#that means even less options and recourse for those who go on to develop

[allisonmathiesen73]

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#Oilfield factoring #Oilfield factoring company #Oil and gas factoring #Oilfield factoring companies #Oilfield invoice factoring #Factoring for oilfield contractors #Factoring for oilfield services #Oilfield service factoring

[awkward-teabag]

I'm so exhausted and I don't think people realize just how bad British Columbia, Canada, is right now in regards to covid.

The provincial health office, Dr. Bonnie Henry, ignores science constantly, as does the deputy provincial health officer. They both claim masks/PPE are the last line of defense and not really effective.

They both refuse to acknowledge covid is airborne, instead saying it's droplets. Note that Henry was one of the lead public health responders in Toronto when SARS hit it and she also didn't believe/treat it as airborne. She also still holds onto the idea that SARS, MERS, H1N1, and now covid transmit in other ways rather than through the air.

They both think kids don't get sick from covid and don't transmit it which is why schools are open as normal, some classrooms don't have windows that open (or don't have windows at all), and they've decided against notifying schools or parents if a kid tested positive.

Contact tracing has been scaled back to the point it may as well not exist, which was fully intentional. They also don't consider friends or classmates close contacts thus won't notify them if someone they spent hours with in a room the other day tested positive.

Testing centres are being shut down en masse, the most infamous one was shut down and the following day it had a Spirit Halloween banner above the doors. There's also only 1 testing centre for 550,000+ people in one region of the Lower Mainland, a region that had the most cases in the second and third wave.

There are also no rapid testing kits available in-person or online (unless you have a spare $250+) despite there being over 2,000,000 sitting in a warehouse about to expire because Henry doesn't think they're accurate.

And the government controls access to testing in most areas and will bar you from getting tested unless you lie about your symptoms. Even then, there's a good chance you'll be told to go home and rest for a couple days to see if you feel better.

Vaccines are being pushed hard as the only thing needed and that if people have two shots, they don't need to wear masks. It was only recently the province even admitted breakthrough infections and hospitalizations were even a thing despite it being known for weeks/months elsewhere in the world.

Hospital capacities are over 100% with extreme staff shortages but Henry, Dix, and Gustafson still decided to get rid of nearly all restrictions.

N95 mask usage is being discouraged with the government saying only surgical masks are needed. Even nurses aren't allowed to use N95 masks or have proper PPE.

The government is no longer reporting on certain numbers and has been caught lying about and omitting numbers time and again thanks to brave individuals who leaked the actual documents and those who spend their days comparing multiple sources to find the actual number.

The government would also rather fire nurses and other healthcare workers despite all the shortages out there (3 nurses a shift when it was supposed to be 24, nurses working 24h/shift to have a modicum of coverage, nurses being mandated to not have breaks despite working 12-24h, etc) so healthcare workers are effectively muzzled.

Film and photography in hospitals is also not allowed.

Interactions with the press are done via phone calls that the government controls and reporters are limited to one question and one follow-up question.

And so much more.

People are dying in hospitals because there's not enough staff and people are having their surgeries canceled because there's not enough staff and/or ICU beds so people who could have survived now have a fatal inoperable illness and only months left to live.

If you think Alberta and Ontario are failing in their covid response, I beg you to look at BC's response and what those who live here are saying, especially those who are marginalized. Normally I would not suggest twitter, but the #bcpoli and #bced hashtags are full of people across the province who are suffering under the lack of covid response.

And no, these aren't elected officials. The office of the Provincial Health Officer is promoted, not elected. British Columbians had no say in who we wanted in charge of provincial health.

#canada #canpoli #cdnpoli #british columbia #bc #bcpoli #covid #politics #abpoli #onpoli #like i see Hinshaw and Tam and others say they were wrong and i'm JEALOUS #because that will never happen in BC #there have been multiple victory laps by DBH and the government for the past year #if you are anxious about covid you are wrong and the reason why things are where they are #that's only slightly paraphrased #and because testing is so limited #(as in you need government approval to get tested and their rec is #almost always to stay home for a day or two) #that means even less options and recourse for those who go on to develop #chronic conditions #speaking of testing if you test negative but die within the hour #you're marked as not having died from covid #basically when you see the numbers the government puts out #assume it's 2x-10x higher than is reported #i've also forgotten a bunch of stuff #because there's so much going wrong #and if you want to have a fun afternoon #look up the SARS report #and look up where the inquiry deemed the government failed #because every single one of those is failing in BC right now

[portraitoftheoddity]

So like I really like Steve and all and he's definitely got the right heart and that's what fandom likes about him, how he stood up to bullies and injustice with his fist raised. But recently I've rewatched avatar and Aang got me thinking, is going against the world fist ready really the right thing. Like Aang was no coward he still stopped Ozai but in most of his battles he tries for peace first. In fact Avatar as a whole talks about change in people.

Like Sokka turned from misogynistic to respecting women, and Iroh's love and patience redeemed Zuko. As much as I love Steve Rogers, fist fighting bullies and getting your ass handed to you or successfully beating them to a pulp isn't going to change them, and it sends a wrong message of fighting fire with fire and bullies don't learn when you punch them usually they get pettier. I agree Steve is right at not letting injustice go be it canon or fandom but Iove that scene in avatar when Aang got into a fire nation school and when a guy tried to fight him he was just like nooope but still managed to be on top as opposed to Steve (maybe just fan fic ver) who would try a punch. I mean I can see Steve screaming at the lies of the fire nation school instead of calmly informing the truth and throwing a dance party. Like Aang might be too pacific sometimes but is charging against people really a good lesson. Stand for what's right, but like in a chill way. And I'm not sure if this is just the fandom version of Steve but in TFS we did kinda see him in an alley fight against a just a ride guy. Sorry about the long rant but what do you think about Steve's fight me attitude being completely glorified in his fandom.

I apologize that I’m gonna gonna get a little long-winded here!

I agree with you that peaceful solutions are great to try first, but when it comes to this punch-happy version of Steve you reference, I think you’re kinda looking at a strawman version of the character, anon --  maybe from poorly-written fic or memes, but not exactly the Steve of film or comics.

Now, the respective approaches of both Aang and Steve are in part a product of the media they originated in. A show aimed at kids with a single overall plotline and arc is often going to aim for a peaceful solution and allow for linear character growth -- while comics, movies and shows developed around a character specifically designed to punch Hitler as a statement during WWII are less likely to have a core message of pacifism, and their structure and circular timelines make growth arcs more difficult to sustain. This doesn’t mean one character’s approach or the other is superior, just that they come from different contexts, narratively and in terms of medium. Plus, there are different kinds of fights, and not all are going to offer us the same options as solutions. Looking for ideological purity -- only ever opting for the ‘right’ solution -- can often lead to doing nothing when no ‘right’ solution presents itself, which can result in more harm than taking a less-than-perfect action.

Let us not forget that when an authoritarian army showed up to kill everyone and wipe out the North Pole, Aang does go all Koizilla with the ocean spirit and wipes out the Fire Nation fleet. Aang has fought people. Aang, albeit with the alibi of “a spirit was in charge”, indirectly kills people (Zhao ends up pretty dead as a direct result of Aang’s spirit rampage). This isn’t particularly glorified, but at the time there isn’t a better outcome presented. Doing nothing would have led to the massacre of the Northern Water Tribe.

That said, I LOVE ATLA and its messages of growth and compassion and I think it’s great to have a protagonist who opts to give people a way out.

...Which is what Steve does. 

We see Steve do this more than once. In CA:TWS, Steve recognizes Bucky and tried to get through to him, to avoid a fight. One ensues, but Steve then refuses to fight him anymore once he’s disabled the helicarrier and saved everyone else, willingly putting his own life on the line to gamble on some part of Bucky’s inner self being in there and worth saving. He isn’t willing to put the lives of other innocents and noncombatants on the line -- protecting them is a priority, even if it means fighting Bucky -- but once that factor is out of the equation, he drops his shield and tries to reach him.

In the same movie, a few scenes earlier, Steve appeals to the personnel of SHIELD -- an organization that has labeled him a terrorist and been hunting him -- and paints out the reality of the situation, giving the good people within the opportunity to react and rebel against the element of HYDRA that has infiltrated -- which they do! But there isn’t a magical lionturtle showing up to tell him how to stop the helicarriers from taking off and murdering millions of people without any casualties, so, yanno. He does what he can. 

Heck, Steve is occasionally teased by other characters for his speechifying -- not just to give pep talks, but to try to get through to people. He does this in the comics a lot. You’ve probably seen this page going around:

It doesn’t always work out. But he tries.

You suggest Steve would punch someone who was wrong in Aang’s Fire Nation School, but I don’t agree with that reading on the character based on what we see Steve do. Steve very rarely is the one to completely initiate a fight. Usually he is reactive. He sees a situation where someone is being a jerk, points out the injustice, and if the person is insisting on hurting someone, Steve inserts himself to make sure it’s him instead of anyone else. Whether the jerk in question is a single bully or an entire army.

You bring this scene up, but when Steve confronts the guy heckling in the movie theater (who is making a woman cry, I’ll add), it’s clear from the man’s posture when he stands up and Steve’s look of dread that while Steve has spoken up, the escalation to violence is not his choice. When we see him a moment later in the alley, he’s fighting defensively -- drawing the man’s ire, keeping him distracted. Steve is reactive in this entire scenario -- not the instigator. (and I think if Steve had Aang’s airbending, he’d love to dodge more punches instead of getting his ass kicked!)

The fact that Steve’s primary weapon is a shield -- a symbol of defense, not offense -- speaks to the fact his entire MO is protection. Violence not for violence’s sake, but to intervene in existing violence when there is no other recourse.

But Steve also admittedly has a stronger sense of responsibility than Aang does at the series’ start. Aang dodges, but he also gets called out by other characters for running away from a lot of his problems instead of confronting them. Steve, if he were a bender, I think would likely be an Earthbender like Toph; solid, stubborn, listening and reacting (though ironically, he would lose his shit over the willful obliviousness and apathy of Ba Sing Se’s leadership). Steve feels a deep personal duty to always be in the thick of it where things are already at their worst. 

If there had been no deus ex machina energybending option presented at the eleventh hour, would it have been better for Aang to die and doom the world than to compromise his morals and kill the Fire Lord? It’s a question of hypothetical principles vs reality of harm in that instance. Aang as a character is allowed by the story to adhere to his principles and get a happy ending. Steve as a character does his best, but ultimately has to compromise with reality when he has to, when it’s not just his life at stake, but many others should he fail to act in time. In those high-stakes scenarios, his cards are often limited.

Steve as a character doesn’t arbitrarily start fights. But he goes to where the status quo is untenable, or where a fight is already raging, and he takes a stand. If he can convince someone to step down peacefully? That’s ideal! But usually by the time Captain America has shown up, there are megaweapons primed and loaded and fascists already hurting people or robots trying to destroy the planet or a Titan about to wipe everyone out, so the ideal option is rarely still on the table. No dance party is gonna be enough to change Red Skull’s crazy nazi mind about killing everyone (which is too bad, because I’d love to watch Steve do the lindy hop). There is no ‘chill way’ to stand for what’s right at that point. 

