Daily Broadside | Don’t Lose Your Cool Over Smart Thermostats. Just Get Rid of Them.

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 39:7
“‘I will make known my holy name among my people Israel. I will no longer let my holy name be profaned, and the nations will know that I the Lord am the Holy One in Israel.'”

Thursday’s Reading: Ezekiel 40-43

Thursday and Big Corporations and Big Government continue finding ways to impose their will on us, often collaboratively, like when Amazon, Google and Apple cancelled the Parler app because they didn’t moderate “violent content” to the satisfaction of the Tech Giants. Parler was also a conservative alternative to leftist Twitter where Trump supporters found a social network without draconian censorship policies, so there were moral imperatives at work, too.

As another example, just last week, New York City officials said they “are requesting that credit-card companies such as American Express, Mastercard and Visa add a new four-digit ‘merchant code’ that would classify gun and ammunition stores on individual statements when purchases are made.” The policy would ostensibly “help companies track when suspicious purchases are made.”

It would also help companies (which “companies” are those?) track when legitimate purchases are made but made by the “wrong people.” Like, say, Trump supporters—who, as you know, are one of the gravest threats to “our democracy” (*spit*).

Last week some 22,000 citizens in Colorado discovered that their electric company had locked them out of their home thermostats because of an “energy emergency.”

Thousands of utility company customers in Colorado were locked out of changing their thermostats due to an “energy emergency,” sparking outrage that spilled onto social media.

Xcel Energy, a utility company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, confirmed that 22,000 customers in the Denver, Colorado area who were signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their thermostats for several hours on Tuesday, KMGH-TV reported …

Some customers posted on social media that they were stuck with home temperatures as high as 88 degrees, KMGH-TV reported.

It was as high as 90 degrees outside, and Xcel Energy customers weren’t able to control their energy use.

Why? Well, because, dummy, they signed up for a “rewards” program. VOLUNTARILY!

In a statement, Xcel Energy pointed out that the customers were part of a rewards program that gave them a discount on their energy bill in exchange for permission to give the company some control over their smart thermostats. 

“It’s a voluntary program,” Emmett Romine, vice president of customer solutions and innovation at Xcel, told KMGH-TV. “Let’s remember that this is something that customers choose to be a part of based on the incentives.”

I wonder if those 22,000 customers were warned that the utility company could commandeer their thermostat and set the temperature in their homes without warning? I wonder if that was said in big type at the top of the rewards program flyer or if it was in fine print as one of a dozen footnotes at the end of the terms and conditions of service? Or was it just a general “the company can take ‘some control’ of your thermostat” without specifying exactly what “some control” meant?

Did the customers know that they would be ceding control over their ability to consume the amount of energy they independently determined they needed and would pay for at a critical moment, or nah?

Once Big Energy or Big Government has control over your freedom to make choices about how you will manage your life, you’re at their mercy, just like in this case. It’s only a small step from there to applying the mentality of Big Tech with Parler.

You voted for Trump? You’ve voiced outrage at a stolen election? You’re questioning why Hillary Clinton is still walking free? You bought a gun? You think Brandon is a facsist? You bought “Justifying Revolution” from Amazon and are going to review for your readers?

Ho ho! No heat for you!

You think I’m reaching here? How many of you thought you’d see the day when an energy company takes it upon itself to decide that you can’t have the energy you want—at peak need—because of a company-declared emergency? Remember, this wasn’t the government declaring an emergency—this was a public utility declaring one.

What if remotely cranking your thermostat up to 80 degrees created “an emergency” for you?

Sure, they incentivized their consumers to join the program, but I’d wager a day’s pay that few of them knew exactly what they were signing up for. Yeah, consumers got a free NEST thermostat, but they also gave up freedom of self-determination.

That “free” thermostat left them at the mercy of the energy company.

Here’s what the Europe Union is doing in the midst of their energy crisis:

They’re going to FLATTEN THE CURVE! Hey, haven’t I heard that phrase somewhere before?

You know that our rulers are just salivating looking at the EU and the Colorado power moves (see what I did there?).

