Otherwise, create a “church fund” and start raising funds. The opportunity will appear when you least expect it.

And now for the second and much trickier part, the part about getting and expanding your Latin Mass community. What your humble blogger has been noticing is what can be described as a CONVERGENCE PROCESS.

The latest example of this CONVERGENCE PROCESS can be extracted from the above Dr. Jordan Peterson video. If one comes to the substance (subject matter) of what Dr. Peterson is conveying through the LEX ARMATICUS framework, one notices the convergence between clinical psychology (Dr. Peterson’s field) with philosophy with Catholic dogma. Here is an example. In the 00:41 second mark, Dr. Peterson makes the following statement:

It’s Derrida that I have the most problem with. And I also know that he put his finger on a very complex problem, … the central post-modernist claim is that every situation allows for a potentially infinite number of interpretations, which is true. And therefore, it’s difficult to determine which interpretation should be held up as paramount. Now that’s true.

(…)

Now the reason the post-modernists were wrong is because there aren’t an indefinite number of interpretations of the world that don’t kill you. Or make others kill you. There is a very constrained number of interpretations that allow you to continue to exist and equally importantly to allow you to exist in the presence of other people. So although there are many interpretations that you can ferret out of the Shakespeare text, your job is to ferret out one that helps you live properly.

What is of note in the above text is that we see a process of discerning Truth. We start out with an entire universe of “interpretations”, we then “ferret” out the true ones. True in this case means those that will allow us to not only live but exist in the presence of other people. And if we take this process to its logical and natural end, we see that if our goal is not only live, exist in presence of others but the ultimate goal of eternal salvation, through a process of elimination, we reach capital “T” Truth. I.e. Catholicism.

Where I would part with Dr. Jordan’s analysis is where he says the following:

And so I think the post-modernists radically overplayed their hand, and that’s particularly true of Derrida, and I think that the people who follow Derrida are in many cases doing so because it’s a hell of a lot easier than actually doing the difficult job of extracting out useful tools from the literature of the world. Which is what you do when you read. You extract out useful tools.

Now, the above might be true. I think that sloth plays a large part in the “academic” research and literary criticism. But what I also think stands behind the radical relativization of language and meaning that the post-modernists introduced into the academy and culture is that they didn’t like where that academic road led. In other words, they didn’t like the fact that if they used a “scientific methodology”, they would end up in the same place as the Catholic theologians of St. Augustine’s day. And then how would they “earn” a living?

So in the name of a “pursuit of novelty”, not to mention earn a living on the public’s dime, the post-modernists took an “anti-intellectual” approach. And where did that road lead them? Here is Dr. Jordan with a prescient explanation:

The alternative to creating value systems and dealing with the exclusion that comes along with it is to drown in nihilistic chaos. And worse, and while you are drowning in nihilistic chaos, you will call out forces of totalitarian order. So it’s no solution. It’s no solution.

What I see post-modernism doing to students generally speaking is demoralizing them completely. You know, they come to university looking to catalyze their identity. Often clinging to the last remaining shreds of their culture. That’s what just keeping them afloat. And all the post-modernist professors do is take those remaining fragments that are allowing them to stay above the water, tell them that they are illusionary and take them away. It’s like, now you are free. It’s like I’ve dropped you in the middle of the ocean. You can swim in any direction you want. You’re free. And I think that’s rooted in large part in hatred of youth. I really believe that. Because why would you cripple people if you didn’t hate them.

And so there’s hatred of humanity lurking at the bottom of the worst accesses of ideologues in general. You know, you hear this from environmentalists sometimes. I’ve heard this many times: ‘The planet would be better off if there were no people on it’. Well, it’s like, let’s keep you away from the thermonuclear weapons shall we.

Yes, an this process is not only apparent at the universities but also inside the post-conciliar church.

Concluding, what is important to understand is that there is a way in which to organize oneself under a Benedict Option scenario. What is key is to organize around a Latin Mass community. The end goal should be to take over the ~~cloister~~ church.

Furthermore, there is also a very ripe environment for a proselytization effort. This environment is being created by individuals in the behavioral sciences and philosophy academic fields. These individuals, like Dr. Peterson appear to be brining their thought process in line with the objective reality. And they are allowing themselves to be driven (guided) by logic, evidence and reason. And this road leads to ONE and ONLY ONE end: the ONE TRUE FAITH.

It would be wise of members of these Benedict Option communities to become familiar with this knowledge and trend, extend it to the supernatural realm of human existence and try to help these lost sheep that Dr. Jordan Peterson describes above.

It won’t be easy, but I am sure it can work.

And the reason is that there is a CONVERGENCE PROCESS between secular knowledge and Catholic doctrine taking place.

Drilling Down To The ROOT Source Of The Problems…

02 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Context

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Today we return to a high level discussion since many occurrences that we are observing have one common ROOT CAUSE. Whether we are talking about the current situation in the “FrancisSovereign” Order of Malta, the Antifa riots that took place in most of the Western capitals yesterday, the dismemberment of FoxNews or even the “stealing Anne Frank’s good name”, we can trace these occurrences back to one ROOT SOURCE.

Update: They’re going after Poland now too.

And that ROOT SOURCE is not what you think it is.

Think closer to home.

Think KIRCHENSTEUER!

Yes, that ROOT SOURCE is what is known as German “soft power” and the German states attempt to control history. Actually, what they are trying to control is historiology. (the study or knowledge of history)

And you thought it was just George Soros….

Below is the American Thinker post that lays out the details…

George Soros and German Media

By Mark Musser

While Russian political tampering concerns dominate news headlines, one area of concern that has been overlooked for many decades is Germany’s mounting influential power over media, academia, and/or book publishing, something which Dr. Robert E. Kaplan of Jerusalem calls “soft power” in his illuminating book titled The Soros Connection, where he demonstrates the very real possibility that George Soros is a political and economic wrecking ball working as a foreign agent for the German state. Dr. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in history from Cornell University. He was heavily influenced by historian Edward Whiting Fox.

Around 2000, Kaplan began noticing that Germany and German based trusts, foundations, and publishers, etc. seemed to have developed a habit of sending grants to Holocaust research projects. While some of this was most certainly done to help ease the problem of Holocaust guilt, there was too much altruism to be credible. The more Kaplan investigated, the more skeptical he became of Germany’s philanthropy — all with a seemingly limitless supply of money. Kaplan then noticed that similar German funding and/or gifting had been a longstanding practice for well over 100 years, including strong ties to yellow journalism together with the meteoric rise of both the Hearst and Newhouse media empires in New York. Further, Kaplan submits evidence of strong German financial connections to the Rockefellers, Carnegies, J.P. Morgan, and the Ford Foundation. All this strongly suggested to Kaplan a coordinated effort of German government policy. Worse, German media has a very poor historical record relative to the freedom of the press precisely because of its close ties to the state going all the way back to the beginning of the Second Reich in 1871, when Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) exerted authoritarian control over what was printed. While the interwar years was concerned with whitewashing German war guilt from World War I, the aftermath of World War II was preoccupied with saving face following the terrors of the Holocaust.

In an article titled, “The German Problem,” the late syndicated columnist William Safire wrote, “I bridle at German book publishing hegemony. Few Americans realize that two German Gesellschaften are gaining stranglehold on US books.” Thus, the German media influences Kaplan writes about is also tied up with book publishing as well. Holtzbrinck Publishers and Bertelsmann control most of the big name publishing houses and a sizable market share of all the books produced in the United States. Bertelsmann is a media colossus that has been described as a “state within a state.” Bertelsmann played no small role in the dramatic rise of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Kaplan writes that in the past 20-25 years, both Bertelsmann and Holztzbrinck have done an admirable job of publishing any number of different books that share Holocaustic blame and guilt with other players and participants in different countries in order to help launder Germany’s history. Both Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck also have substantial Nazi pedigrees in their past. Bertelsmann is controlled by the Mohn family, who had a strong pro-Nazi history in the 1930s and 40s. Today the Mohns are active environmentalists who belong to the ultra-green Club of Rome. Scientific American and Nature magazines are owned by Holtzbrinck.