And ultimately, I think we need both kinds of characters! I think it’s important to encourage diplomacy and compassion, to urge people to find common ground and to find nonviolent ways of diffusing and deescalating situations. To look at things from other perspectives, and to give people the option to learn and grow and be better than they were. I love a good rehabilitation arc, and think ATLA does this beautifully and has incredibly important messaging and philosophies.

But I also think we need stories that say, hey, when those options aren’t on the table? When no one is listening no matter what you try to say, when you’ve looked for a way around it and no lionturtles have showed up to save your ass? Sometimes, you have to put yourself in front of the guy swinging punches and raise you shield and stop him. Sometimes you don’t get the nice options that make you feel good; sometimes the world is messy and ugly; but sometimes, even if we can’t do the ideal thing, we can still do the right thing. Take action and put an end to the perpetuation of violence in the moment to protect the helpless. (Then work on rehabilitation and communication.)

#lena has thoughts #meta #avatar: the last airbender #steve rogers #captain america #Anonymous #lena answers things

[claraxbarton]

Probably literally no one wants to read this, but on the off chance anyone wants to CHOOSE to read my thoughts on fanworks in relation to traditional western culture and not merely be subjected to them via DM during an innocent (though angsty as all hell) convo on the parallels between Stucky and Destiel well, here’s 1700 words on it:

—-

Actually. And here’s the thing that works so damn well with both bucky/Steve and Dean/Cas is that there is no clear “damsel/hero” dichotomy that we see in classic heteronormative relationships.

But like.

The thing about fan fiction, and AO3 specifically, is that it primarily features homoerotic and homoromatic relationships between two cisgender white men. Yes that is changing- mostly thanks to the rise of KPOP (the surprise lord and savior of 2020) and Hulu and Netflix optioning East Asian movies and television series to spread those narratives. Which is an entire thing on its own because so many of those like- is it Untamed? Feature homosocial environments and thus- the point is. The landscape is changing and yay.

But AO3s success is largely predicated on two main ships: Stucky and Destiel. Yes there are others that are huge and continue to grow, but these are the two that I feel (with no data or research to support my assertion) helped AO3 take precedence over ffnet as THE site for fan work hosting.

Now, the contradictory thing about fan work, the thing that is so often described as hypocritical and/or fetishizing is that the majority feature two cisgender white men engaged in homoerotic and/or homoromantic relationships when the majority of the readers and creators of fan works are neither.

Data supports the supposition that most fan work creators and consumers identify as non-male. And in that subset the majority identify as female.

Simply based on generic population data, the correlation can be made (again no effort put into googling this because I have sewing to do) that the majority of this group is likely cisgendered heterosexual (white) women.

However, fan works and fan engagement are a proven community for fans who do not ascribe to the heteronormative gender binary or heterosexual and/or heteroromantic relationship structure and are, in fact, not just white. Again- imagine numbers that are factual because sewing.

Fandom is not unique to entertainment media. We can trace it back to, well, as long as we can trace it back. What are the Venus of Willendorf statues of not fanart? The Parthenon? Egyptian funereal pyramids and their contents? Renaissance art in general? Is the King James Bible not a “fix it” for the previously canonical literature (that’s a hot take don’t come for me.) (you could also consider the King James Version an attempt at song fic).

In more contemporary culture, we have sports fandoms- primarily male dominated. Primarily cisgendered heterosexual white male dominated.

The fandom culture of sports fans has been described as that of collectors and curators- they want memorabilia and statistics and gatekeeping actions often require proof of knowledge or commitment via possessions.

Meanwhile, entertainment media fandoms- such as those experiences on AO3- are more creative than curatorial. Instead of efforts to organize, delineate and create hierarchies within fandoms (yes this happens but is not the overriding force), these sorts of fandoms seek to create fanWORKS and fanCOMMUNITIES. Yes, fantasy sports leagues exist and so do sports teams fan communities. But I ask you, where in sports fandoms is there a GISH?Or an AO3?

The reality of contemporary western dominated culture (entertainment,sports,economic,political, artistic and philosophical) is one that features white cisgendered heterosexual men at the apex-

Both as creators and consumers despite prevailing realities in population and cultural zeitgeist.

As such, most western dominated fandoms are homosocial: dominated by one group, that of white cisgendered heterosexual men.

All that is to say, most star athletes are straight white dudes. Most movie stars are straight white dudes. Most politicians. Most wealth holders and distributors. Most creators.

Why? Because patriarchy. But the WHY isn’t the point of this long ass word vomit.

It’s the So What?

Sports fandoms are the territory of these same homosocial networks.

But media fandoms are the territory of those NOT at the top of that hierarchy.

While the CONTENT and the original content creators remain part of that homosocial white cisgendered heterosexual group, the consumers of media are largely NOT OF THAT GROUP despite what the content creators may desire or believe (see: the creatives behind supernatural and their ridiculous ability to convince themselves that their core demographic are straight white dudes 15-40).

As such, content that features the patriarchy is primarily heterosexual, heteronormative, racist (acutely or passively), misogynistic, homophobic, homosocial and, well, lacking.

Take, for example, MCU and Supernatural as franchises. Our main characters are primarily white dudes. White dudes who mostly interact with other white dudes, whose “tribes” (brethren, compatriots, coworkers) are also white dudes. Yes, smurfs exist- the token woman or non-white person. Sometimes even a queer person (gender or sexual, though very, very rarely gender queer).

The fact that whenever our “heroes” interact with anyone outside their tribe or homosocial group they are almost inevitably evil, dead or about to die is telling. How many women die in supernatural? How many people of color? How many villains in the MCU (and while the X-MEN franchise isn’t necessarily within the MCU because Hollywood, the queer coding within X-MEN is encyclopedic) are queer coded?

Now, I’ve said repeatedly that heterosexual and heteronormative relationships are the mean within such media. Our white dudes bang white ladies, love white ladies, but act like manly white men and don’t put romantic feelings ahead of things like patriotism and pain unless they have “earned” the right to such (a trial that often involves a lot of deaths that are never addressed or given recourse. See:endgame)

Bros before hoes is more or less the rule of western mainstream media.

As such, relationships that demonstrate respect, trust, vulnerability, compassion and resiliency are almost always homosocial: or they are between two bros (no homo) and not between a man and a woman.

You trust the guy at your back, not the woman because you 1. Want to bang her 2. She’s probably going to die 3. She’s a damsel 4. Seriously she’s probably going to die.

Which all means: most of the well developed characters and relationships within mainstream western media are homosocial- they exist between two members of the same group. In our case, those straight white bros (which of course within supernatural can sometimes be taken literally in the case of Wincest).

Which means, the consumers of this media- mostly not white straight cisgendered dudes- are left with content that doesn’t represent who they are or what they want or even can aspire to.

So what’s the solution? Collect data and memorabilia? Sure why not.

OR: use your beloved media, those well developed characters and relationships, to create something new.

Fan work.

We circle back, at last, to the idea that fan work creators and consumers can be hypocritical or contradictory by creating works that feature that which they are not- these white dudes in love (romantic, sexual) with each other.

This supposition suggests that creators and consumers are using the characters and situations in fan work as replacements for what they lack in heterosocial relationships- either in media or in their own lives. Or, put another way, fans replace either Bucky or Steve with themselves and image the other to be their “love” interest.

To an extent, this may be true. That both parties are usually written to have male genitalia while most fans do not is where so many of the hypocritical and fetishization issues come into play.

But the reality is, fans are working with what they are given. Most fans don’t have dicks. A generous portion of fans don’t want to engage with dicks is sexual ways (or engage in sex at all) (and it must be emphasized that the majority of works on AO3 are rated T not E).

But the value in reimagining, subtextualizing, or deconstructing the mostly platonically presented homosocial relationships in western media as homosexual or homoerotic or homoromantic is not (for the most part) about fetish or about placeholders and substitutions for the fan.

It is about creating fanwork that reflects the society a fan lives in or wishes to live in.

Just as the sports fan will go to a bar and paint themselves blue and deride the Yankees because they want to envision a society that upholds a white cisgendered male patriarchy, media fanWORKS are created because we do NOT have a society that values romantic or erotic relationships between equals (for in traditional western society the only equal to a white cisgendered man is another white dude).

So, at last, a return to Stucky and Destiel.

The relationships created in fanWORKS between these two aren’t simply those where one is the “‘man” in the relationship and the other is the “woman”.

Yes those fanWORKS exist.

But most utilize the strong bonds of trust and respect and vulnerability and dare I say shared experience to create romantic and erotic relationships that are both more complex and more realistic than those actually portrayed in the same media.

In Stucky, we see Steve save Bucky and Bucky save Steve. We see Bucky hurt Steve and Steve hurt Bucky. We see their positions as EQUALS as a means by which to create a world where fulfilling relationships can exist that do not automatically restrict one (or more) parties to that of “chattel”.

The same is true of Destiel.

And both relationships feature key similarities within the original media that make for such rich possibilities.

Castiel saves Dean from hell. Castiel is brainwashed by the patriarchy to view Dean as lesser and even to kill him (this happens multiple times).

While Steve saves Bucky from Azzano, it is Bucky who saved Steve for almost their entire lives before that point. And after that point the two go back and forth to save each other. And let us not forget that Bucky was ordered to kill Steve but “he knew me”.

Dean and Castiel go through a similar ping pong match of saving each other.

This isn’t just about being equal in strength- it’s about being equal in vulnerability.

Which, to belabor the point, doesn’t exist in mainstream media’s romantic or erotic relationships nor is it widely taught or reinforced in western culture as a whole.

In conclusion.

Stucky and Destiel can save the world.

But probably KPOP would do it better and faster and cooler.

—-

Totally feel free to engage with your own opinions. Because I have to go sew now but later? Later we should talk friends and foes.

#fandom #meta #critical #fanfiction #fanfic #fanart #mcu #supernatural #SPN #stucky #destiel #Steve Rogers #captain america #bucky barnes #winter soldier #dean winchester #castiel #deancas

[andrew-tha]

The Death Penalty and Indefinite Incarceration: A Stage 1 & 3 Dialectic

I’d like to start by first thanking my friend, who I will call Gs, who is always there to listen to my rambles and bounce ideas.

If you find references to emotional stages confusing, please read the Summary of Emotional Development first.

Allow me to begin with my most controversial and easy-to-quite-out-of-context claim, and then steadily unravel how I came to such a claim:

“The Death Penalty is an ultimate admission of weakness”.

In my country of the United States, there persists a debate between continuing the practice of the death penalty for extremely high crimes, such as mass homicides, and its complete elimination in favor of indefinite incarceration or “life in prison”. There are a couple arguments favoring indefinite incarceration that I find strong: a) help reduce the number of deaths of wrongfully convicted individuals, and b) is ultimately cheaper than the death penalty due to the costs associated with death penalty appeals. In contrast, there is really only one argument I consider strong in favor of the death penalty beyond what I am about to describe later in this essay, which is the following: “There are some people in this world, such as a person who murdered a loved one, we just want to be dead”. The important word to keep in mind here is the word “want” as straightforward desires are difficult to argue against, as opposed to “needs” which are often much easier to argue against, for example:

“I need candy”

“No, you don’t; it doesn’t give you any nutrition.”

Versus

“I want candy”

“Oh, OK.”