Instead of finding better and cheaper ways to provide energy; instead of modernizing the power grid and fortifying it against failure; instead of letting the citizenry determine how much energy they are willing to consume and pay for; instead of doing all that, Big Corporations and Big Government are looking for ways to deliver the minimal required while maximizing profits.

And to do that, you need to comply with their vision of what is “enough.”

The solution? Get yourself off the Internet of Things. Buy a plain vanilla thermostat that lets you decide when and how much energy you’ll use.

At least until the mandates arrive.

Daily Broadside | Think Locally To Prepare For What Is Coming

Daily Verse | Proverbs 29:11
A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.

Monday’s Reading: Proverbs 30-31

Welcome to Monday and the last half of July. If you’ve been reading through the Bible in a year with us, we’re now more than half-way through. Congratulations and keep going!

I occasionally read Sarah Hoyt (accordingtohoyt.com) who writes sci-fi-ish or fantasy-ish books and is a political observer who contributes at Instapundit. I thought a recent column of hers was interesting in that she wrote about her personal season of burnout as a writer as a lead-in to a list of calamities that we’ve experienced over the last couple of years that may induce burnout among the citizens of this great country.

We do not expect to find ourselves under a two year house arrest at the decision of tyrants, for no reason that makes any sense. We don’t expect our kids’ education arbitrarily destroyed (not to mention what most found out about their kids education during the lockdown.) We don’t expect small businesses destroyed. We don’t expect unapologetic election fraud. We don’t expect the people who come to power that way to then do things like refuse to let our country drill for oil, or try to drive the country in the direction of technologies that don’t exist, thereby making it impossible to transport the essentials. We don’t expect to have to find ways to navigate daily life: it worked before.

I think that’s true — the majority of Americans “don’t expect” these many painful and nerve-wracking developments because they’re either ignorant of what’s happening or they’re trusting that “things” will eventually go back to what they were before (which, as I wrote on Friday, will not).

She writes, “We all know we’re heading for food and fuel shortages. We’re all watching things become more difficult. We can all predict the results,” then says:

But there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, particularly by our lonesome selves. And nothing can be done until the discontent reaches a critical mass, which, as we see from other countries, requires a whole other level of suffering, and a level of damage it will be hell to recover from.

And…. we’re powerless. It’s our lives, the lives of our kids. It’s our businesses, our communities, the careers we spent years building. It’s our ability to come and go at will, to visit friends, family. It’s our savings, our old age survival. It’s our medical care. It’s our ability to speak, to attend a demonstration, if we agree with it. It’s our ability to defend ourselves (ask the Bodega owner in NYC.) It’s plans we’d made, things we’d worked toward.

None of it is safe, all of it is in the hands of people we can’t trust, people who have other agendas than our best interests. (And far more sinister than any traditional publisher ever managed.)

And there is absolutely nothing we can do. Not yet. Not while we’re bound and delivered to our foes.

The central point she makes is that we’re powerless to change what’s happening in Washington, D.C., and in many State and city governments. I think for the most part that is true, too.

It’s very difficult to effect any kind of change even when we vote hard and then vote harder the next time. Part of it is that lasting change often takes a very long time to occur (think of the nearly 50 years it took to overturn Roe v. Wade). Conservatives are swimming upstream, like spawning salmon, against the cultural rot that exists in almost all of our national and state institutions, in our businesses, in our schools, in entertainment, in media, in many of our churches and in our local communities.

Part of it also is that we don’t have a leader who can rally the masses like Donald J. Trump did. He did in four years what hundreds of politicians didn’t do for the last forty. He did it because he’s a tough bastard who likes to give as good as he gets and didn’t let the entire system wear him down. But even if he wins four more years … it’s still only four more years.

It’s going to take more than that.

Sarah suggests five things we can do, which she details on her site:

  1. Don’t lie to yourself (admit you are powerless);
  2. There will be a time when you’re not powerless (be ready for post-survival);
  3. Prepare by planning to survive what’s coming;
  4. Keep doing life as you are now until you absolutely can’t; and
  5. You won’t always be powerless (not quite a redundancy).

What I like is that she’s looking for things we can do in the face of overwhelming circumstances as an encouragement. Many of you reading this blog clearly see the state of affairs in the U.S. and wonder what can be done. I, myself, have wondered about it many times and have come up short. But Sarah’s list made me consider what else can be done as we prepare for what might be coming.

