Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – I’m going to try to do briefer pieces every day or two until at least election. Things have gotten so crazy that to try to do any sort of comprehensive stuff is truly like trying to drink from the proverbial fire hose. But we can do some postcards on the road to Armageddon. Kind of like a pointillist painting, taken together, all the dots reveal an image.

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It grieved me to see that Melania Trump is a big abortion supporter. It doesn’t change anything major: I’m voting for her husband, not her. But it is a sorrowful disappointment that such an otherwise seemingly gracious first lady thinks that executing an infant has as much moral consequence as stomping a spider. We truly have a lot of wood to chop.

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I’m not sure whether to be disgusted by the government or thank it for making my point for me. Well, I am certainly disgusted by this cheap parody of a government. On the positive side, I have been telling people for years that you need to prepare for the government NOT to keep its commitments to you. Already, it is not. So only really obtuse people would continue to count on it. How has it failed us? Let me count the ways…

• $42 billion in tax dollars for the rural broadband internet connection program. How many have been hooked up? ZERO. You can bet a lot of uniparty cronies got their beaks wet off this “program.” Who knows, maybe there was even a cut for “The Big Guy.” That’s how this administration seems to work – to the cheers of the gutter press. We would have had some hookups through the Starlink System – but that is owned by Elon Musk. Once Musk bought Twitter to make it a free speech platform, Biden’s government declared war on him and shut down any Starlink hookups in 2022.
• Way back in 2021 the Biden-Harris administration set aside $1.3 billion to build EV charging stations across the country. $632 million and almost four years later, seven charging stations have actually been built. That’s almost $100 million per charging station. Kind of makes you long for the days of $800 government wrenches. Who knew that was the government procurement equivalent of rummage sale pricing? I intentionally linked to the White House’s original announcement on this, to illustrate the vast gulf between what the left promises and what it delivers – and how much it costs all of us.
• In hurricane ravaged North Carolina, not only is FEMA not helping – it is actively trying to prevent private companies and citizens from helping their neighbors. This is not just an outlier. Wide groups of people are sharing their frustrated stories about how FEMA – and even local governments – are trying to prevent help from getting through. In the Biden-Harris administration, they don’t even bother to lie and pretend they are there to help you – especially if you’re in a red area.
• This comes as Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Majorkas announces that FEMA will not have enough money to get through hurricane season. You remember Majorkas. He’s the guy that ALL Democrats and enough weenie Republicans refused to impeach for facilitating the illegal invasion at our southern border. Turns out that, after spending over a billion dollars to provide free housing and $5000 cash cards for those illegal aliens from the FEMA account, FEMA can’t be bothered with American citizens, whose only job, apparently, is to tote the load for everyone else.
• After ponying up another couple of billion in aid to Ukraine last week after its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, did a campaign stop for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania, Harris promised refugees who have lost everything that the government will give them a check for $750. This sounds like an improvement over the $700 government gave residents of Maui who lost everything in the fires there, but it turns out that many affected residents are reporting to X (formerly Twitter) that they are being turned down for the $750 check almost as quickly as they apply. Sheesh…if the government wasn’t going to actually cut the checks, why didn’t they call it $5,000 in emergency assistance? A $5,000 check you won’t honor doesn’t cost you a dime more than a $750 check you won’t honor – and it doesn’t sound as bad. Of course, the gutter press is trying to run cover for the Biden-Harris administration. I fully expect the press to report any day now that 51 intelligence officials have assured us that they are $5,000 bad checks, not $750 bad checks.

Everywhere you look, more stories are coming out about how uppity American taxpayers are expecting to be treated like Ukrainian oligarchs, illegal aliens, or Biden family members. The temerity of it all!

Fortunately, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, ordinary truckers, hillbillies and other assorted rednecks are actually going in to help as fast as they can get there – and through all of the government laid obstacles. Trump set up a GoFundMe account for hurricane relief that, as of last reading, has raised over $3 million. Musk is busy giving free connections to Starlink to affected areas and shipping in receivers. Truckers, hillbillies, and rednecks are swarming in to do what they can, using private helicopters for search and rescue and using trucks to bring in emergence supplies despite the obstruction of FEMA. Basically Trump, Musk, truckers and rednecks are doing what the left always says illegal aliens are doing: the jobs American govt. refuses to do. The hour of the ordinary man begins with little notice – and none by the gutter press.