In that same way, the want for someone’s death is somewhat difficult to argue against directly, as it isn’t easy to argue that someone does not in fact want something. So the common course of action is to come up with other kinds of arguments that do not tackle the base want, but instead try to persuade on some other foundation, such as moral/ethical (reduce deaths of wrongfully convicted individuals) and financial (indefinite incarceration is cheaper).

In the following, I will make an argument on a new foundation: Emotional. I will lay out the circumstances in which the death penalty is expectable or appropriate, and then explain why it is not appropriate for the society we live in today. I will delve into emotional stage explanations of why we want someone’s death versus why we want someone to be put into prison for incredibly long period of times. At some points I will tie in stories from cartoons, anime, and other pop culture as examples and elaborations.

First, a definition. I understand the Death Penalty to be: “state-sanctioned killing”. By “state”, I mean any governing body with a sufficient monopoly on violence and the authority to mete out such punishments, ethically or not. I’m primarily thinking of the United States, as well as extreme examples such as any cookie-cutter dictatorship or police state. If your local Homeowner’s Association were powerful enough, I suppose they could count as a “state”, too. By “sanctioned”, I mean something that is carried out by the approval of one or more persons within the state that is not necessarily the individual(s) directly carrying out the execution, and is premeditated, meaning something not committed in the heat of the moment but rather with thoughtful deliberation. And finally, “killing” means the death of a person by the hands of another in a lawful way, though not necessarily in an ethical or moral way.

Because a central controversy around the death penalty is whether it is the right or wrong thing to do, I began my thinking on the subject with trying to find a circumstance in which killing, with or without the state, is the ‘right’ thing to do. What I initially found were degrees of killing on a spectrum from “OK” to “Not OK”. Further, the circumstance on the far most “OK” end of that spectrum was Self-defense.

When someone is killed due to self-defense, and we are certain that it was self-defense, not only is the killer not convicted of a crime but our hearts likely go out more to the killer than the victim. This is understandable, because the killer in this circumstance is the one who was initially threatened to such an extreme extent that they genuinely feared for their life. We can pepper in some Emotional Stage theory stuff here by thinking about this fear and threat to life and its relation to Stage 1: Co-dependence. In Stage 1, all important matters are matters of Life and Death. So when your life is being threatened, you are being pushed into a Stage 1 situation. Like a mouse cornered by a cat, you either fight for your life and the lives of your loved ones or die, so it is understandable for you to react in such a way that may end the life of your attacker. In this circumstance, you have a need to kill, because failing to do so likely means the end of your own life or the lives of those around you.

We can see this line of thinking in recent controversial police-involved fatal shootings in the US and their ensuing investigations, where a central pillar of their defenses was often that the police officers genuinely feared for their lives. I won’t go into my personal opinion on these subjects, as I like to go by a case-to-case basis (there being, sadly, too many cases) and their circumstances are not supremely significant to the subject at hand beyond what I noted now.

Point is, self-defense is a circumstance in which killing is A-OK. In concluding such, I then delved further into self-defense scenarios, and found there can be significant differences between self-defense scenarios on the spectrum of “OK” to “Not OK”.

On the extreme end of “OK”, we might have a young child who is being attacked by a couple adults, and, perhaps by dropping a brick on their heads or causing them to slip on some marbles on the stairs, kills his attackers. In such a scenario, we rush to the care and comfort of the child, sorrowfully fearing what sort of effect such a traumatizing experience might have on the child. On the other end towards “Not OK”, we might have a professional boxer in a bar attacked by a drunk patron, ending in the death of the patron by the boxer’s hands. There, culpability is much greyer, and deeper investigation is required to determine whether the boxer acted irresponsibly. Either way, the boxer’s reputation among the boxing community may be damaged.

What is the difference here? The difference is Power. The less power you have, the less responsible you are for any given situation. The more power you have, the more. Because the boxer is an adult, because he is trained, because he is strong, he has more options available to him, a greater variety and effectiveness of ways to diffuse the situation. The stronger you are, the less you need to kill. With that said, let us return to my initial claim: “The Death Penalty is an ultimate admission of weakness”.

The Weak need to kill, because by virtue of being weak they have few to no options. The first lesson you learn in most any martial art is: “Priority #1 – Run Away”. The Strong, despite being more capable of killing, don’t need to kill, because by virtue of being strong they have many more options. Strength is not merely physical power but also intelligence, knowledge, resources, influence, cunning, and more. To kill is to admit that you’ve been pushed so deeply into a corner, stripped of so many of your options, made so vulnerable, and rendered so powerless that you have no other recourse but to utilize a Stage 1: Co-dependent reaction. Stage 1: Co-dependence is the stage of feelings of powerlessness and, consequently, violent overreaction and defensiveness.

It was at this point that I realized I was wrong about one of my assumptions: The “OK”/”Not OK” spectrum is mislabeled. It is not about what is OK and not OK. There is no killing that is OK. There is no killing that is just fine or acceptable. All killing produces negative emotional effects, whether it be by creating victims, traumatizing the killer, or generating an atmosphere of fear and hatred, i.e. Evil, Darkness and the Real. The actual label should be: “Forgiveness”. Killing is more or less forgivable depending on the circumstances. A child killing an adult in self-defense? Most forgivable. An adult drowning a preschool class in the cold blood of puppies and kittens? Most unforgivable. The “Forgiveness Spectrum” may supplement the explanation(s) for why folks suffer from survivor’s guilt even when other peoples’ deaths were outside of their control – they do not struggle with whether the deaths were OK or not, but with whether they can forgive themselves for being the ones to survive. Perhaps then the go-to consideration to keep in mind when talking to someone about survivor’s guilt would be to frame it in terms of forgiveness regardless of whether any wrongdoing was committed.

So when a state sanctions a killing, that state is admitting that the person they are killing is so imminently threatening that they have no power to do anything but kill the person. It is at this point that I’d like to say that in general it is not only OK but important for people to be able to allow themselves to be vulnerable. And the same holds for a state, because a state is just a more formally organized group of people. So if there is indeed a circumstance in which there exists a person within a state’s jurisdiction that is so imminently and uncontrollably threatening to the lives of people, then if the state is able to publicly admit its own weakness as justification for the death penalty, then I would not fault the state for carrying such a thing out.

I am anxious about something regarding my argument, and so I feel the need to clarify: when I talk about the state and that which is imminently threatening, I am not talking about that which is threatening to the persistence of the state itself, but rather about the lives of actual people, i.e. citizens. A state, i.e. the specific organization of a group of people with authority and power over citizens, can persist in defiance of the actual desires and needs of the majority of its citizens, and the operators and executors of state power may and often do act against the health and prosperity of their citizens if it means the furtherance of the state’s persistence. In fact, if I were to give an extremely brief and unsatisfying history of societal development, then I might say that during the earliest times of subsistence hunting and farming, it was about the persistence of the village until the next day. Then when cities formed, it was about the persistence of the ruling elite into the next generation, which leads us into feudalism, e.g. nobles and royalty. When mercantilism and eventually capitalism developed, it was about the growth and persistence of sheer wealth into infinity. During these times the Nation-state was conceived of, which banded large groups of people together in a way that was more effective at creating and persisting power and wealth than feudalism was. Part of the nation-state development process was, “Ya know, if we try to take care of people’s wants and needs a little bit, we can more effectively utilize them for the extension and persistence of state power, like for example we can make and maintain a standing army”. Aaaand that’s where we are today, where the nation-state tries to more or less take care of some of their citizens’ needs, but mostly to the extent that it enables the state to persist (though the present era of globalization is blurring the lines between nation-states, so it’s getting all funky and more complicated).

I presently believe that the next emotionally evolved form of governance in the modern day is a state that is OK with the end of its persistence. This is not communism whatsoever; communism is a society absent the state (though communism’s definition for state likely differs significantly from my much simpler one). What I mean instead is an organization of people in power that is OK with having their power end and replaced by others according to the needs and desires of the citizenry. Basically, a state that is not desperate to persist in its current form, but instead willing to weaken and subside if it means better meeting the needs of its people.

I got the idea for this from my favorite manga series ever, One Piece, during the Alabasta arc. The arc has been out for at least a decade, so spoilers: the king of the country of Alabasta discovers the source of the true threat that has been manipulating events around the country to bring it closer and closer to open civil war. Unfortunately, he learns of this just as the rebel army of manipulated citizenry are charging towards the capital city’s gates. The king’s generals ask him if their army should meet the rebels on the battlefield before they take the royal palace. Instead, the king orders the entire army to empty from the capital and charge west, towards the source of the true threat. “But sir”, they worry, “we will lose the capital!” In response the king proclaims, “This country is not its capital. This country is its people!” The king was personally OK with the collapse of his own state if it meant the protection of his people. To me, that is a Stage 4: Independence or Stage 5: Transcendence mode of thinking. Definitely not Stage 3: Group-dependence, who would struggle between the preservation of the state and their need to try their best to meet people’s needs. To be fair, I do not think this necessarily means that a Stage 4 or 5 government will always necessarily choose “needs of people” over “preservation of the state”, because the two may not be diametrically opposed, but rather interwoven within the other. What Stages 4 and 5 do enable, however, is decisive action in the face of damning pressure.

Tangent aside, how does Indefinite Incarceration compare to the Death Penalty as they relate to emotional stages? In stage 1: Co-dependence, death is the ultimate punishment, so folks and states struggling with Stage 1 tend to favor the death penalty. In stage 3: Group-dependence, being exiled from the group is the ultimate punishment, and one form of exile is imprisonment. So Indefinite Incarceration is an ultimate punishment for folks and states primarily function in a Stage 3 emotionality.

Thus it is a Stage 3 society that favors “life in prison” as its primary ultimate punishment and a Stage 1 society that favors the death penalty as its primary ultimate punishment. A society that was operating at a greater stage can be pulled down by traumatic events and in this way be made to change what punishments it favors. This is effectively the end goal of extremism and terrorism today – to bring societies down emotional levels in order to render them more vulnerable and thus more easily manipulated. It’s also easy to see what emotional level extremism and terrorism operates from, regardless of political leaning. Suffice to say, whenever I engage in a discussion on politics with another person, I try to understand the emotional stage a rationalistic argument is being made from as much as I try to understand any given argument itself. Recall that all arguments and rationalizations stem from and are limited by the emotional stage in which that argument is made from, so if the emotional foundation of an argument you are making coincides with one of an argument someone else is making, you two are more likely to be able to agree and find common ground perhaps regardless of the actual content of the arguments. This is likely more consistent at higher stages and less consistent in lower ones, due to lower stages having a greater tendency to view and assert things in terms of black and white.

“What about Stage 2? What does state-sanctioned punishment from Stage 2 look like?” 

The answer to this question I got from the fictional novel World War Z. In one of the sections, it describes one survivor’s group’s struggle with maintaining order, especially among the people who were formally white-collar investment bankers and jet-setting socialites who now had to learn how to repair toilets. Feeling that such jobs despite their importance were beneath their former lives, they threw tantrums and were uncooperative. These folks suffered from Stage 2: Counter-dependence, i.e. an overinflated sense of self-worth leading to rebellious behavior. Unfortunately, the group’s postwar society did not have the resources to imprison these folks – idle labor that needs to be fed and clothed is a supreme waste within the circumstance of a total war with zombies – but they could not justify killing these adult children for such petty behavior, nor could they simply leave them alone. Eventually, they came up with some old-school punishment which, while making them uncomfortable with how uncivilized and archaic it was, seemed to work: The stocks. A few days of public humiliation appeared to sufficiently temper the majority of Stage 2 complainants, especially when, in the backdrop of the zombie world war, Life and Death of the whole of humanity was on the line.