She’s right; there isn’t much we can do to stop what’s happening at the macro level. (She writes, “You want to scream at the sky. You want to stand in front of a tank. You want a grand gesture that stops the insanity.”)

But what I’m beginning to see is that there is a lot that can be done at the local level. The famous adage, “all politics is local,” means that every politician is concerned about his constituents at home. I also take it to mean that what gets offered up at the national level comes from the local level via the State. If you want to see change at the national level, then get busy at the local level.

Here’s a list of four things we can all be doing locally when it feels like we can’t do anything nationally:

  1. Cultivate a life of prayer. I won’t go into any detail, but I’ve seen some remarkable answers to prayer over the last year. Not everyone who reads this blog is a believer, I’m sure, but one of the things Christ-followers have is not just the promise of prayer, but the command to pray.

    “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God” (Philippians 4:6-7).

    And we are to persist in our prayers: Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

    “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’”
    (Luke 18:1-8).

    Prayer is simply speaking to God, by faith, and enjoining Him to intervene on our behalf. Having just read through the Psalms, it amazes me how often King David, a shepherd-turned-warrior, turned to the Lord to plead his case against his enemies. Think of prayer as a tool which God gives us and commands us to use.
  2. Develop community in your neighborhood. We and some of our neighbors put on a second annual block party for our street this past week. As I walked around introducing myself and meeting several new people, I explained to some of them why we were doing this.

    Our society is going crazy and people are at each other’s throats, I said. It feels like we’re more divided than ever. Neighborhoods aren’t like they were when I was a kid, where my parents would push me out the door and say, “See you at dinner!” They’re more like communities of hermits who wave at each other as their garage doors go down or as they pass each other while cutting their lawns. By and large there aren’t the meaningful relationships that there once were, and people don’t intrinsically trust each other as they once did.

    We’re trying to develop those relationships again by providing a mixer and getting people introduced to each other because nobody should feel isolated, especially with the chaos that seems to be growing across our society. We need others.

    That can’t be done from the top down; it has to be done from the bottom up. And we’ve found that people want what we are offering. They loved getting the chance to meet their neighbors and some suggested we do it more than once a year.
  3. Become more self-sufficient. Hoyt touches on this in her third point. We will be surprised by how dependent we are on the supply chain if it ever truly breaks. We’ve seen some signs of the strain on it when supermarket shelves were empty, when baby formula was suddenly missing.

    In my life I’ve never — and I mean, never — had to worry about whether food would be available. The store always had everything I needed. But now … can we rely on that?

    Maybe not.

    Becoming more self-sufficient is growing a vegetable garden or, if permitted where you live, raising some chickens for eggs. Chicks are $2 or $3 each and, once mature, each of them will lay an egg a day for about three years.

    Buy a generator and learn how to hook up your refrigerator to it. Build a fire pit and begin storing up wood to burn. Learn how to capture rain water and have it available for flushing toilets. Purchase food goods that have a long-term shelf date. Stock up on paper goods, like toilet paper (remember the panic buying at the start of COVID).
  4. Arm yourself. I know guns are anathema for some, scary to others, and extreme for still others, but I’m a Second Amendment advocate and I don’t see a contradiction between being a Christian and owning a firearm.

    You have witnessed the increase in violence over the last several years, especially after the death of St. George Floyd. You may have to defend yourself and your family as the culture becomes more feral and our law “enforcement” declines to prosecute offenders in the name of racial justice. There’s nothing wrong with standing your ground against evil.

    A joke: A burglar entered the house of a Quaker and proceeded to rob it. The Quaker heard noises, took his shotgun downstairs, and found the burglar. He aimed his gun and said gently: “Friend, I mean thee no harm, but thou standest where I am about to shoot!”

    Seriously — buy a gun and stock up on ammo, a little at a time. Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. And that’s coming from a guy who ten years ago would’ve never thought it was necessary to have a firearm.