Kaplan then goes on to show how George Soros parrots virtually the same agenda that Germany and its media allies have been peddling for years. In particular, Soros mimicked Germany’s desire to break up Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Initially, only Germany wanted to break up the Balkans. President Clinton followed suit. The U.S. and Europe thus sided with the Albanian Muslims in both Bosnia and Kosovo. While Milosevich was no saint, the Bosnian/Albanian Muslims were/are not much better. During World War II, they fought on the same side as the SS and were Nazi collaborators. Kaplan is also convinced that the Balkanization of Yugoslavia was the first salvo of what is today called the Arab Spring, in order to help resurrect some form of the old Ottoman Empire. Germany and Turkey were allies in World War I. After Serbia was bombed in the Bosnian War, the USA then lost Russia, which is at the very heart of the crisis now fomenting in Ukraine. Is it not possible that much of the vitriol over Russia right now in the media is being largely promoted by German concerns?

Soros was infamously known for being the man who broke the bank of England in the early 1990s. According to Kaplan, Soros had inside information from the German government as he used the mark to make a killing involvong deliberate currency manipulation that hit England particularly hard. Soros has since used that incredible haul to make even more money, usually at the hefty expense of other nations. He then uses his profits to heavily influence and manipulate politics worldwide, particularly in America.

The first time we hear of Soros was in 1944 Budapest, Hungary. Thanks to the protective efforts of his father, Tivadar, Soros worked with a Nazi godfather to help locate and shake down fellow Jews of their belongings before they were shipped off to Auschwitz. Soros alleges his father put him in that position to shield him from the Nazis, but it becomes very difficult not to presume that Tivadar had strong connections with the Judenrat in Budapest. The Judenrat were Jewish councils that the Nazis set up all over Europe to force them to do their dirty work for them. The Judenrat were placed in charge of the ghettos that housed the Jews in horrific conditions. While many of the Judenrat tried to serve the best they could with what was forced upon them, some actually enjoyed the virtual godlike powers that were granted. How Soros’s father related to all this is unknown. What is known is that Soros himself, though a Jew and a free man, constantly works against Zionism and pro-Jewish policies today.

According to Pamela Geller, there is a dossier on Soros that alleges previous strong connections between Soros and Francois Genoud (1915-1996), the Swiss Nazi banker who helped bankroll the Third Reich and was later flush with Holocaust cash after the war. Genoud used Nazi money to lay the foundation stones for Islamic terrorism during the early 1970s. Many also believe Genoud was the very founder of the international Al Taqwa Bank in Switzerland that was directed by a neo-Nazi Islamicist by the name of Ahmad Huber, originally Albert Huber, who was a Swiss convert to Islam. This bank supposedly helped sponsor Osama bin Laden and was shut down after the 9/11 terrorist attacks for aiding and abetting both Al Qaeda and Hamas. Italian security dubbed it, “The Bank of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Many today complain of the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into various branches of the U.S. government.

While more than a few will look at Dr. Robert Kaplan’s assessment of Soros with incredulity, it is highly unlikely that even a rich, powerful man like Soros could have such a dominating influence over world affairs without state sponsorship of his activities. Even Bill O’Reilly once called Soros, “Blofeld.” In the original Ian Fleming James Bond series, Blofeld was in charge of an underground, but very rich and powerful semi-fascist terrorist organization of sorts called Spectre.

Mark Musser is a part-time pastor, author, missionary, and a farmer who lives in Olympia, Washington. He is a contributing writer for the Cornwall Alliance. His book Nazi Oaks provides a sobering history lesson on the philosophical foundations of the early German green movement, which was absorbed by National Socialism in the 1930s that proved to be a powerful undercurrent during the holocaust. Mark is also the author of Wrath or Rest which is a commentary on the warning passages found in the epistle to the Hebrews.

Washington D.C. – ‘splained…

28 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Of Interest

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Today I re-publish a post from the Conservative Treehouse blog. It has become my “blog of choice” for understanding the power structure in Washington D.C. The reason that I am bringing this to your attention is that the post’s author, one Sundance does a great job of laying out the operational aspects of how Washington D.C. works.

Or rather, does not work.

One series of points (DATA POINTS) that Sundance has made below, which set the lightbulb off in my head, is the following:

There is not a single congress person who writes legislation or laws.

(…)

Recap: Corporations (special interest group) writes the law. Lobbyists take the law and go find politician(s) to support it. Politicians get support from their peers using tenure and status etc. Eventually, if things go according to norm, the legislation gets a vote.

(…)

This helps to understand when Senator Rand Paul, Mike Lee or Ted Cruz are “pitching” a “bill they’ve written”, it’s a gimmick – a ruse – a pure fundraising ploy. Nothing more. That’s why the bills they talk about (ie. El Chappo, Clean Repeal etc.) never actually materialize…. they are raising money, not legislation.

And that’s why Trump’s legislative inbox is empty.

Yea, that makes perfect sense!

That ‘splains everything…

*****

Understanding Why President Trump Has Not Received Legislative Action From Congress…

Posted on April 27, 2017 by sundance

There are many new commentators at CTH, and even more new people taking notice of politics for perhaps the first time in their lives. There is also some confusion noticed between two distinct groups who appear to be talking above and around each other. Two groups trying to communicate from two entirely divergent sets of understanding.

Perhaps it is valuable to reset the larger frames of reference and provide clarity.

Many, heck, most people think when they vote for a federal politician -a representative- they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation. This is the old-fashioned “schoolhouse rock” perspective based on decades past.

There is not a single congress person who writes legislation or laws.

In 2017 not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct. This simply doesn’t happen.

Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body. Here’s how it works.

Outside groups often called “special interest groups” are entities that represent their interests in legislative constructs. These groups are often corporations, banks, financial groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar business connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella of interest specific to their like-minded affiliation.

Sometimes the groups are social interest groups; activists like climate groups, environmental interests etc. The social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need.

The for-profit groups (mostly business) have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws favorable to their interests. They have fully staffed offices just like any business would – only their business is getting legislation for their unique interests.

These groups are filled with highly-paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs. In the modern era this is actually the origination of the laws that we eventually see passed by congress. Within the walls of these buildings within Washington DC is where the ‘sausage’ is actually made.

Again, no elected official is usually part of this law origination process.

Once the corporation or representative organizational entity has written the law they want to see passed they hand it off to the lobbyists. The lobbyists are people who have deep contacts within the political bodies of the legislative branch, usually former House/Senate staff or former House/Senate politicians themselves.

The lobbyist takes the written brief, the legislative construct, and it’s their job to go to congress and sell it.

“Selling it” means finding politicians who will accept the brief, sponsor their bill and eventually get it to a vote and passage. The lobbyist does this by visiting the politician in their office, or, most currently familiar, by inviting the politician to an event they are hosting. The event is called a junket when it involves travel.

Often the lobbying “event” might be a weekend trip to a ski resort, or a “conference” that takes place at a resort. The actual sales pitch for the bill is usually not too long and the majority of the time is just like a mini vacation etc.

The size of the indulgences within the event, the amount of money the lobbyist is spending, is customarily related to the scale of the bill the sponsoring business entity needs to get support for. If the sponsoring business or interest group can gain a lot of financial benefit for the legislation they spend a lot on the indulgences.

Recap: Corporations (special interest group) writes the law. Lobbyists take the law and go find politician(s) to support it. Politicians get support from their peers using tenure and status etc. Eventually, if things go according to norm, the legislation gets a vote.

Within every step of the process there are expense account lunches, dinners, trips, venue tickets and a host of other customary way-points to generate/leverage a successful outcome.