I bring this up to lead back into the significance of Power in this conversation and how power relates to vulnerability and punishment. Because the state had significantly reduced power in World War Z, they had to resort to Stage 2 methods for punishing their citizens. This is not a good thing, but it is understandable. The weaker you are, the fewer options you have available to you. 

Now regarding the death penalty in modern day America: Should we practice it, and why or why not? My answer is No, we should not because we are not so vulnerable. The moment we capture someone and put them within our control is the moment we lose our justification for killing that person. Killing in the heat of the moment is more forgivable than killing after they’ve been put into custody. We are too far from weak to be going around applying the death penalty, even for the most heinous crimes. Only when either a captive presents an imminent and irrevocable threat to human life despite being in custody or if the power of the state is so depressingly reduced such as in an apocalyptic scenario can we sincerely claim we are vulnerable enough to justify an execution.

For a brief moment let’s talk about the nature of “Threat”, and its relation to killing and stages of emotional development theory. When talking about “threat” in terms of stages of emotional development theory, the feeling of threat is as important as the actual presence of threat, because it is the feeling or emotional perception/conviction of threat as opposed to the logical determination/conclusion of threat that drives our reactions. However, with regard to killing and the death penalty, I would argue that evaluating the feeling of threat is insufficient to determine our willingness as a state to forgive; the actual presence of threat must be evaluated as well. For one, maturing as individuals necessitates tempering our emotions with knowledge and vice versa; it is important to balance our feelings with what we can know and learn. For two, feelings are not necessarily based on reality and often skew or twist the actual nature of events. A person stressed out over possibly being laid off soon may misinterpret his friend telling him about the family vacation to Disneyworld they went on recently as mocking his decreasing ability to provide for his family.

Allow me to wind down with what originally got me invested in this whole topic. What really got me thinking about the subject of the death penalty was the animated movie Superman vs. the Elites. I won’t spoil the important parts of the movie, so what you need to know about it is that in the beginning there is this one supervillain that Superman has to capture again and again because the supervillain keeps on escaping. Problem is, every time he escapes he kills many people, so people start getting upset about Superman following the rule of law and only merely capturing him. In reaction to that, a new superhero group calling themselves “The Elites” comes out and does what Superman can’t bring himself to do, and doing so stages a battleground of competing philosophies about justice and the appropriateness of killing. Superman really struggles with this, and so I tried to think of a mode of thinking that would enable him to parse out his thoughts on a case-by-case basis involving villains. Batman struggles with the same thing when it comes to the Joker, and the temptation to kill versus the commitment to no killing persists as an eternal struggle for these two heroes.

With what I have argued above, I could make the argument with Superman that he could kill the supervillain and forgive himself for doing so while also not turning towards the Dark Side. He can do this by sincerely admitting his weakness of being unable to contain the supervillain, and then taking action to change and improve his capability. It was made self-evident by his repeated escapes and mass murders that neither the state nor Superman could contain the imminent threat to human life that the supervillain exerted. They lacked the power. Being able to admit that would make the act of killing more forgivable. It will still hurt Superman, and the state, and everybody involved, and forgiveness would still be a difficult trial, because killing always has negative emotional effects regardless of its circumstances, but it would enable Superman to exceed his moral/ethical conundrum without falling into the Stage 2 arrogance-trap of the movie’s main antagonists “The Elites” while also protecting people. Batman could likewise do the same with regard to Joker.

The primary personal barrier to all of this is the willingness and presence of mind to perceive and admit one’s limits. Even if this all makes sense in his head, Batman may still not go for this, as he is supremely a Stage 3: Group-dependent kind of person who almost always overextends himself beyond his emotional limits and punishes himself with self-exile. His overwhelming sense of duty and obligation to the city of Gotham consequent to him feeling responsible for the death of his parents is what fuels the tortured soul we have come to know and love. Batman has been stuck in stage 3 for a very long time, and very well may die there. Depending on the iteration, while Batman has demonstrated his willingness to admit his weaknesses, he has in equal part demonstrated his unwillingness to forgive himself, hence his tendency towards self-exile.

In Conclusion

The death penalty is an admission of weakness, because the appropriateness of killing someone is a function of power. The more powerful you are, the more options you have, the less you can justify killing, i.e. “With great power comes great responsibility”. Killing does not exist on an “OK vs Not-OK” spectrum, but rather a “Forgiveness Spectrum”, because killing always damages emotionally and requires forgiveness to heal. We cannot justify the death penalty in modern day America because we have far too much power. Only in exceptional circumstances, such as an apocalyptic scenario or the existence of a captive individual whose imminent threat to human life cannot be contained, could we find ourselves vulnerable enough to warrant judicial killing.

#Theory of Emotional Development #Stage 1 Codependence #Stage 3 Group-dependence #Death Penalty #Life in Prison #Bad History #One Piece #World War Z #Superman vs the Elites #Superman #Batman

[goingmedieval]

On Medieval Health Care and American Barbarism

As I’ve noted several times, I generally try to ignore whatever is currently passing for ‘governance’ in America at the moment, cuz I just ain’t got the patience, or ability to do all that emotional labour. However, they will keep on doing things that call back to the medieval period, so we’re gonna have to talk about it.

So currently in America, which is defo a first world country and for sure very prosperous and a good place to live, there is some debate about whether or not sick people should be driven into bankruptcy, given the audacity of their instance on being ill. (Have they tried not getting ill? IDK.) 

Some Americans, who are for sure good Christians and well into Jesus, need you to know that no one should be obligated to help sick people pay for medical care. To whit:

How charming.

This idea – that health care is something that requires a) payment, and b) is an individual, not a community, concern is what we’re going to talk about today.

Now, as you may be aware, European medicine was underpinned by the idea of humorism which was central to Hippocratic medicine. Hippocratic medicine itself was developed from the tradition of Greek natural philosophy. Hippocrates, obviously, gave his name to the discipline, but the Hippocratic Corpus – a series of sixty some essays on medicine – was developed by several authors and compiled around 250 BCE. Galen then came along sometime around 129 AD and updated the ideas slightly, and notably had some influence on theories of anatomy and pharmacology, but was still a stan for humor theory.

As the theory went – the body held four humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. These humors, in turn corresponded to the four seasons, the four elements, four temperaments, and four stages of the life cycle like so…

More or less, the idea was that if your humours were balanced you would remain healthy. If something got out of whack, you got sick. To get better you needed to get those humors back into balance. A lot of this idea was based on observation. If you were so sick to your stomach you were vomiting bile it sure did look like you had too much and your body was trying to rid itself of it. Bad cold? Same thing with phlegm.

Medieval medicine took this classical basis and ran with it. Classical medical texts were copied and edited in monasteries and monks also wrote their own works on herbal medicine and botany based off their own observations. As groups of devout Christian men with access to medical knowledge, monks considered it to be their religious obligation to provide medical care for members of their communities. 

As a result, most monasteries ended up having a sort of informal hospital. Because they were actual fucking Christians.

There were a lot of other groups practicing medicine in the medieval period however. Barber surgeons, famously, did a lot of medical work that involved cutting people. Basically if you were able to keep a razor sharp enough to shave someone, odds were it was sharp enough to do minor surgery. Homeboys would do stuff like blood letting, dentistry, looking after soldiers during and after battle, and also keeping your cut fresh AF.

Barbers were medical professionals and for sure got paid. However, the medical services they provided were generally in reach of your average (read: peasant) medieval person. There was also something for the ladiez to do medically – that is look after other ladiez. (Did you know that half of all people in the medieval period were actually women? No for real. I’m serious.)  Midwifery was some real shit, and basically one of very few professional options for individual women at the time. (Fuck yeah the other option was sex work – shout out to my girls.)

Midwives were typically apprenticed at a young age in order to learn the trade, and had to have a reference from their parish priest as to their good character in order to do so. They then learned all about assisting the labour process. Labour was an exclusively female medical event – with men being excluded from the birth chamber. Midwives were certainly professionals, but the great majority of people (again, peasants) could still afford their services.

There were also straight up apothecaries who were sort of like modern day chemists/pharmacists who made drugs and medicines. By the thirteenth century they had their own guilds, and they often worked alongside other medical practitioners in order to establish what drugs should be made or  

There were, of course, also dedicated physicians in the medieval period. There were several schools that taught medicine, including the much-celebrated Salerno, and later Montpellier, which is still in operation.

These institutions trained doctors including the famous Rogerius who wrote a killer book called The Practice of Surgery (Practica Chirurgiae) round about 1180, and also came up with the term ‘lupus’ and Giles de Corbeil who wrote a series of influential medical poems on the urinary tract and pulsology. The university system was making some pretty good advances in medicine, if slowly. People started doing more work with human dissection and learned more about anatomy. (Fun fact – high medieval Europe did not totally ban human dissection, but Pagan Rome did. Bring that up when people say the medieval period was backwards.)

The medical schools were drivers of medical thought and research and the people who trained in them often ended up working for the elite. You had to go to school for years to be licensed, and it wasn’t cheap, so you charged.

That’s where the trouble started.

After the Black Death showed up, people were not too enthused about medical practitioners. If they knew so much, why couldn’t they stop the plague?

 People began cracking down on non-licensed medical practitioners. If these people were actually skilled in terms of medicine then for real, why TF was everyone dying on the regular? Soon laws began to propagate stating that only licensed, i.e. university educated physicians could practice medicine. This fucked shit up.

Suddenly a lot of people who had been offering health care services couldn’t. The barber who pulled out your rotten teeth? Not licensed. Apothecaries who knew everything about how to create drugs? Part of a guild that learned through apprenticeship, not university. The monks who had killer medical libraries, actual running hospitals, and gardens full of medicinal herbs at their disposal? Only educated in the cloister.

It was even worse for women who could not go to university. In the medieval period all students had to take holy orders in order to join university, meaning that they were clergy members, if only for their time in school. Women couldn’t do that. That meant that there was no legal way for midwives to practice, despite the fact that only women were supposed to be involved in the birth of children.

So the ranks of people who could legally provide medical care suddenly dropped. Meanwhile, the only people who could legally provide it needed to see that cash money in order to provide medical care because they made a huge investment of time and money to get where they were. 

In some instances, where you lived also determined whether or not you could get medical care. A trained physician would want to stay where the greatest number of potential (wealthy) clients lived. They, therefore, tended to stay in cities, or revolve around courts where their educational investments paid off. No one was going out to the country side to see to the peasants, you feel me? Moreover, the peasants couldn’t drag themselves off to a monastery for help when they got sick anymore, because monks weren’t supposed to be practicing medicine. There just wasn’t anywhere to go for help. By the early modern period, then, the poor had been stripped of a lot of the options they could exercise before.