Uncle Sam is not going to save you. In fact, “Uncle Sam” is the one causing the harm. I’m as angry about it as the next guy, but I’m embracing the fact that unless there’s a massive uprising, there isn’t much we can do about it nationally. In the meantime, there are some things we can be doing on a personal, local level. Pray, develop community, become more self-sufficient, and arm yourself.

Let me know in the comments what you think.

Daily Broadside | Don’t Look Now But What You Can Plainly See Isn’t There

Daily Verse | Hebrews 2:3b
This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.

Wednesday’s Reading: Hebrews 3-4

Good morning, my friends. Wednesday and everybody but the current Resident and the other squatters in the White House have noticed that the price of everyday goods and services are rising faster than a hot air balloon filled with the vapid musings of Joy Behar and Whoopie Goldberg.

Since I’m no expert on economics, let’s let David Catron give us the details.

This is the largest 12-month increase in the CPI since 1982, and it is hitting Americans where it hurts most — the cost of energy, food, and transportation. This suggests that there is indeed a “huge disconnect,” but that it is between the fiscal fantasies of the Biden administration and the financial realities faced by the voters. Unfortunately for the White House, inflation isn’t as susceptible to spin as are most issues debated inside the Beltway. Americans encounter the truth every time they pay their heating bills, fill up their gas tanks, and buy food. Friday’s report merely confirms what they see in their daily lives. The worst news involves how much more they now spend on energy than they paid last year:

On energy: The energy index rose 33.3 percent over the past 12 months with all major energy component indexes increasing sharply. The gasoline index rose 58.1 percent over the last year, its largest 12-month increase since the period ending April 1980. The index for natural gas rose 25.1 percent over the last 12 months, and the electricity index rose 6.5 percent.

On food: The food at home index rose 6.4 percent over the past 12 months, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending December 2008. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increased 12.8 percent, with the index for beef rising 20.9 percent. The index for dairy and related products posted the smallest increase, rising 1.6 percent over the last 12 months.

Everything else but food and energy is up 4.9 percent over the past 12 months, its largest 12-month increase since the period ending June 1991.

From Ronna McDaniel at Fox News:

Meanwhile, the latest data from the Labor Department shows consumer prices skyrocketed 6.2% in October – the largest spike in more than 30 years. Rising prices are making everything more expensive: gasoline is up almost 50% since last year and used vehicles have risen by 26%. And if you hosted a holiday dinner last month, you might’ve emptied your wallet: according to the Farm Bureau, Thanksgiving dinner cost families 14% more than last year.  

Despite Biden’s assurances that inflation was temporary, the latest numbers indicate that inflation is here to stay – and will likely get worse. Economists project that high inflation will last well into 2022. 

Yet Biden and company want you to believe that this is all nothing to worry about and, in fact, are lying about it with straight faces.

Rather than actually tackling inflation, officials are more interested in explaining why those prices aren’t the full story. Biden chief of staff Ron Klain decided that the best response was a flip chart explaining that everything was actually great. It is one thing to tout your economic achievements, it is another to deny the existence of any problems. On inflation, the White House too often finds itself telling voters not to believe their lying eyes.

This is standard operating procedure for the Democrats:

But American voters aren’t having it:

The Economist/YouGov poll taken prior to last week’s release of the Consumer Price Index showed that 53 percent of Americans say the economy is getting worse. Just 15 percent say the economy is getting better.

Inflation is a the heart of economic concerns. Fifty-six percent of Americans say inflation is a very serious problem. Another 27 percent say it is somewhat serious, while nine percent say it is only a mild problem and two percent say it is not a problem at all.

All of this portends a disaster for the Democrats in 2022 but, just like their attitude toward inflation, they’re in denial.

President Joe Biden spoke at the Democratic National Committee holiday party on Tuesday night and expressed optimism that his party will prevail in next year’s midterm elections.

“We have to keep making the case,” Biden told a crowd of about 400 in Washington, D.C. “Let me say this again: From the president, we’re going to win in 2022.”

“I want to tell my Republican friends: Get ready, pal. You’re in for a problem,” Biden said, explaining that Republicans are “against everything” and challenging the crowd to name something the GOP is “for.”

OK “pal.”

Don’t forget: these clowns are the ones in charge. It’s up to us to relieve them of that burden in 2022 and 2024.