But the important part to remember is that the origination of the entire system is EXTERNAL to congress.

Congress does not write laws or legislation, special interest groups do. Lobbyists are paid, some very well paid, to get politicians to go along with the need of the legislative group.

When you are voting for a Congressional Rep or a U.S. Senator you are not voting for a person who will write laws. Your rep only votes on legislation to approve or disapprove of constructs that are written by outside groups and sold to them through lobbyists who work for those outside groups.

While all of this is happening the same outside groups who write the laws are providing money for the campaigns of the politicians they need to pass them. This construct sets up the quid-pro-quo of influence, although much of it is fraught with plausible deniability.

This is the way legislation is created.

If your frame of reference is not established in this basic understanding you can often fall into the trap of viewing a politician, or political vote, through a false prism. The modern origin of all legislative constructs is not within congress.

“we’ll have to pass the bill to, well, find out what is in the bill” etc. ~ Nancy Pelosi 2009

“We rely upon the stupidity of the American voter” ~ Johnathan Gruber 2011, 2012

Now, think about this reality against the backdrop of the 2016 Presidential Election. The entire system within DC was not structurally set-up to receive a Donald Trump presidency.

If Hillary Clinton had won the election, her Oval Office desk would be filled with legislation passed by congress which she would be signing. Heck, she’d have writer’s cramp from all of the special interest legislation that would be flowing to her desk.

Why? Simply because the authors of the legislation, the special interest and lobbying groups, were spending millions to fund her campaign. President Hillary Clinton would be signing K-Street constructed special interest legislation to repay all of those donors/investors. Congress would be fast-tracking the passage because the same interest groups also fund the members of congress.

President Donald Trump winning the election threw a monkey wrench into the entire DC system…. The modern legislative machine is frozen in place.

The “America First” policies represented by candidate Donald Trump are not within the legislative constructs coming from the authors of the legislation. Congress has no bills to advance because all of the myriad of bills and briefs written are not in line with President Trump policy.

That’s why congress has not passed any legislation for President Trump to sign.

There’s no entity within DC writing legislation that is in-line with President Trump’s economic and foreign policy agenda. Exactly the opposite is true. All of the DC legislative briefs and constructs are antithetical to Trump policy.

There are hundreds of file boxes filled with thousands of legislative constructs that became worthless when Donald Trump won the election.

Those legislative constructs (briefs) representing tens of millions of dollars worth of time and influence and are now just sitting there piled up in boxes under desks and in closets amid K-Street and the congressional offices.

Any current legislation must be in-line with an entire new political perspective, and there’s no-one, no special interest or lobbying group, currently occupying DC office space with any interest in synergy with Trump policy.

Think about the larger ramifications within that truism.

That is also why there’s so much opposition.

No legislation by outside interests means no work for lobbyists who sell it. No work means no money. No money means no expense accounts. No expenses means politicians paying for their own indulgences etc.

However, no K-Street expenditures -because of the futility of it- also means more money available for opposition and activist activity.

Lastly, when you understand this reality you begin to see the difference between legislation with a traditional purpose and faux-legislation with a political agenda.

Remember, politicians don’t write laws – outside groups do.

If you asked a DC Senator or House Member to actually write a law they’d look back at you like a cow just licked them on the forehead. The politician would have no clue what you are asking them to do, and would immediately look to their staff as their closest reference point (the go-betweens) for outside lobbyist assistance.

This helps to understand when Senator Rand Paul, Mike Lee or Ted Cruz are “pitching” a “bill they’ve written”, it’s a gimmick – a ruse – a pure fundraising ploy. Nothing more. That’s why the bills they talk about (ie. El Chappo, Clean Repeal etc.) never actually materialize…. they are raising money, not legislation.

And that’s why Trump’s legislative inbox is empty.

Staffers with nothing to do…

“FrancisSovereign” Order Of Malta – The Dry Run…

27 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Processes

≈ 3 Comments

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For those who have been following my blog, you will have noticed recurring themes. Among these recurring themes are: NUChurch – in Liquidation and the FrancisChurch NGO. The manner in which these two theme converge is: due to the EPIC FAIL of the post-conciliar NUChurch, the dwindling number of pew sitters that are the source of funding of the contributions made pursuant to Canon 1271 of the Code of Canon Law and the IDEOLOGICAL RIGIDITY of the bishop of Rome, Francis has decided to transform the Bride of Christ into a functionally secular NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION. Today we have more evidence (DATA POINTS) supporting correctness of the above supposition.

What’s more, we introduce a new element: Historiological and Cultural FrancisCleansing.

The Cultural FrancisCleansing can be observed from such occurrences as the completely irrational FrancisWar on Tradition. This FrancisWar appears to be an emotional exercise on Francis’ part since it is being waged regardless of either economic or operational consequences. (see here and more recently here)

With respect to the Historiological FrancisCleansing, what is meant by this is term is purging of any previous historical structures that have been put in place within the Institutional Church by Francis’ predecessors. All 265 of them, including the 36 or 42 false ones! We got an preview of just this FrancisStrategy in the interview given byArchbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez to the Corriere della Sera on the 10th of May 2015. (see here)

Today, we add to our knowledge.

Our jump-off point is our post titled The Bishops Really Need To Start Speaking Out About This…

In that post, we laid out in some detail how Francis is attempting to transform the very nature of the Catholic Church. What is in fact happening is that Francis is trying to get rid of the supernatural nature of the Catholic Faith and TRANSFORM post-conciliar NUChurch into FrancisChurch, a completely worldly institution. And if we are to believer Archbishop Victor Fernandez, Francis wants to make these changes permanent.

This FrancisStrategy is in turn due to the catastrophic state of Vatican finances, as we have pointed out many times (latest see here). The post-conciliar church, by driving the Faithful away has created a huge funding gap. Since they have not replaced the old funding model with a new one, post-conciliar church is at the mercy of special interests for a big part of their funding. Cough, cough… KIRCHENSTEUER. These special interests in turn have their own agendas, agendas which are contradictory to the Church’s stated mission, i.e. the salvation of souls.

This is where we pick up the story today.

I found two post today relating to the upcoming election of the Grand Master of the “FrancisSovereign” Order of Malta. (see here and here) In these posts, the careful observer can identify the above themes playing themselves out in real-time.

Carefully watching what is transpiring “behind” the scenes, we first notice that Francis has taken an extraordinarily unusual interest in the upcoming election. An election of the government of a previously SOVEREIGN state.

The interest in the election and the new order in the Maltese Order, on a operational level, can be viewed as transformational in its own right. To explain, Giuseppe Nardi on the Eponymous Flower blog writes the following:

The latter regulation [limiting the eligible candidates] to assures the Order its elitist character, but on the whole, the limitation of the candidates for the Grand Master office to the first class ensures, above all, its spiritual character.

So what are the limitations on the eligibility to become the next Grand Master?

The Grand Master must be a professed knight, for only these, among all knights, undertake the solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These are currently among the world’s 13,000 knights less than 60. (…) The Maltese are similar and yet different. The Second and the Third Estate, together with the First Estate, elect the Grand Master, but must choose him from the small circle of the “Monks’ Knights”. This is reduced to currently 12 candidates because, according to old custom, all four grandparents of the Grand Master must be of noble descent.

And the reason behind these statutory restrictions is:

This has been and still is to prevent the ancient order from becoming a mere humanitarian NGO among others.

So it appears that Francis has problems with the 12 potential candidates that could be elected under the current Order’s statutes. The reason he would have a problem with these individuals is that they most likely do not want to take the Order in a new direction. A “German tendency“.

On the other hand, Team Francis would like a new and transformational direction very much, a “German tendency”. Giuseppe explains what this “German tendency” entails:

The “German tendency” in the Order has for some years been said to make the Maltese Order such an NGO, which would surely be efficient, thoroughly organized with German efficiency and superior to all comparable NGOs because of the diplomatic immunity of the Order. They see the framework within the Order to build up therein the perfect humanitarian, international player and contact for governments and international institutions.