All of this helped to create the system that America is experiencing today. Healthcare became a luxury – something that the rich elite had recourse to, and which everyone else had to do without.  It is also a hugely modern ‘system’. No one is compelled by their religion to take care of the sick, despite the fact that America loves to call itself a Christian country. We compel bright young people who want to make money to go to med school, because there is a huge financial incentive. Being a medical doctor gets you paid. We do not tell them they have a responsibility to treat the sick when they are trained.

This health care system also routinely marginalises people who provide medical care but are not physicians, in particular those who are providing medical care in one of the traditionally ‘feminine’ roles. Nurses and midwives have much much more patient contact than doctors do, but are paid nowhere near as much. Hell, in America you might be paying out the nose for medical care and only ever see a nurse practitioner anyway, such are the vagaries of for-profit healthcare. So the nurse-practitioner ain’t getting paid, but you are still paying, and somehow all of this is fine and good.

None of this is to say that medical practitioners shouldn’t be paid for their services.  It’s a hard job. You have to learn a lot. In the UK we really treat our junior doctors terribly and they deserve so much more. In the medieval period people still managed to treat people at all levels of society and still make a good living. The people who could afford to give away free health care in the medieval period (monks) had really comfortable life styles. The lower-level practitioners like barbers and midwives made their living on volume. There were options for patients and practitioners to enhance their quality of life.

Overall, then, while medicine has moved on from the medieval period and is much more effective – the healthcare options that many people in America have are actually much worse in comparison to what was available seven hundred years ago.

Perhaps even more distressing for enthusiasts of using ‘medieval’ to mean bad (which you should never do), is that America is a less caring society than Europe in the year 1300. Medieval Europeans were subject to strict class systems, many were unfree, and most lived lives of grinding poverty and work. Most people weren’t allowed to move down the road if they wanted to - but they were still considered deserving of health care.

Tell me one more time who the barbarians are.

#medieval #history of medicine #health care #doctors

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 58 - NJD - The Room

Yea, I guess there still in the race even if it is a distant third. The race for the final wildcard spot has felt… hopeless at times. At some point in that game against the Rangers something snapped in me. You can talk yourself into a lot of things in life: putting off the laundry for too long, being lazy on your car registration until the Cop pulls you over, buying a Brian Gionta jersey that won’t even fit you. I was still able to talk myself into the Sabres making the playoffs before Friday night. I’m not so sure anymore. Sure, as of the posting of this blog Buffalo is a full five points back on first team out Carolina while Philadelphia is now breathing down their necks dead even in points while the Sabres have a game in hand. There is a scenario that could unfold here where the Hurricanes make the playoffs and the Flyers are the first team out. I mean Pittsburgh missing the playoffs would be fun but that’s like ordering a garbage plate and getting just the pasta salad: yeah, this isn’t bad, but the nature of this situation had me believing I would get quite a bit more. Yeah, our expectations were inflated by November but I’m not relitigating that again and I think all reasonable observers were placing the Sabres on the bubble back in September. We’re still on that bubble but who would have thought bubbles hurt so much to sit on? Luckily the Playoff Trash talk is out of the way for the Devils because I really don’t have the heart for that. I turned this game off after the Reinhart goal. Yeah, after it because I felt that hopeless. My dad messaged me because we have our cute little Sabres chat with my brother and he, perhaps for not knowing hockey so well (he’s more of a football guy), thought a one goal deficit wasn’t too much to overcome. He messaged me that in the third period and shortly thereafter admitted himself it was time to turn the game off. Get someone in your life who knows when to turn it off.

So, I know last game I said I wasn’t going to do the goal for goal recap and ended up doing it. I mean it for real this time: I just don’t have a recap in me. I was at the last game against the Devils and it wasn’t shit: in fact, Buffalo won 5-1 in a game that kind of felt liberating after the stretch of games before it. Buffalo lost 4-1 tonight and it looked like a different team. Sam Reinhart scored the one Sabres goal in this game, it was a nice rebound tap in when the game was still 2-1. I don’t feel the need to recap any of the Devils goals because they are folks I don’t follow regularly on a team that not only will not be a threat if the Sabres do pull a playoff berth out of their asses, but are likely one of the next teams to be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs after the Senators led the way into that abyss earlier this week. How long until the Sabres join those sad ranks? As recently as last week I thought this group of guys could pull off a tight race going into March and here we are with 24 games left and they don’t even look like they want it anymore. Yeah, once again a lot of stuff was said in the locker room after this game and I will get to that but what is it? What is the thing in the room that is holding them back? They lost to a Cory Schneider in this game who hadn’t won a game in a calendar year up until recently! I could rationalize the recent loss to Winnipeg as a tight game lost by inches. This one looked like a surrender. How is the team that led the whole league in November, however much that was obviously an aberration, coming out in a playoff race game like this? Something isn’t right in the room and apparently this is the only recourse for guys like me who don’t want to throw Jack Eichel and Rasmus Dahlin under the bus. It’s either there is something wrong in the room or we need to discuss our brightest stars not living up to potential. The former is the solution we opted for after last season’s utter shitshow. Botterill shipped Ryan O’Reilly out and if you’re decrying that trade now, you’re missing the forest for the trees. The latter option is too depressing to contemplate when we’re going on eight years without Sabres playoff hockey.

Is Jason Botterill going to do anything about this state of affairs? You know I’m not convinced the playoffs was ever the internal goal for this season. Every professional organization has the external goal which is fixed squarely on winning games, making the playoffs and winning a Stanley Cup. The internal goal is the real shit you get from the insiders like Friedman and McKenzie. We all pegged this team as a bubble team. Did Jason Botterill and the Front Office decide they were going to get Reinhart signed, then Skinner and make minor moves at the Trade Deadline and continue to build at the Draft and over the summer? The lack of movement at this awful moment seems to suggest that and the deadline a week from tomorrow stands to prove it. Yeah, Botts could make a splash and signal he wants this group to make the playoffs now. Frankly I’m desperate for that outcome to the point of not feeling the need to spell out exactly which trades I’m ok with and which ones I’m not. This ship looks to be going down right now but it isn’t below the waterline yet. And oh yes, I am past the point of bandying about around Phil Housley and his strategic decisions. We got our Scandella-less game and you see how well that went! I’m out of answers on the ice but the scarier part is that I am running out of answers in the Front Office now too. Was Housley’s comments about only having what the GM gave him to work with merry conservation starters over wings and Pearl Street? I’m not saying the GM needs to act in spite in response to those comments but what’s going on? What is going on? I really lead myself to believe we were in a hot new smart organization after the wild offseason last year and now I’m not so sure about that either. The jury is still out on that but in terms of the shot at a playoff spot I feel like the deliberations may be coming to an end.

But it isn’t over yet! Let’s get to our handsome ice soldiers in the locker room! What consolation do they have for us? Phil Housley said: “We’re still in this race.” I am not wasting my time dissecting the “we” and “in this race” right now with him. At this point we’re running about a 50/50 chance he’s completely lost the room morale wise. Us fans always make mountains out of mole hills but let’s look and listen to how the players felt. Sam Reinhart, visibly frustrated at being asked “…are you guys just about toast?” responded saying “we in the room don’t feel like we’re out of it at all.” It seems like that question came from media man Donald Trump warned you about Mike Harrington with the News, so I’ll let Samson off on that one. Zach Bogosian, okay yeah why not, let’s go to Zach Bogosian who responds to similar questioning about what makes him think this team can put together a few wins going forward here with: “It’s because of all the guys in this room here. I believe in them.” Okay, even if they’re losing faith in the coach if they can work together as a team that’s something, right? Fuck if I know. If their united there in the room, God bless them: I hope it results in more than just a festive golf trip in April. Captain Jack? I’m sure someone got words from him but I know he’s taking this hard so I’ll sit back and see if he’s going to hoist this group out of it. I won’t be grilling him about why he’s not scoring at the same clip he was in the middle of December. I’m sure he’s lifting twice as hard because of this slump. Three times as hard for the team itself.

There are no matchups over the next two weeks that inspire much of any confidence. If you are expecting to count potential W’s down the stretch here just trust me and don’t for your own mental health. I think we’re past that point now. These guys need to string 3 to 5 wins together now to even look like competitors for that last spot so take it easy now. Take solace in the fact that this less-than-hopeful calculus is happening after Valentine’s Day this season and not before Thanksgiving. There’s progress right there even if it’s not the advancement we wanted. Hey, the Rochester Americans are holding onto a division lead and stand to capture that title for the first time this decade. I’m enjoying that and you can look for this month’s Amerks Angle in the near future celebrating that. The Americans rough stretches last for three maybe four games. You can comfortably speculate about playoff matchups with them and if that’s what you’re looking for I recommend it over looking for rays of lights right now with the Sabres. Like, share and comment and the internet algorithms that curate our lives will cause us to meet again soon for that good time. In the meantime, I think we can take in trade deadline rumors with a not completely unrealistic hope that something may develop to change what we’re going through right now on this crazy roller coaster that is Sabres fandom. Let’s Go Buffalo.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I can’t believe I got this done tonight. It’s better than starting a Monday off this way, eh?

#buffalo sabres #hockey #nhl #blog

[nolimitsongrace]

July 21: Spiritual Warfare of a Different Kind

Spiritual Warfare of a Different KindJuly 21, 2020

Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. — Revelation 2:16

Today the Church is facing a crisis of morals. More and more, society has no stomach for spiritual or moral absolutes. Pastors and spiritual leaders who decide to “take a stand” and preach the Gospel in its pure, unadulterated form are derided as irrelevant and intolerant hate-mongers.

The public reaction to biblical truth is often so adverse that many pastors are hesitant to take strong positions on issues of morality, even though these truths are clearly stated in the Word of God. Rather than answer difficult moral questions, they are tempted to dodge the questions and skirt around the issues in an attempt to avoid conflict.

*[If you started reading this from your email, begin reading here.]

This same issue plagued the Early Church nearly 2,000 years ago. Toward the close of the First Century AD, there was a group of spiritual leaders who intentionally “watered down” the message of the Gospel to make it less demanding and more accommodating to other points of view. Because the culture couldn’t stomach the idea of a strict exclusionary faith that claimed to be above all others, this group of spiritual leaders attempted to entice Christians to make their faith more inclusive of everyone else’s beliefs.

The problem grew so rampant at the close of the First Century AD that Christ issued a strong rebuke to the people who were spreading this toxic doctrine when He supernaturally appeared to the apostle John. Addressing these erring spiritual leaders, Jesus sternly warned, “Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth” (Revelation 2:16).

The word “fight” is in this verse is the Greek word polemos, a well-known Greek word that describes a full-scale battle that is fought until victory is achieved. This emphatically means that Christ is not willing to surrender His Church to anyone, and He will fight for His Church until it is solidly back in His hands. He refused to stand idly by and let these individuals corrupt His Church. If errant spiritual leaders did not repent of their active or passive tolerance of this false teaching, Christ would rise up against them with His mighty sword.

Christ’s warning to the Early Church applies to the Church in all ages, and it is clear to see why His words are especially relevant to believers today. Although there are many God-fearing pastors, preachers, and spiritual leaders in the modern Christian community, a host of spiritual leaders are replicating the grave errors made by errant leaders in the First Century. In pulpits and congregations around the world, truth is being watered down and altered to reflect the inclusive values of a changing culture. In many congregations, pure, sound doctrine has been completely replaced by soft, “feel-good” messages, and the majority of people in the pews are ignorant of even the most elementary tenets of the faith.