If you are a snooty lefty and are counting on lefties to help you out in crisis, you might note that the Biden-Harris administration is perfectly content to let the lefties in Ashville, North Carolina perish right alongside the righties they ignore. Here’s a pro tip for you arrogant lefties: if you live in an area prone to disasters, better get yourself at least one Trump-supporting hillbilly friend. Stat. Your lefty friends will be glad to count you as collateral damage if they are required to actually expend any effort to help you in crisis.

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It was 21 years ago when I fully realized how fixed the game had become with the federal bureaucracy. I had a neurological injury (nerve-based, not brain-based) that completely disabled me for over three months. I was the sole support for my son, a 16-year-old boy at the time. I sought emergency assistance until I could get the surgery and, hopefully, get back to work. It was not promising. It was when I went to the Social Security Administration that I understood just how much trouble I was in. Social Security is supposed to provide both a retirement income AND insurance against complete disability. The lady behind the counter was in her 60’s – and explained that after I had been completely disabled and unable to work for a full year I could come back and reapply – and maybe they could help me then. I started shaking all over. The woman decided to take a break and came outside to join me in a cigarette and talk for a minute.

She bitterly said she was a few months shy of retirement and could not wait – because everything had become political now. She was kind to me, but bitterly candid in our private talk. “If you were a black woman, we would have an emergency check for you tomorrow if you had a hangnail,” she said. “But you’re a middle-aged white man. Your job is to keep pulling until you can’t anymore and then get out of the way. The only thing the government will do for you is take your kid if you can’t figure out a way to keep your head above water.” Oh, she was bitter about what the government bureaucracy had become then. And that was with a Republican president.

Fortunately, with the help of some good friends, I was able to keep my head above water. My son was old enough to drive, so I could still get to appointments when I lost the capacity to drive. When I finally got to surgery, they lost me a couple of times on the table and revived me. Tricky stuff when they are working on your spinal column and your spinal cord is exposed. It was the most brutal, painful recovery I can imagine – and I certainly have never come close to getting back the capability I had before this injury. I learned how to manage with my vastly more limited physical capability – and to manage expectations. One expectation I have never had since then is that our governmental system is on the square – or plays fair without regard to race, creed, or political opinion.

I just learned early what anyone who is paying attention is learning now.

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I hope you realize that we are living a massive illumination of conscience right now. Except for genuinely stupid people, everyone who supports the modern leftist agenda knows it is a pack of lies, including those peddling it. They do not support it out of any altruism (though they try to give altruistic-sounding reasons to justify it.) It is all about power and dominance. When they stand in judgment before God, they can still support the hideous things they do, but they will not be able to say they did not know what they were supporting. In short, the state of everyone’s soul is being revealed to them.

Does that mean we will not have the sort of dramatic fireworks show most of the pious imagine for the Illumination of Conscience, the Three Days of Darkness, or the Warning? No. God sometimes works in layers – and caps off the layers with a dramatic, obviously supernatural display. I personally think the only overt, obviously supernatural display we are going to get this time is the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart at the end of all the troubles. By then, all who have chosen evil will have repented or been swept away. God RARELY tries to intimidate people into belief. He prefers to show them the consequences of their choices and have them choose to return to Him out of love for truth. And He prefers to work through the ordinary – as much as we always long for Him to do the extraordinary. The supernatural coerces people who do not mean it: the ordinary draws people who act out of love for what is right. You get a much better grade of acolyte when you work through the ordinary. Over nine times out of 10 we do NOT get the fireworks show we had so confidently expected – and often while we are looking for it we miss the fulfillment of prophecy right before our eyes.

I insist that the reason things are so garishly obvious right now – and getting even more garishly so by the moment – is because God is determined that NO soul will be able to claim he did not know what he was doing. Hold out hope for the fireworks show if you must, but do not let that prevent you from properly reading the signs of the times. God is locking us into our true character right now. We are giving witness for – or against – ourselves. Woe unto those who choose evil and call it good!

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This Saturday, Oct. 5,begins my annual Novena to Our Lady of Fatima’s ultimate apparition. It is the 107^th anniversary of the actual event in Fatima, Portugal. I have a sense that this Novena comes at the critical moment for our world – and is very important to all of us. I hope you will join me in praying it. I will put prayer up both on Facebook and Twitter every day until the Feast Day. We are not actually on our own. We are accompanied by a cloud of witnesses, led by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, escorted in procession with Our Lady, the Angels, and all the Holy Saints who have gone before us.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim

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