The critics of this “German tendency“, i.e. the 12 potential candidates under the current statutory regime however, are of the following mindset:

Critics, on the other hand, argue that this is possible only at an unacceptable price: the loss of its identity as a Catholic order, if not the loss of its Christian identity. The main distinction between other humanitarian NGOs would no longer be the charism of the Knights ‘and Hospitaler’ Order, which in Jerusalem protected the pilgrims on their way to the holy places, who for centuries defended Christianity militarily and who always performed works of active charity with the works of the spiritual Charity.

And what is the primary motivation for introducing these transformational FrancisChanges into the FrancisSovereign Order of Malta?

The answer comes via Edward Pentin and the OnePeterFive blog. Here is that text:

The anonymously written paper also claims that the Vatican is supportive of Boeselager (the “German tendency”) and the order’s wealthy German members partly because it is cash poor and relying on outside financial help.

“The German bishops practically control the Vatican because they are so rich and the Vatican so poor,” the author stated. “Indeed, the Vatican is constantly in danger of becoming insolvent and is easily manipulated by the German bishops.”

This is said to explain why the Vatican did not want Boeselager dismissed, formed a commission of investigation into his dismissal largely made up of people connected with a $118 million bequest to the order based in Switzerland, and had him swiftly reinstated.

So what can be inferred from the information above?

Much!

What we are witnessing is TRANSFORMATIONAL FrancisChange being forced onto the Order of Malta. What in fact is happening is that The Francis is using the artificially created leadership crisis that he brought about, to bring new management into the Order, management that will change the Order from a Catholic organization into a secular Non Governmental Organization.

What is in fact also happening, is that Francis is using the Order as an experimental Petri dish to see how far he can go in introducing this sort of TRANSFORMATIONAL FrancisChange into the wider Universal Church.

If it goes smoothly, and Francis sees that there is little or no opposition, we can expect that the FrancisChange will go full speed ahead in the Universal Church

If he is stopped or even faces stiff opposition, he will adjust his scheming and skullduggery and try to figure out something else.

Remember, his ghost writer Victor “heal me with your kiss” Fernandez said so.

But whatever the outcome of this little situation, the FrancisWreckingBall is in full swing, taking down any and all opposition to Francis’ plan for creating a ONE WORLD RELIGION with Francis sitting on the top of the heap.

He is doing to the Order of Malta that which the Taliban did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan

Welcome to reality folks!

The Post-Modernist FrancisContinuum Explained

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Context

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In today’s post we jump over to a philosophical theme. In the below post, our friend Jonathan Newman from the Mises Institute provides the Zero Hedge readers, and by extension you dear reader, with a great overview of the current pseudo-rationalist cult known as SCIENTISM. (see here)

Just to frame the CONTEXT of what you will be reading below, one needs to understand where the SCIENTISM ideology/sect lies on an ideological continuum. So let’s define the continuum.

A good place to start is to define the extremes. I will use the classical philosophical markers, i.e. Aristotelian rationalists versus Platonist mystics. Furthermore, since we are dealing with ideologues, we are dealing with an “adaequatio realis mentis et vitae” mindset. Therefore, the extremes on this “bringing thought into line with life” continuum are in fact “pseudo” extremes, since they only exist in the ideologue’s minds. So below, I will depict this continuum and affix some ideological points onto it. Here goes:

YES?

So today, we allow Jonathan Newman to define the pseudo-rationalist extreme, i.e. scientism

Before we get to the post, can anyone take a guess where Francis, the bishop of Rome fits on this continuum?

Actually, he fits everywhere.

If you dear readers recall, Francis went through his Pentecostalism phase early in his bishopric of Rome, but “brother bishop” Tony Palmer passed on and he probably couldn’t come to a revenue sharing agreement for the “church” consolidation attempt. These days, he has focused on the Scientism extreme with his special “distinguished” guests that he is bringing into the Vatican. Folks like George Soros and his team of George Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Ehrlich.

And the reason that Francis can fluidly traverse this post-modernist continuum is that he is a …. wait for it… a post-modernist. Once again, Dr. Jordan Peterson explains The Francis here:

And explains why Francis is not only a danger for your salvation, but also for your mental health here:

An now, the Mises Institute post on Scientism.

*****

Neil Ty – The Scientism Guy

Authored by Jonathan Newman via The Mises Institute,

Neil deGrasse Tyson has released a new video aimed at a what he sees as a growing anti-intellectualism problem in the United States.

It was released at the same time as the March for Science and many Earth Day demonstrations. He reflects on what he thinks made America great and what’s stalling progress today. Science used to be respected, but today, there is a growing crowd of science-deniers who threaten our “informed democracy.”

The real anti-intellectual move, however, is conflating science, the scientific method, and truth to be one and the same. Fundamentally, science is any human attempt at discovering truth. What is true exists independently from what humans believe to be true or how humans arrive at truth claims. The scientific method, the process of using repeated experiments in an attempt to validate or falsify the conclusions of previous experiments, is but one way humans attempt to discover truth.

The purpose of the video was to call out the obstinate, ignorant voters who deny what many regard as certain truths handed to them by a body of elite, trustworthy scientists. Yet Tyson and the marchers border on an equally dangerous view: scientism.

Scientism isn’t scientific

Scientism is the over-reliance on or over-application of the scientific method. Scientism has many forms, one of which is the use of empirical methods to do economic science, or the dismissal of claims not based on experiment results that question other claims that are based on experiment results. Mises dealt with scientism repeatedly, and closely guarded the boundary between economics and other sciences.

The scientific method is not universally appropriate. Consider an extreme case: if you measured a few right triangles and observed that the sides did not correspond to what the Pythagorean theorem says, would you toss the Pythagorean theorem, or would you reexamine your measurement method? Would you dismiss the logical geometric relation in favor of the scientific method?

The scientific method is particularly suited for the natural sciences. It’s hard to recommend a different method than experimentation and observation to answer questions about chemical reactions, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and biology.

The scientific method is unnecessary or even ill-suited in other areas, however. Consider these questions, and what sort of approach is appropriate to answer them: What is 17 divided by 3? All else held equal, what are the effects of an increase in demand for blue jeans? Who should I invite to my party? What are the effects of expansionary monetary policy on employment, prices, incomes, production, consumption, and borrowing? How should I treat people?

Of course, Neil deGrasse Tyson wouldn’t recommend using the scientific method to answer all of these questions (hopefully), but the point is that empiricism and experimentation are limited in their appropriate applications. The scientific method does not have a monopoly on truth.

Always open to falsification

The scientific method has another large limitation: conclusions derived solely by experimentation are always susceptible to falsification by just one aberrant observation. For this reason and others, even wide consensus among scientists should be met with at least some skepticism before the heavy hand of the government gets involved.

In 1992, the government, backed by the scientific community, told you that you needed 6-11 daily servings of bread, cereal, rice, and/or pasta to maintain good nutrition (and that saturated and animal fats are to be avoided). Many government policies and public school food offerings were based on this recommendation, including, suspiciously, agricultural subsidies and import tariffs. But then, years later, new information revealed this to be terrible advice, after a big jump in diabetes diagnoses and obesity rates.

Or, consider the government’s attempts at alleviating malaria. The National Malaria Eradication Program sprayed DDT in 4,650,000 homes and overhead by aircraft. Later, it was realized that DDT is carcinogenic and the spraying had a severe effect on the environment and wildlife, birds in particular. Birds of prey like the bald eagle are not considered endangered species anymore, and the ban on DDT is considered a major factor in their recovery. Even this conclusion is in question, including whether or not DDT is carcinogenic for humans, but the point is that the government itself backtracked on its own science-based solution to a problem. It banned a chemical it once sprayed indiscriminately.