Despite their ability to communicate masterfully, many modern-day ministers lack a basic education in fundamental Bible principles or have simply chosen to avoid teaching sound doctrine in favor of more popular motivational messages. To be direct, it appears that some have been duped into taking a politically correct position on many biblical truths instead of declaring truth — because the truth would put them on a collision course with the society that surrounds them.

This drift away from the Bible has created a doctrinal vacuum in the Church — a void currently being filled with dynamic business ideas, financial advice, and motivational messages instead of the Word of God that the Holy Spirit is bound to honor with signs and wonders. It is certainly true that some of the motivational messages delivered from the pulpit are beneficial in people’s lives, but this help is temporary and can often be found in a book by some psychological guru. When everything is said and done, only the Bible has the power to permanently transform.

Unfortunately, what we currently see and feel is only the beginning of the rift that is developing within the Church world. Unless a major revival occurs, this rift will only grow deeper and wider. If repentance doesn’t melt the hearts of people throughout the Church world, it will eventually seem like there are three churches:

A Church that holds fast to the truth and faces the brunt of opposition because it refuses to bend.

A Church in the middle trying to “ride the fence” through accommodation in order to avoid persecution and societal rejection (see Revelation 2:12-17).

A lukewarm, “Laodicean-like” Church (see Revelation 3:14-22) that has allowed compromise to run its full course, stripping it completely of the power of God and leaving Jesus standing on the outside.

It is not too late for the Body of Christ to make a recovery. In fact, it is never too late as long as there are believers who are willing to hear and hearken to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church. However, in order for the Church to receive the divine power it needs for correction, change, and restoration, it must undergo a transformation from the highest to its lowest levels.

The Bible makes it clear that if spiritual leaders refuse to take a stand for truth in these turbulent times, Christ will fight against them with His mighty sword. This is a battle that they cannot win. Absolutely no one may mitigate the truth of the Gospel — even for the purpose of purchasing peace with the world around them. The only true recourse is to surrender to the Holy Spirit and do what is right, even if it is wrong in the eyes of the world.

Early believers endured bullying, ridicule, imprisonment, and were even put to death because they refused to conform to the world that surrounded them on all sides. Although some believers collapsed under this pressure, many steadfastly resisted this coercion to conform and held fast to their faith. God has always had His remnant — those who will not bow to external pressures. In these last times God will have that remnant once again, and those who refuse to fear or to compromise their faith in Jesus Christ will experience previously unknown levels of the power of God as a result of their commitment to stand by truth.

I realize this is a very different type of Sparkling Gem, but I felt it necessary to write and memorialize what I believe are the greatest struggles facing the modern Church. I encourage you to stay faithful in praying for those believers and spiritual leaders who refuse to succumb to the pressures of the age and stand by absolute, biblical truth, regardless of what the world around them dictates. Why not make a fresh consecration to the Lord today that you will always be counted among that faithful number? Make a quality, immutable decision for your own walk with God: “From this moment forward, there’s no fence left to ride! Compromise in my commitment to Jesus is NOT an option!”

MY PRAYER FOR TODAY

Dear Father, I ask You to help me understand the relevance of this word I’ve read today. I pray that You will strengthen the present leadership of the Body of Christ to stand for the absolute truths of God’s Word even if that stance places them in direct opposition to the world. I ask You to raise up strong leaders in the Christian community who will lead the way and courageously stand for truth, regardless of the price that must be paid. I pray for my pastor and for other spiritual leaders. Father, I ask You to help them hear what the Spirit is saying and grant them boldness to call the Church to a time of holiness and separation, even if it is opposed to the voice of the world around them.

I pray this in Jesus’ name!

MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY

I boldly confess that I will stand by the truth of God’s Word, regardless of what the world around me tries to dictate as morally right or wrong. A day will soon come when we will all stand before Christ’s high court of reckoning and give account for how we upheld truth or how we forfeited it to accommodate the world around us. I have made my decision! Regardless of what the world says or what names it calls me, I am going to stand by the Christian values that have guided the Church for 2,000 years. Truth has not suddenly changed — it is society that has changed. I am determined to stand by biblical truth regardless of the price I must pay.

I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO CONSIDER

Today’s television programs often depict homosexuality as the norm. Can you think of other examples in modern society where biblical truths are undermined and exchanged with a new code of ethics?

As a Christian do you believe you should merely go with the flow of what’s happening, or is it your responsibility to uphold the absolute truth of the Gospel?

If it personally costs you to take a strong moral stance that is in line with God’s Word, are you willing to pay that price? How far are you willing to go in your commitment to biblical truth?

[rafeegworld]

Pros and Cons of Gig-Based Cleaners

Gig-Based Cleaners

These are individual cleaning professionals who find work through sharing economy platforms such as Handy and TaskRabbit. Some gig-based cleaners also operate their own cleaning businesses and use these platforms to find additional clients. In either case, the platform acts as an intermediary in the transaction; you pay the platform, which then takes a cut and passes the rest on to the worker.

Gig-based cleaners are cheaper than full-service companies and may be easier to schedule. However, they’re not ideal for customers with complex needs or those seeking long-term relationships with their cleaners.

Cost of Gig-Based Cleaners

Gig-based cleaners generally cost less per hour than full-service cleaners. However, unless you request otherwise, gig-based cleaners usually work solo, lengthening the time required to complete the task.

I surveyed pricing on Handy and TaskRabbit. Handy seemed better-equipped to handle regular cleaning requests, charging $25 per hour guaranteed for biweekly cleanings. TaskRabbit’s pricing was more variable since its workers – or “taskers” – set their own rates. In Minneapolis, cleaners started at about $25 per hour, but better-rated taskers charged upwards of $40 per hour.

Pros of Gig-Based Cleaners

Lower Cost Than Cleaning Companies. If cost control is your top priority, you’ll want to limit your search to independent and gig-based cleaners.

Scheduling May Be More Flexible. Gig economy platforms have vast networks of capable service providers, particularly in major metro areas. If you live in an area with a high density of eligible workers, you’ll be able to schedule cleanings almost at will, as long as you don’t mind a different person each time.

Fully Insured. Reputable gig platforms provide liability insurance, usually up to $1 million, at no cost to the customer. This gives crucial peace of mind to homeowners reticent to file insurance claims and renters without adequate liability insurance coverage.

Cons of Gig-Based Cleaners

Quality and Consistency May Suffer. Though workers who develop a pattern of poor reviews or customer complaints will eventually lose platform privileges, gig platforms nevertheless have lots of subpar service providers. When you’re welcoming a different cleaner into your home every time, quality is something of a crapshoot.

Long-Term Relationships May Be Harder to Form. This is another unwelcome byproduct of using a different cleaning person every time. If you’re looking for a reliable cleaner who knows your home cold, a full-service company might be a better choice.

May Not Be Ideal for Larger Residences or Bespoke Needs. Slower, less efficient gig-based cleaners are not ideal for big houses or custom cleaning needs. You’ll have better luck with independent cleaners with whom you’ve formed long-term relationships or full-service companies that guarantee their work.

How to Find the Right Fit for Less

Keep these pointers in mind as you research and vet home cleaning services.

1. Get Multiple Quotes

Regular home cleaning is a significant investment. At $150 per visit, 26 biweekly cleanings cost $3,900 per year. For most families, even a $200 one-off cleaning is a substantial expense.

In other words, hiring a third party to clean your house is not something to be done lightly. And, unless you’re preparing to stage your home in preparation for a scheduled open house or hosting a last-minute gathering, it’s not something that requires a snap decision. Take your time and request as many cleaning quotes as you need to make an informed decision. Get every estimate, including the details of what is and isn’t included, in writing.

Every full-service company we approached offered free in-house estimates. Independent and gig-based providers often offer estimates sight unseen. Unless cost control is paramount, don’t simply focus on the final cost; also pay attention to what’s included, the time needed, and scheduling flexibility.

2. Always Do a Trial Run

Before entering into a recurring arrangement with a third-party home cleaner, make sure they’re as good as they say. If you have the luxury of waiting a month or longer to finalize the agreement, purchase one-time cleanings from each of your finalists at least two weeks apart to give your house time to lapse back into a disorderly state.

3. Check References

Always ask prospective cleaners for references and follow up with as many as possible. Use as many third-party resources – such as Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, and HomeAdvisor – as you can to find unbiased reviews or references. Talking only to references provided by the cleaner may give you an inaccurate picture of their capabilities.

4. Don’t Overestimate Your Cleaning Needs

Before beginning your research in earnest, think carefully about how much cleaning your home actually needs.

If you don’t have kids or pets and you’re good about sequestering disorder in, say, a mudroom or entryway, you might have little trouble keeping pace with your cleaning needs on your own or with quarterly or semi-annual cleanings.

Even if your house needs regular professional attention, don’t overestimate its needs. A monthly cleaning might have the same effect as a biweekly cleaning, and at roughly half the cost.

Of course, your personal cleanliness preferences play a role here too. If you demand spotlessness, you might be willing to pay more for more frequent cleanings or add-on services.

5. Don’t Opt Into More Add-Ons Than You Need

Be careful with those add-ons. Whether you’re willing to pay for services not included in a basic cleaning depends on your schedule and tolerance for DIY cleaning. My wife and I put off scrubbing our refrigerator for months (gross, I know) before finally springing for a $25 deep clean, but we’re pretty attentive to dusting around displays the professional crew won’t touch. We also clean our unfinished basement semi-regularly, cutting our per-visit cost by roughly one-third.

6. Ask About Fees

Ask prospective cleaners, or pore over their contracts, for specifics about their fees. Cleaners that require long-term contracts may build in hefty cancellation fees. Many independent and full-service cleaners charge credit card processing fees; we recently switched from credit card billing to direct debit because the company increased its processing fee above our cash back credit card’s rate of return.

7. Negotiate & Customize Your Cleaning Package

You’ll have better luck negotiating with independent cleaners, but even full-service firms may be willing to give a little for a stable, long-term arrangement.

If you don’t need your home’s entire lived-in area cleaned every time, structure your proposed package around the rooms you do want cleaned – say, both bathrooms, both active bedrooms, and the living room and kitchen, skipping the basement, bonus room, and spare bedroom. Most cleaners are happy to customize pricing by room count; even if they aren’t, fewer rooms mean less time cleaning, which could help your overall cost.

8. Factor In Health & Environmental Impacts

If using health- or eco-friendly cleaning products is important to you, you’ll pay a premium for it, as a visit to your local home improvement store’s green cleaning products shelf will confirm. Ask prospective cleaners about their approach to the inevitable health and environmental impacts of home cleaning. If they offer eco- and non-eco-friendly cleaning options, price out both.

9. Confirm Insurance Coverage

Ask prospective cleaners to provide the name of their insurance provider, policy details, and coverages. Then, contact the insurance company to confirm that this information is accurate. Make sure your cleaner is “bonded” as well. This type of coverage covers theft in the home, a common problem.

If a prospective cleaner isn’t willing to divulge insurance details or reveals that they’re not insured at all, avoid using them. Should one of their workers suffer an injury or cause damage in your house, you’ll want to make sure you’re covered without having to go through your own home insurance provider, which is likely to raise your premiums after you file a claim.