Since the climate is such an important issue for Tyson, consider also the claims and predictions of various scientists around 1970. Earth Day had just started, and scientists were predicting rather apocalyptic scenarios, similar to what we are hearing today from climate scientists. To be clear, just because these predictions turned out to be “spectacularly wrong”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that modern claims are wrong. But it might explain a lot about the modern layperson’s skepticism, as opposed to sheer stupidity as Tyson suggests.

Sites like retractionwatch.com document the increasingly frequent cases in which academic journals must retract published research because the peer review process was a sham or when other fraudulent activity comes to light. A recent entry reports that Springer had to retract 107 papers on cancer due to fake peer reviews. Surprisingly, retraction doesn’t always mean fewer citations, as this top 10 list of most highly cited retracted papers demonstrates.

Skepticism and science are good friends

These examples reveal another larger issue with Tyson’s argument. Tyson says, “every minute one is in denial, you are delaying the political solution.” The problem is that sometimes delays and denial are exactly what is needed. The scientific method requires time and attempts at falsification.

There is an inherent contradiction and arrogance in Tyson’s video. In one breath he is praising science and the way the scientific method works: “I get a result. A rival of mine double checks it, because they think I might be wrong.” But in the next breath, he declares to the doubter who also thinks some scientific conclusion might be wrong: “You don’t have that option! When you have an established, scientific emergent truth, it is true whether or not you believe in it.”

So the rival scientist is allowed to question the conclusions of other scientists because the conclusions might not be true, but nobody else is. We may not all be equipped with a laboratory, but we are all equipped with reason, experience, preferences, common sense (some more than others), gut instincts, some ideas about what is morally right and what is morally wrong, and our own areas of expertise. Surely these are not meaningless when it comes to judging the claims of a politically-connected technocratic elite and their policy recommendations.

Political connections bias science

Like the food pyramid, political interference in the scientific process led to terrible consequences in scheduling various drugs. Marijuana, which is now widely accepted to be virtually harmless, is still scheduled with heroin and ecstasy, and higher than cocaine and methamphetamines. Yet researchers and agencies produced enough of Tyson’s “emergent truths” (which we are not to doubt) over the years to keep it that way. The effects of this prohibition have been devastating, including a prison system bursting at the seams, militarized local police, violent organized crime (legal and illegal), and more deaths than marijuana itself could ever cause on its own.

Indeed, when the government does or funds research, it seems to always arrive at the conclusions which involve the government getting larger in size and scope. To question these expansions is to question the science, and to question the science is to mark oneself a stubborn idiot.

Tyson is trying to convince these stubborn idiots to learn some science. Only then, he says, will they become the informed citizens this democracy needs. But what if the skeptics aren’t stupid? What if their skepticism is due to the perceived track record of the scientific community over the years (especially when the government is in the mix)?

Most of what Tyson perceives as anti-intellectualism may not be a problem with people’s ability to think, but an inability to trust a politically-connected scientific community that has led them astray in the past. Besides, if he really thinks too many Americans are too stupid, then he ought to look no further than the public education system that produced this alleged mass of illiterate science-deniers.

Name-calling over debate

But I don’t think Tyson views the American electorate as 51% dumb and 49% smart. I think he knows that there are a few outliers with truly unscientific ideas and who will not be convinced of even the most obviously true scientific conclusions.

The implication in the video is that if you don’t go along with this one idea, you are just like those wacky outliers. Those who have a healthy skepticism of what the government and the intelligentsia claim are lumped together with the outliers as a rhetorical strategy.

In practice, however, even those who are on board with the science but disagree with the government solution to the problem, are also added to the same group of idiots.

It’s a rhetorical strategy that may not work for him. Having been in my fair share of debates, I know that insulting my opponents isn’t the best way to have them see things from my point of view. Suppose I come across a minimum wage proponent. Should I call them an ignorant economic-theory-denier, or should I just keep trying to convince them of the effects of minimum wage legislation? Should I treat them the same way I might treat somebody who holds to the completely debunked labor theory of value or somebody who thinks the economy is subject to the whims of lizard-people?

The end goal: bigger government

At the end of the video, Tyson’s real interest becomes apparent. He wants the government to battle with the climate, stick everybody with the same vaccinations, and teach every student a materialistic explanation for the origins of the universe and human and animal life.

Tyson implies that scientific conclusions give way to political solutions, when often what is best is to simply inform the people of some new “emergent truth” and allow individuals and firms to change their behavior in light of and to the extent that they buy in. Top-down, universally enforced “solutions” often cause more problems than they solve and don’t have the flexibility, effectiveness, or economic viability that they need.

In the beginning of the video, Tyson asks, “How did America rise up from a backwoods country to be one of the greatest nations the world has ever known?” I would argue that the impressive accomplishments of the United States are in spite of and not because of government intervention. The economic development of the United States is due to a wide range of factors, including an early adherence to relatively laissez-faire economic policy, the industrial revolution, only the occasional war instead of the state of perpetual war we find ourselves in today, a relatively individualistic culture, an “entrepreneurial spirit”, and abundant natural resources and farmable land.

Certainly scientific and technological innovations played a major role. But my questions for Neil deGrasse Tyson are these: what made those scientific and technological innovations possible? Do you want Americans to be more scientifically literate as an end or as a means to establishing a political agenda? Does the government really need to get involved for us to solve all of our problems? What harm is there in further experimentation and further attempts at convincing the population of your ideas before resorting to silencing the unconvinced by labeling them “science deniers”?

Telling people not to question their government or a politically-connected scientist-class is dangerous. It’s throwing the baby out with the bath water, and it seems to run against his own values. Indeed, Neil deGrasse Tyson is frequently featured on a popular YouTube channel called “Question Everything”. We should encourage a healthy skepticism, especially when the government is involved.

When it comes to political solutions to Tyson’s list of problems, it means scarce resources must be employed toward some goal. This puts him outside of his jurisdiction, natural science, and into my jurisdiction, economics. Dare I tell him to not question my conclusions?

The Battle For Your Mind – What Is Truth?

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Narratives

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Today your humble blogger returns to the NARRATIVE.

Over at the Zero Hedge website, we get a post titled Schumer: “U.S. Is No Longer Fact-Based” Nation; Breitbart News A “Threat To Democracy”. And this post is too juicy to let pass by without presenting it to my loyal readers.

Furthermore, the subject matter of this post dovetails quite neatly with that of another post that appears on the OnePeterFive blog, written by Maike Hickson. (see here) In that post, Mrs Hickson translates an interview given by the Head of the SSPX breakaway group, the Fraternal Society of St. Peter’s Father Bernhard Gerstle .

Without commenting on the post itself, (I would like my dear readers to read and judge for themselves) all I will say is that if that part of the post-conciliar church that is promoting the Restoration of all things in Christ, is not able to define truth as bringing the mind into conformity with reality (adaequatio rei et intellectus), then what is in fact left is simply to push the post-conciliar NARRATIVE.

The problem with pushing the NARRATIVE, or any NARRATIVE for that matter, is that it introduces cognitive dissonance into the minds of the Faithful. And just to remind everyone what cognitive dissonance entails, it is this: (see here)

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress (discomfort) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values; when performing an action that contradicts one of those beliefs, ideas, or values; or when confronted with new information that contradicts one of the beliefs, ideas, and values.

This state of mind produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.

Now, in order to restore balance, the mentally stressed party is forced to take one of two alternative routes:

Scientific Method: a method of inquiry commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. (Bringing mind into conformity with reality – adaequatio rei et intellectus)

Magic Thinking: denotes the belief that one’s thoughts by themselves can bring about effects in the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it. (Bringing thought into line with life – adaequatio realis mentis et vitae)

So at the end of the day, the question that everyone, including the good Father is reduced to asking is the same question that Pontius Pilate asked in this below dialogue:

And just to drive the point home, below is the Zero Hedge post with an example from the political sub-set of the Visibilium Omnium, and the “distinguished” Senator who has obviously taken sides.

*****

Schumer: “U.S. Is No Longer Fact-Based” Nation; Breitbart News A “Threat To Democracy”

Last Friday Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a press release reminding sanctuary cities of their obligation to enforce federal immigration laws or risk losing their federal funding. Within the release, Sessions noted that Chicago’s murder rate has risen “more than 50 percent from the 2015 levels” and that New York City continues to experience gang murders due to the city’s “soft on crime” stance. Here’s what he said:

“Additionally, many of these jurisdictions are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime. The number of murders in Chicago has skyrocketed, rising more than 50 percent from the 2015 levels. New York City continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s “soft on crime” stance. And just several weeks ago in California’s Bay Area, after a raid captured 11 MS-13 members on charges including murder, extortion and drug trafficking, city officials seemed more concerned with reassuring illegal immigrants that the raid was unrelated to immigration than with warning other MS-13 members that they were next.”

We suspect that Sessions’ “soft on crime” comment was in reference to an ongoing feud between the NYPD and Mayor Bill De Blasio that erupted back in 2014 after De Blasio effectively legitimized the assassination of two cops in broad daylight by referring to minorities as “oppressed” and “threatened” by local police. The situation garnered national media attention when the NYPD turned their backs on De Blasio after he showed up at the funeral ceremony of the murdered cops.

Of course, the main stream media had a slightly different interpretation of Sessions’ “soft on crime” comment and has worked itself into a tizzy insisting that the Department of Justice is ‘attacking’ the NYPD.

As evidence, here is a comical exchange from MSNBC this morning in which Joe Scarborough insists that Sessions is “attacking the NYPD” while Mika accuses the DOJ of propagating “fake news”:

Scarborough: “The Attorney General sends out a letter basically attacking the NYPD saying that they are ‘soft on crime.’ Has he never been to New York?”

Schumer: “We are the lowest of the 25 biggest cities in crime.”

Mika: “But they say crime is out of control.”

Schumer: “My daughters ride the subway at 4am and I’m perfectly happy about it. We are a safe city. And, by the way, New York has grown from 7 million people in 1990 to 8.5 million today, the largest of any city because crime went down.”

Mika: “There’s this talk about ‘fake news’ but that quote we just put up there is ‘fake news’ coming from the Attorney General.”

Schumer: “We’re no longer fact-based. The founding fathers created a country based on fact. We don’t have a fact base. If Breitbart News and the New York Times are regarded with equal credibility, you worry about this democracy.”

We won’t even bother to highlight all of the instances in which the New York Times decided to push ‘fake news’ regarding the Trump administration’s alleged ties to Russian hackers (but feel free to read this for an example: “NYTimes Reports Trump Aides’ “Repeated Contact” With Russian Intel Officials, Admits No Collusion Discovered“).

That said, we can at least agree with Chuck that many politicians no longer live in a “fact-based” world….in fact, here is just one of our favorite examples…

..and this one is also very good.

Others Seeing It – Tradition The Only Way Forward…

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Restoration

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In today’s post we skip back to the Restoration theme. Over at the American Thinker, a post appeared titled Mater Si, Magistra No: Renewal of Tradition in the Catholic Church, written by Mr. Paul Ingrassia.

This post contains several key DATA POINTS, which is why I am bringing it to your attention. Among those key DATA POINTS are:

The Restoration is real, taking place and a good thing.
The “Francis” as well as the entire “new springtime” experience has been a complete bust. (last paragraph)
Only way forward is to return to Tradition.
Catholicism (Tradition) will become the largest movement within the Catholic Church in the not too distant future.

NOTE BENE, and a big one. In the text, we find this passage:

And while it would be unwise to ascribe a cause-and-effect relationship between Mass attendance and Vatican II, it is nevertheless indisputable that Christianity in the Western world is currently experiencing an existential crisis as people everywhere – particularly the young – abandon organized religion in droves.

Readers of this blog know why, yes?

For the new readers, allow me to explain.

We know from the seminal work of Dr. John Lamont that protestantism is a mixture of positive and negative theology. The negative theology is an anti-Catholicism that needs Catholicism in order to exist. The analogous situation in the biological sciences would be the relationship between the parasite needing the host.

Or to put it another way, with a protestantized NUChurch, there is nothing to “protest” any longer.

On the other hand, the positive theology aspects are very weak. Too weak in fact to sustain protestantism in and of itself. Hence a rapid disintegration of the Catholic Church leads to an even greater disintegration of the prostestant sects.

Numquam Ponenda est Pluralitas Sine Necessitate

And now for the article that appeared on the American Thinker… (see here and emphasis added.)

Mater Si, Magistra No: Renewal of Tradition in the Catholic Church

By Paul Ingrassia

It has been over a half-century since the closure of the Second Vatican Council, which ran in multiple sessions from 1963 to 1965 under the papacies of Pope Saint John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. Vatican II, as the ecumenical council is colloquially known, is considered the defining moment of the Church in the twentieth century. The council brought forth historic change to the Roman Catholic Church, fundamentally altering the liturgy and dispensing with centuries of tradition to appease a world society that had freshly emerged from the two deadliest conflicts in human history.

The council, which sought to rigorously examine the challenges that had long plagued the Church in the modern era, was the impetus behind the liberalization of the Catholic Church. The Council Fathers sought to transfer the focus of the liturgical movement from the priests to the laity, ascribing renewed significance to the congregation. This coincided with a movement away from Latin to the vernacular. The way the documents of Vatican II were written allowed practitioners of the Novus Ordo Mass, promulgated by Pope Paul VI, to replace Gregorian Chant with secular religious hymns, thus making the latter the predominant musical tradition.

This and other reforms accelerated the overhaul of traditional customs and likewise reflected the Church’s growing aloofness to such things as doctrinal orthodoxy and traditional morality. In keeping with the stylistic changes of the liturgy and the theological approach of aggiornamento, a “bringing up to date,” Church architecture, particularly over the past half-century, has been compromised by the spirit of Vatican II. Grandiose cathedrals that once towered over cities and reached toward heaven have been replaced by pedestrian structures devoid of the Romanesque and Gothic elements that in years past fostered the allure and mystique of the Catholic Church. The interiors underwent a similar transformation: tabernacles were, in many cases, relegated to side alcoves, and the centerpiece crucifix was replaced by a resurrected Christ or a barren cross, indistinguishable from Protestant symbolism.

In addition to the liturgical alterations, the rites of the seven sacraments were subject to considerable revision. Traditional vestments were dispensed with, and the regalia of the papal coronation, such as the sporting of the papal tiara, last worn by Pope Paul VI in 1963, was indefinitely retired. Priests have also moved away from the Tridentine custom of celebrating Mass ad orientem (facing “liturgical east,” or toward the high altar), instead opting for the more personalized versus populum (facing the congregation), which was consistent with the Church’s pivot toward personalized morality and emphasis on self-fulfillment over set dogma.

Perhaps the most salient change is the Second Vatican Council’s commitment to ecumenism. Keeping in line with its desire to democratize and reconcile longstanding theological rifts in a rapidly globalizing world, the ecumenical reforms were met with varying degrees of success. In this respect, the Council Fathers had hoped to reorient the Church’s perspective to highlight the shared orthodoxies between the Catholic Church and other faiths, a departure from its former practice of highlighting the deviations among other denominations. Some traditionalists viewed these unprecedented measures with horror, believing the Church to have completely abandoned centuries of tradition. But the Council Fathers reiterated that no doctrinal changes had been made; the Council’s chief aim was to democratize and appease a modernizing world, not surrender to it.