10. Ask for a Guarantee

Most full-service cleaning companies offer guarantees of some sort, but don’t enter into any agreements without making clear exactly what the provider’s guarantee covers. Blanket guarantees that aren’t open to subjective interpretation – such as “100% satisfaction guaranteed or your money back” – are best. You want to have the upper hand, and ensure adequate reimbursement, if and when you demand recourse.

11. Avoid Long-Term Contracts

The home cleaning industry is competitive enough that there’s no need to work with a cleaning company or independent cleaner that locks their customers into long-term contracts. We have an open-ended arrangement with our current cleaning company. We can cancel at any time with no penalty or cancel individual cleanings without affecting future visits.

12. Opt Into Auto-Pay

Many cleaning companies offer auto-pay discounts. Even if yours doesn’t, you’ll avoid late payment fees and interest when you opt into an auto-pay arrangement – assuming you keep enough money in your account to cover the recurring charge.

13. Look for Promotions

In competitive markets, full-service cleaning companies offer an array of promotions, such as package deals, discounts, and bonuses. We’ve already touched on frequency discounts, which are almost universal. Other types of deals include:

Package Deals. Cleaning companies may cut customers a break – for example, 10 cleanings for the price of 9 – when they pay for a multi-cleaning package up front.

Partner Discounts. Some cleaning companies partner with larger employers to offer employee discounts. The company we ultimately chose offered a generous discount for employees of my wife’s organization, for instance.

Referral Bonuses. Some cleaning companies run referral programs that pay existing customers for successful new-business referrals. In a cursory search, I found per-referral bonuses as high as $50, a significant discount to the cost of a single cleaning visit.

14. Clean Up Before the Cleaners Come

Last, but not least, once you’ve established a relationship with a solo or corporate cleaner, remember to tidy up the house before each visit. When you declutter your living space in advance of your cleaning team’s arrival, it makes their job more efficient.

Even if you’re charged a flat rate and don’t accrue direct financial benefit from quicker work, your team is likely to be more thorough with minimal clutter in the way. We’re far happier with the results when we take 15 to 30 minutes to clean up our most heavily trafficked rooms the night before our cleaning company comes.

[baehkhun]

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[easyloans7432-blog]

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There’s a lot more to his downfall than just twitter. stock market rises and falls doesn’t it? And didn’t Obama have to deal with a recession caused by banks handing out fraudulent real estate loans? Let’s see trump deal with a recession before comparing

— Trey Hunter (@TreyHunter87) September 14, 2018

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[anthonycamp0s]

How to get free leads to my local business

https://nexxusdesigns.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-to-get-free-leads-to-my-local.html https://www.nexxusdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/local-business-marketing-in-texas-1024x294.jpg

Are you a home services provider or home improvement contractor that is looking for a solution to generating leads online? Have you either considered or have signed up with Homeadvisor or Angies List in hopes of getting more leads for your sales team? Find out why this is NOT the best option for your local home services business.

Introduction: Overview This information can be useful for both consumers and home professionals. These types of online marketing companies are the direct (online) competitors of the actual contractors you are trying to hire for a home project. The monetary interest of the marketing company (HA & Angies) will always come first, over and above the interest of you the consumer or the contractors that are signed up with them.

These popular online lead generation services are a tempting solution to getting more business, especially for a new & growing company, but are they really worth it and are you being robbed by these online competitors? In this article we take a deep dive into the world of online lead generation services, their tactics, gimmicks, and deceitful practices. If you are a business we cover why and HOW to be the source of your own online lead generation, and we cover WHY consumers should be aware of these types of services.

Our goal will be to shed light on the truths & facts, the do’s & dont’s of these services, and also how you as a local business owner can take charge, spend less on advertising while generating more new online leads – all by yourself!

Homeowners may take advantage of this article and gain insight into the troubling process both for you AND the 10+ service providers who are all hungry for the same thing, your lead. It’s like placing a piece of meat in a wrestling ring and releasing 10 lions to fight over it, and the lead is the meat.

Generating Leads Online:

As a marketing company ourselves we know very well the pain and struggle of generating new leads on a consistent basis from online & other sources. We are not much different than most home improvement companies who are trying to figure out how to take more sales shares in their local markets, although we do have a bit more knowledge on the subject of online marketing and that’s why we are who we are.

So, you have a local business and you provide a quality service, right? Good, well for the purpose of this article we will focus on home service & improvement providers who have reservations and concerns about using services like Homeadvisor, Angies list, Thumbtack and the like – and your reservations will be vetted below, we are sharing all the details!

If you own a local home service business chances are that your company CAN and will take on more new business and chances are that you ARE looking to grow your business. One of the absolute BEST returns on your marketing budget are leads from online, but only if done correctly!

As a business, in terms of getting new sales from online sources, you do NOT have to pay (much) to generate the leads. Part of what we do is provide training to business owners on how to find ways to create online & digital inbound lead generation systems. If you are a business owner you need to understand the marketing resources that you have at your disposal within your current business structure. Knowing these things will also help you to continuously develop new & unique inbound marketing strategies that drive new sales without spending all of your money and loosing all of your hair.

Homeadvisor & Angies list – Consumers & Contractors Beware

Why would you pay hard earned money on a lead that was simply window shopping or could not afford the service at the time you had to PAY for their information!? A better solution would be to use the resources in your business to create online lead funnels that can keep leads from going cold without shoveling out the dough.

Online Competitors are NOT who you think: Who are your online competitors? If you answered the actual local businesses that show up on a Google search, you might be halfway right. The other half (and the bigger half) are not even real companies, they are marketing entities that intend to sell you leads that you could have generated yourself!

In the real world (that is the offline world) you can name on 2 hands your direct competitors easily, but what most business owners fail to include or realize is that online lead generation services like Home-advisor are your worst and most aggressive competition.

In the online world the competition landscape is a bit different than say word of mouth referrals. There are marketing companies out there that have large budgets and smart people who intend to STEAL YOUR LEADS away and resell them to you, and your direct competition!

The Online Online Lead Gen Concept:

A few smart people have the great idea of capitalizing on the ignorance of both the consumers looking for local home services and the professionals who provide them. The key factor of their success is that you the business owner do not know how to or have had trouble making a solid online brand awareness, ranking to the top of search results, or having a good inbound sales strategy that is working or if you are a new business with limited advertising looking to get more sales.

Since most people go into business for the things that they know best it means that most business owners are NOT marketing experts, or else that’s what you would be in business for, right!? This is the key factor that online lead generation services capitalize on while facing it a certain way to the people looking for your services.

Wiki Info: Formerly: ServiceMagic (1998–2012) Type: Subsidiary Industry: Local homeowner services Founded: December 1998 Founder: Rodney Rice, Michael Beaudoin Headquarters: Golden, Colorado Key people: Chris Terrill, CEO Services: Home improvement marketplace Number of employees: 2,000 Info Cited from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomeAdvisor

In recent years HA has been involved with many lawsuits, and one in particular a class action. Even before the most recent developments they had to change their name from Service Magic due to public backlash on their practices. Complaints abound from both sides, contractors & homeowners alike. Stories of having unqualified contractors show up and never finish work which were companies as provided by Home advisor have been featured in the news.

Here are some testimonials for Homeadvisor services

Glassdoor employee review of homeadvisor 

Sitejabber consumer reviews of homeadvisor

Home-Advisor for Contractors

If you are not already a paying member there are 3 ways HA might contact a business owner to get them on-board.

Cold sales call.

Cold sales email stating they have leads in your area.

Spoofing – Pretend that they are the lead, and when you call back it’s the same sales rep that has been trying to call or email you by using their lead system, impersonating an email or phone call. (BTW – Yelp ha been known to do this also.)

Pricing: HA will charge somewhere between $200 – $350 annually for on-boarding of a new business. They say this charge takes care of the business profile, account, phone number forwarding, links on other websites, and the background check.

Contractors are charged thereafter per lead at a rate varying from $10 – $100+ depending on whatever they want to charge whenever they want. Charges are applied to contractors at the end of every week, usually Friday and processed by the following Monday. Reasons & information for the pricing structures can be found on their website.

The Leads: There have been numerous reports that the leads delivered to contractors are poor and unqualified, therefore not worth the money paid for them. Even though there are some qualified leads and ready-to-buy consumers using the service the vast majority of leads are window shopping, confused, and not ready to buy.

HA will also promote itself as a home owners resource network, providing information and things like cost calculators. In many cases this can cause confusion with consumers who are just in the research & discovery part of their buying journey.

Contractors have reported to us that in most cases the lead has been disseminated to over 4 and more other contractors, and as it turns out the lead was not ready to buy. Sadly, all of the contractors who were sent that very same lead are charged the going rate with futile recourse. In other cases business owners have reported that the same lead from a month ago will pop back into their dashboard and after contacting the lead (again) they state never have resubmitting the request.

Meanwhile, this poor person’s email and basic information has been sold by HA to other vendors & marketing channels which will innundate them with solicitation emails and even annoying phone calls. There is no doubt that some of the people who use HA to find local pros are serious about their inquiry, but few. As a local contractor you can generate these leads yourself, you don’t need to rely on a questionable service.

Concerns: Have you searched for your business online for the keywords that you are trying to rank for in the local area and you see that these big “pay to play” websites are ranking over your website? It is concerning & frustrating because when you see a website like HA (a marketing company) ranking for in searches for the services that you provide in your local area you know that isn’t a real business and it’s a direct link to all of your competitors.

If a consumer clicks on one of those websites and you are not listed and paying them you may not get the lead. You know that most of the leads you would have to pay for are not worth paying such a price for because of their early stage in the buying process, and for the fact that the competition is so steep because of the nature of this model.

These online lead generation marketing companies have been known to market to consumers using tv commercials, search engine ads, organic search rankings, partnerships, acquisitions, and networking to promote a branding image such that if the consumer is to see their ad when searching for a home service they are more inclined to click on it over your own. As a business owner who needs to generate more leads from online sources what can be done, how can you compete?

A few videos from actual contractors experiences:

Solutions & Alternatives: Lead Gen

Are you considering signing up for Home-advisor or other pay per lead services to help grow your business? If you are still considering the decision we can help, but if you have already signed up we can help you transition out of it.

Advice for new companies: If your business has limited funds / small marketing budget do not even think about signing up for these services, they will drain your revolving capital faster than anything! However, if you have a respectable marketing budget and need to get in front of possible buyers fast, you could sign up with one or two and use them for the short term while you develop some of the strategies we will mention below.

We think that every business should be their own content creation and syndication machine. With the resources available like smartphones, tablets, cameras, YouTube, computers, etc there is no reason why you should not be able to create a new piece of sales material every day.

As mentioned in previous posts, being present at the very top of the sales funnel does not have to drain your funds without return like many of these types of PPL services.

Offline Marketing Strategies

Your business can take advantage of cost effective print marketing to increase local awareness. Everything from the good ole networking & hand-outs, flyers, and of course custom business cards. Direct mailing is a great way to target a specific demographic or local area that you know would use your services. By creating a compelling visual postcard you can generate warm local leads on a budget that you can afford.