Over a half-century later, it remains unclear just how successful the Council was in achieving its goals and to what extent the ensuing history of the Church is incumbent upon Vatican II reforms. Some traditionalists cite the vibrant state of the Church prior to the Council’s formation in many parts of the world – notably, the United States, Canada, and many parts of Eastern and Southern Europe. Today, Mass attendance in all these regions – particularly those bereft of a prevailing Protestant subculture – has dropped precipitously, suggesting a failure of the Council to deliver on its goals. Incidentally, Mass attendance in the United States has declined as well – approximately three in four practicing Catholics attended Mass on a regular basis prior to Vatican II, whereas now, participation hovers around twenty to twenty-five percent. To some, this is vindication that the Church must restore many of its former traditions or risk annihilation altogether. And while it would be unwise to ascribe a cause-and-effect relationship between Mass attendance and Vatican II, it is nevertheless indisputable that Christianity in the Western world is currently experiencing an existential crisis as people everywhere – particularly the young – abandon organized religion in droves.

Perhaps the most disheartening case of this is the devitalized state of the Irish Catholic Church, which, for centuries, had provided the cultural foundation of one of the most Catholic countries in Europe. Today, Mass attendance barely exceeds thirty percent and remains in decline. This figure is less than a third of its 1950 participation rate and, by some estimates, is markedly lower than in countries that do not have a traditionally Catholic heritage, such as the United States. The long-term results of this wholesale secularization are not yet fully understood. However, the fact that Ireland redefined marriage in 2015 by popular referendum in an attempt to include same-sex couples suggests a certain permanence to these trends, at least for the foreseeable future. Granted, the Catholic Church remains an integral part of Irish society, but its influence has waned considerably in the past few decades, setting the stage for a renewed debate of once untouchable issues like abortion and euthanasia.

The problems facing the Catholic Church in Ireland are very much interrelated with the problems affecting the Catholic Church globally; the former is a concrete derivative of a systemic issue whose origins trace back to the fallout of the Council itself. Some, including Pope Paul VI and Pope Benedict XVI, maintained that it was not Vatican II, strictly speaking, that caused the crisis of the modern Church, but rather how the Council was subsequently misconstrued by the burgeoning news media and leftist academicians. Considering the liberal climate of the late 1960s, there is little doubt that the cultural changes of that era impacted the interpretation of the Council. This, in conjunction with the evolving media climate, in which biased journalists labeled the Council Fathers as winners and losers depending on their philosophy, furthered the confusion about the Council’s implications. In recognizing this, some blame can still be accorded to those who backed the Council for haphazardly calling for its creation without accounting for the cultural changes that would invariably dint its rollout, regardless of whatever the actual outcome was.

Ultimately, whether or not the Council accelerated today’s lack of religiosity is secondary to the larger premise that the modern Church was, in fact, greatly shaped by Vatican II reforms. Knowing this, it would be wise for Church officials to gradually roll back many of the liturgical changes and work toward implementing a more traditionalist platform. Pope Benedict XVI appeared to sympathize with traditionalists in expressing during his papacy that liberals had wrongly interpreted Vatican II by objecting to such reforms as pushing back against local suppression of the Latin Mass, in addition to smaller reforms, like reviving several papal garments that had fallen into disuse. Although these efforts were rather diminutive in theological significance, they nevertheless signaled that the Vatican was at least open to the idea of bringing tradition back to the Catholic Church.

So where left to go for the surviving religious hoping for a grand awakening of their faith?

Some, like Rod Dreher (who left the Catholic Church for Eastern Orthodoxy), believe that a new “dark ages” have befallen contemporary civilization and that the best way to manage the situation is for the remaining few Christians to organize into monastic communities of believers removed from the moral decay of modern times. This so-called “Benedict Option,” named for St. Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480-537), is tailored for Americans who wish to preserve genuine Christian culture by displacing themselves from a society that is in its current state outwardly hostile to the Christian faith. Essentially, the debauchery of American civilization has reached a point of no return, forcing the few devout remaining to withdraw from the world, if not physically, then at least spiritually, into true communities of faith that will uphold the principles of the Church and form a “living spiritual relationship with God.”

Others have advocated for less drastic measures, though a common pessimism about the degraded state of Western civilization appears to unify many traditionalists. Indeed, there is a clear metaphysical crisis working to dismember any form of objective truth or attach genuine significance to the human person. Above all, the effects of modernity have reduced the dignity of the modern man into nothing beyond a baseless social construct contingent on no substantive higher moral truth. The horrible eventualities that might result from such spiritual lethargy are, at present, unknown.

Christians should hope that at some point in the future, the truths embedded in the writings of such distinguished theologians as Benedict XVI may ignite an awakening of the Logos and a renewal of faith founded in the memoria Ecclesiae, the memory of the Church. Tracey Rowland, writing for the Catholic Herald, put it this way:

When a new generation arises in full rebellion from the social experiments of the contemporary era, craving a human ecology that respects both God and nature, and wanting to be something more than rootless cosmopolitans, Ratzinger’s publications will serve as Harry Potter-style Portkeys, giving creative young rebels access to the missing cultural capital – indeed, access to what Ratzinger calls the memoria Ecclesiae.

So long as current trends continue, traditional Catholics may ultimately become the Church’s most prominent voice, if for no reason other than that they will be the only ones remaining, thereby forcing it into this direction by default. Naturally, Catholics should hope it doesn’t reach this point, but considering that the updated papal idiom of Pope Francis did not usher a wave of disaffected Catholics back into the Church, it seems that a reversal of course might actually be a good thing. The Church would be well advised to stop pandering to lapsed Christians, and instead to strengthen its resolve on doctrine and tradition, especially given the alarming trend of moral relativism among younger people in particular, which is grossly incompatible with the objectivism espoused by Catholic doctrine. A more reverend, disciplined, and ordered Church might ultimately precipitate a rekindling of the Catholic faith and shift the emphasis away from the material and personal and toward the metaphysical and divine.

Vive La France… (w Updates)

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by S. Armaticus in Processes

≈ 4 Comments

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Today, Low Sunday is a big EVENT day. The first round of the French presidential elections are taking place as I write this.

Update 6: 13:25 23 April 2017

No drama.

LePen and Macron through.

Not surprising, but disappointing none the less.

Uphill fight since entire French establishment will be against her.

Update 5: 12:35 23 April 2017

UK’s Daily Mail reporting Le Pen through to second round.

They have Macron as leading though, so we have conflicting reports.

Update 4: 12:20 23 April 2017

More leaks. Looks like Le Pen and the communist Melenchon going through to second round.

OBJECTIVE REALITY is just 34 minutes away!

Update 3: 11:33 23 April 2017

We are on the right track folks… (see here)

Story appeared on Gateway Pundit with a timestamp of 09:41 Eastern.

If correct, it looks like Le Pen v. Fillon in second round.

Update 2: 10:10 23 April 2017

It’s like Deja Vu all over again…

Just took an online poll and here are the results:

And this is the result from the #FrenchElection Twitter timeline, i.e. not pro Le Pen.

And this one here:

The above poll shows Le Pen within 2 percentage points of wrapping it all up in the first round.

Wow!

Fillon is consistant at 9% to 11%. If this is correct, that would mean that his support is heading over to the Le Pen camp. Very interesting….

Update 1: 09:40 23 April 2017

The Daily Telegraph comes out and admits that Marine Le Pen is “riding high in the bellwether town”.

Slowly the unwashed masses are being prepared for OBJECTIVE REALITY.

Turnout in the first round of France’s hotly contest presidential elections was higher than expected at midday, after recent polls suggested that more than a third may stay away from polling booths.

At midday, the interior ministry said that 28.54 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballot, compared with 28.29 percent in 2012.

Turnout is key. Big turnout is good for Marine Le Pen. And in a country where 80% + of the electorate goes to the polls, even fractions of percents become significant.

*****

I have not been writing about nor predicting the French election since I don’t speak French and don’t follow the French political scene let alone the cultural scene. Therefore, I will not insult your intelligence by providing you dear reader with information that I have no way of verifying.

Having said that, there is one blog that I do follow which operates under the name of GalliaWatch. Today, on this blog their appeared the following post titled: The latest poll and the bookmakers.

In that post, there is some information that I find credible, in the “can be objectively verifiable” sense of that term. This has to do with one of the candidates, namely Mousier Macron. Now for those who have not been following this campaign, Macron shot up from nowhere into the lead, in the French fake polls after Mousier Fillon had his little problem with nepotism and sweetheart deals given to immediate family members.

Now Mr. Fillon was leading in the polls at the time the scandal broke and what I found strange about this flip-flop was that intuitively, it would mean that the ex-Fillon voters would be going over now to the Macron side.

HIGHLY UNLIKELY, especially in the first round!

Now… knowing the positions that these two politicians represent, I found this hardly credible. Hence, FAKE POLLS.

Which brings us the the below post. In this post, a poll appears with the following results:

I find the above credible in terms of positioning in which the candidates will fall after the polls close.

If this is the case, the second round will be fought between Marine Le Pen and François Fillon.

The second and last observation that needs to be made is this: by how much are the Le Pen votes suppressed in the fake polls? If we recall, in the Trump election, we had a 13% point swing in the final week (Courtesy of ABC “News”).

So what we will be watching for today is the voting percentage that Le Pen gains from the actual voting. If she gets an increase of say 10%-13% that we saw in the Trump elections, she could be in the mid 30’s in the first round.

And if we are in the mid 30’s in the first round and Fillon is the opponent, then Marine Le Pen stands a good chance to be the next President of the Republic of France.!

OREMUS!

*****

The latest poll and the bookmakers

First, as you probably know, Donald Trump tweeted for Marine Le Pen.

Second, the impatience is growing in the comment sections of the websites I consult.

Third, all kinds of plots and schemes are being bruited about but I have no proof of anything. These “plots” concern the honesty of the election and whether or not one can place any faith at all in the “democratic” process. We have been through that here, we know how it feels to suddenly realize that an election is merely a trick, a bait that the gullible population gobbles up, that it is all rigged in advance, that nothing we do matters, etc… But here, we learned (to our amazement) that the people still had something to say, and we can only hope that the same is true in France. For the people of France, the patriots, to win on Sunday they have to come out massively, and leave their doubts behind. If Marine Le Pen wins in the end, and becomes president, there will be ample time to criticize her decisions, to complain, to say you’re sorry you voted for her, to wish you were in another country, to cry in your beer, etc… And the complaints may be justified. She is NOT the “far right-winger” the media proclaim her to be, we know that, and she has changed the nature of the Front National from a nationalist right-wing party into a nationalist left-friendly party, and this is not good. But there is no other choice. Of course, you can stay home and not vote, and many people refuse to participate in a “democratic” process they perceive as corrupt and leftist financed and manipulated.

Rather than rant like everyone else is doing, I’ll give you the latest predictions, showing Marine in the lead. This poll, dated April 21, 11:30 p.m., is the last one from Filteris. The FN is black, the LR (Fillon) is blue, Mélenchon is red, and Macron is yellow:

From Riposte Laïque:

Note that the attack on the Champs-Elysées occurred 24 hours before this poll. Marine Le Pen advanced by almost one point (0.97%) while François Fillon remains qualified for the second round, even though he lost 0.56% of potential votes.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon seems to be the beneficiary of the “useful votes”, that are coming from the voters of Benoît Hamon and Philippe Poutou (both leftists). He has progressed again 0.23% and is currently at 21.34% or barely 0.2% from the Les Républicains candidate (i.e., François Fillon).

As for Emmanuel Macron, he too has progressed by 0.11%, stopping his free-fall, no doubt because Benoît Hamon’s voters are also giving him some “useful votes”.

Note: In France a “useful vote” is a tactical vote, not a vote based on conviction. It usually serves the purpose of preventing someone from being elected.

Among the “small candidates” François Asselineau appears to be the only one to advance slightly.

Note: Asselineau founded the UPR party in 2007 and has slowly managed to become known to the public via the Internet. He espouses a comprehensive platform that is essentially pro-sovereignty and nationalist/protectionist, and advocates that France leave the EU, the Euro Zone and NATO. He has been accused of promoting conspiracy theories, and of being anti-American. Read more at Wikipedia.

If we are to believe Filteris, we are heading for a second round between Marine and Fillon, with a possible surprise from Mélenchon. (…)

The bookmakers continue to bank on a second round between Macron (favored by far) against Marine, who would beat Fillon by a hair.

Note: Readers at Riposte Laïque have no faith whatsoever in Filteris and feel the author of the article, Anne-Laure Joly, doesn’t know her job. Many readers at this website believe Marine is way ahead of everyone and that the truth about her ratings is being covered up.

One reader reports the following, but does not provide the source:

– The news is out. If in the second round it’s Marine vs Fillon, the left is calling for a night of barricades and destruction throughout all of France… a fine example of democracy. I don’t remember any FN voter burning a car, smashing a bus stop or throwing Molotov cocktails at the police during the 2012 victory of that slug Hollande. Now we know who the real fascists are in this country.

For those interested in the gambling aspects of the election, the website Oddschecker posted this report dated April 21, 10:44 p.m. (gambling jargon is above my head):

The first round of the Presidential elections will take place this Sunday as French voters head to the polls. Results will be released around 8pm local time and if one candidate receives more than 50% of the first vote, they will automatically become the next French President and the second round of voting will be cancelled. However, no candidate has ever walked away with the main prize after the first round of voting and given the odds, it seems unlikely to happen this year. If there is no outright majority, the top two politicians will face-off again on Sunday May 7.

Betting on the next French President has been a popular market throughout the year on Oddschecker, with betting activity at its highest this past week. Emmanuel Macron remains favourite with the bookmakers at 5/6 (54.5% implied probability), ahead of the National Front leader, Marine Le Pen who is 10/3 (23.1% implied probability) to take the hot seat. Far-right leader, Le Pen has always been a popular pick with bettors; in the first three months of 2017 she accounted for a massive 42% of bets on the market, whereas Macron only held 23% of bets placed via Oddschecker. Third favourite, Francios Fillon took up 13% of bets in the same period and his odds are currently 4/1 (20% implied probability). In the last week, Macron who married his former high school teacher, has become an ever more popular pick with politics punters. Despite Le Pen still being the favourite choice (34%) with bettors, Macron’s share of bets placed has grown to 26.6%.

As well as increasing support for the favourite, both Fillion, Mélenchon and Asselineau’s share of bets placed have also risen and they now account for 15.2%, 11.1% and 7.2% respectively. The left-wing politician, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s odds have been extremely volatile leading up to the first round of voting. On March 12th he was available to back at odds as big as 150/1 (0.7% implied probability). However, just over a month later these odds had been slashed to as short as 4/1 (20% implied probability) on the 15th April. His chances, and with that his odds, seem to have dwindled of late though and he’s now as big as 16/1 (5.9% implied probability) to win the election. Despite the dramatic change in odds, Melenchon has only accounted for 7% of bets placed through Oddschecker so far this year.

Another candidate whose support has grown throughout April is François Asselineau. The Popular Republican Union President’s views on taking France out of the EU seem to have resonated with members of the French public. Even though his odds of 250/1 suggest there’s no chance of him making it through this round of voting, he’s accounted for just over 7% of all bets placed on the market this week.

According to bets placed on the next President market today, Marine Le Pen looks guaranteed to make it through the first round of voting with over 87% of stakes placed, and 60% of bets. One bookmaker is still offering 66/1 that she wins over 50% of the first round share.

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Vive La France… (w Updates)

Update 6: 13:25 23 April 2017

Update 5: 12:35 23 April 2017

Update 4: 12:20 23 April 2017

Update 3: 11:33 23 April 2017

Update 2: 10:10 23 April 2017

Update 1: 09:40 23 April 2017

The latest poll and the bookmakers