A great source for getting custom direct mail postcards for your business is: Postcard Mania

Online Marketing Strategies

The whole world is online and plugged in, and you know that the majority of EVERYONE searches for something online and probably does not own an actual phone book. By now we know all of that, so how do we capture our piece of this online searching activity?

Know your business Before creating or improving your business for better online lead generation you need to know yourself and your business inside & out. You need to be able to tell a compelling business story while promoting what you do. Identify why you are in business and how to best promote yourself by asking: what are your advantages, what benefits will your customers receive, what problems are you solving and how do you make it easy?

Website (Base Camp)

The best way to become the authority in your market is to produce helpful content that caters to your potential clients questions and concerns or objections on a well designed & optimized website. All of this content can be created in different ways but must be under one roof. This is why your business website is so important, it is where you need to send leads to be converted, and it needs to be the main source in which they found you.

Content Pages & Blog posts

Videos

Brochures

PDFs

Low risk offers

Content Syndication:

As you create the content at Base Camp (your website and blog) you will need to syndicate this content to your audience. First create the content that is good, better than the competitor’s, then share that content around to the multimedia channels that might find it interesting or add value.

Social Presence

Getting someone to know about your website might take some offline and online actions. There are some places online where you can direct people to your main website in hopes of getting a sale. Find out where your buying audience is hanging out on social media and leverage a business profile on those platforms to engage with them and make them aware of your business.

Lead Nurturing

As part of the sales funnel leads begin as cold and warm up to becoming hot to make a purchase. While the lead is “cold” you may need marketing assets that help them through this part of the process in a more passive way. By using the blog on your website you can put together compelling bits of information that is helpful but not pressuring to make a purchase.

Email & Follow up systems

Having a way to capture a lead email on your website or sales page is one way that you can followup in a passive manner. If a lead submits their email for low risk offer of good information then you can place them into the respective email campaign to provide them with more related content.

A great way to get an email campaign setup is through: Mail Chimp

This was simply an overview of the things you can do to create an inbound online marketing system for your local business. We encourage you to visit other pages on our site as it relates to you, and if you still have questions just send us an email.

Paying for services like Home advisor can cost you an arm and a leg which is no good for a new business that is trying to break into a local market. We want to provide you with a real sustainable way to keep leads flowing in without spending all of your operating capital in the process.

Our company focuses on training business owners on how to take over their local marketing and how to quit paying those expensive lead gen companies for poor service. If you have found this article because you are a home service provider struggling with getting new business online we hope this has helped. This is not a comprehensive guide, but we will add more information over time.

The post How to get free leads to my local business appeared first on Nexxus Designs & Marketing.

nexxusdesigns Article Source

Nexxus Digital Media Designs

Nexxus Designs

#Nexxus Designs Blog

[nexxusdesigns]

How to get online leads to my local business

Are you a home services provider or home improvement contractor that is looking for a solution to generating leads online? Have you either considered or have signed up with Homeadvisor or Angies List in hopes of getting more leads for your sales team? Find out why this is NOT the best option for your local home services business.

Introduction: Overview This information can be useful for both consumers and home professionals. These types of online marketing companies are the direct (online) competitors of the actual contractors you are trying to hire for a home project. The monetary interest of the marketing company (HA & Angies) will always come first, over and above the interest of you the consumer or the contractors that are signed up with them.

These popular online lead generation services are a tempting solution to getting more business, especially for a new & growing company, but are they really worth it and are you being robbed by these online competitors? In this article we take a deep dive into the world of online lead generation services, their tactics, gimmicks, and deceitful practices. If you are a business we cover why and HOW to be the source of your own online lead generation, and we cover WHY consumers should be aware of these types of services.

Our goal will be to shed light on the truths & facts, the do’s & dont’s of these services, and also how you as a local business owner can take charge, spend less on advertising while generating more new online leads – all by yourself!

Homeowners may take advantage of this article and gain insight into the troubling process both for you AND the 10+ service providers who are all hungry for the same thing, your lead. It’s like placing a piece of meat in a wrestling ring and releasing 10 lions to fight over it, and the lead is the meat.

Generating Leads Online:

As a marketing company ourselves we know very well the pain and struggle of generating new leads on a consistent basis from online & other sources. We are not much different than most home improvement companies who are trying to figure out how to take more sales shares in their local markets, although we do have a bit more knowledge on the subject of online marketing and that’s why we are who we are.

So, you have a local business and you provide a quality service, right? Good, well for the purpose of this article we will focus on home service & improvement providers who have reservations and concerns about using services like Homeadvisor, Angies list, Thumbtack and the like – and your reservations will be vetted below, we are sharing all the details!

If you own a local home service business chances are that your company CAN and will take on more new business and chances are that you ARE looking to grow your business. One of the absolute BEST returns on your marketing budget are leads from online, but only if done correctly!

As a business, in terms of getting new sales from online sources, you do NOT have to pay (much) to generate the leads. Part of what we do is provide training to business owners on how to find ways to create online & digital inbound lead generation systems. If you are a business owner you need to understand the marketing resources that you have at your disposal within your current business structure. Knowing these things will also help you to continuously develop new & unique inbound marketing strategies that drive new sales without spending all of your money and loosing all of your hair.

Homeadvisor & Angies list – Consumers & Contractors Beware

Why would you pay hard earned money on a lead that was simply window shopping or could not afford the service at the time you had to PAY for their information!? A better solution would be to use the resources in your business to create online lead funnels that can keep leads from going cold without shoveling out the dough.

Online Competitors are NOT who you think: Who are your online competitors? If you answered the actual local businesses that show up on a Google search, you might be halfway right. The other half (and the bigger half) are not even real companies, they are marketing entities that intend to sell you leads that you could have generated yourself!

In the real world (that is the offline world) you can name on 2 hands your direct competitors easily, but what most business owners fail to include or realize is that online lead generation services like Home-advisor are your worst and most aggressive competition.

In the online world the competition landscape is a bit different than say word of mouth referrals. There are marketing companies out there that have large budgets and smart people who intend to STEAL YOUR LEADS away and resell them to you, and your direct competition!

The Online Online Lead Gen Concept:

A few smart people have the great idea of capitalizing on the ignorance of both the consumers looking for local home services and the professionals who provide them. The key factor of their success is that you the business owner do not know how to or have had trouble making a solid online brand awareness, ranking to the top of search results, or having a good inbound sales strategy that is working or if you are a new business with limited advertising looking to get more sales.

Since most people go into business for the things that they know best it means that most business owners are NOT marketing experts, or else that’s what you would be in business for, right!? This is the key factor that online lead generation services capitalize on while facing it a certain way to the people looking for your services.

Wiki Info: Formerly: ServiceMagic (1998–2012) Type: Subsidiary Industry: Local homeowner services Founded: December 1998 Founder: Rodney Rice, Michael Beaudoin Headquarters: Golden, Colorado Key people: Chris Terrill, CEO Services: Home improvement marketplace Number of employees: 2,000 Info Cited from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomeAdvisor

In recent years HA has been involved with many lawsuits, and one in particular a class action. Even before the most recent developments they had to change their name from Service Magic due to public backlash on their practices. Complaints abound from both sides, contractors & homeowners alike. Stories of having unqualified contractors show up and never finish work which were companies as provided by Home advisor have been featured in the news.

Here are some testimonials for Homeadvisor services

Glassdoor employee review of homeadvisor 

Sitejabber consumer reviews of homeadvisor

Home-Advisor for Contractors

If you are not already a paying member there are 3 ways HA might contact a business owner to get them on-board.

Cold sales call.

Cold sales email stating they have leads in your area.

Spoofing – Pretend that they are the lead, and when you call back it’s the same sales rep that has been trying to call or email you by using their lead system, impersonating an email or phone call. (BTW – Yelp ha been known to do this also.)

Pricing: HA will charge somewhere between $200 – $350 annually for on-boarding of a new business. They say this charge takes care of the business profile, account, phone number forwarding, links on other websites, and the background check.

Contractors are charged thereafter per lead at a rate varying from $10 – $100+ depending on whatever they want to charge whenever they want. Charges are applied to contractors at the end of every week, usually Friday and processed by the following Monday. Reasons & information for the pricing structures can be found on their website.

The Leads: There have been numerous reports that the leads delivered to contractors are poor and unqualified, therefore not worth the money paid for them. Even though there are some qualified leads and ready-to-buy consumers using the service the vast majority of leads are window shopping, confused, and not ready to buy.

HA will also promote itself as a home owners resource network, providing information and things like cost calculators. In many cases this can cause confusion with consumers who are just in the research & discovery part of their buying journey.

Contractors have reported to us that in most cases the lead has been disseminated to over 4 and more other contractors, and as it turns out the lead was not ready to buy. Sadly, all of the contractors who were sent that very same lead are charged the going rate with futile recourse. In other cases business owners have reported that the same lead from a month ago will pop back into their dashboard and after contacting the lead (again) they state never have resubmitting the request.

Meanwhile, this poor person’s email and basic information has been sold by HA to other vendors & marketing channels which will innundate them with solicitation emails and even annoying phone calls. There is no doubt that some of the people who use HA to find local pros are serious about their inquiry, but few. As a local contractor you can generate these leads yourself, you don’t need to rely on a questionable service.

Concerns: Have you searched for your business online for the keywords that you are trying to rank for in the local area and you see that these big “pay to play” websites are ranking over your website? It is concerning & frustrating because when you see a website like HA (a marketing company) ranking for in searches for the services that you provide in your local area you know that isn’t a real business and it’s a direct link to all of your competitors.

If a consumer clicks on one of those websites and you are not listed and paying them you may not get the lead. You know that most of the leads you would have to pay for are not worth paying such a price for because of their early stage in the buying process, and for the fact that the competition is so steep because of the nature of this model.

These online lead generation marketing companies have been known to market to consumers using tv commercials, search engine ads, organic search rankings, partnerships, acquisitions, and networking to promote a branding image such that if the consumer is to see their ad when searching for a home service they are more inclined to click on it over your own. As a business owner who needs to generate more leads from online sources what can be done, how can you compete?

A few videos from actual contractors experiences:

Solutions & Alternatives: Lead Gen

Are you considering signing up for Home-advisor or other pay per lead services to help grow your business? If you are still considering the decision we can help, but if you have already signed up we can help you transition out of it.

Advice for new companies: If your business has limited funds / small marketing budget do not even think about signing up for these services, they will drain your revolving capital faster than anything! However, if you have a respectable marketing budget and need to get in front of possible buyers fast, you could sign up with one or two and use them for the short term while you develop some of the strategies we will mention below.

We think that every business should be their own content creation and syndication machine. With the resources available like smartphones, tablets, cameras, YouTube, computers, etc there is no reason why you should not be able to create a new piece of sales material every day.

As mentioned in previous posts, being present at the very top of the sales funnel does not have to drain your funds without return like many of these types of PPL services.

Offline Marketing Strategies

Your business can take advantage of cost effective print marketing to increase local awareness. Everything from the good ole networking & hand-outs, flyers, and of course custom business cards. Direct mailing is a great way to target a specific demographic or local area that you know would use your services. By creating a compelling visual postcard you can generate warm local leads on a budget that you can afford.

A great source for getting custom direct mail postcards for your business is: Postcard Mania

Online Marketing Strategies

The whole world is online and plugged in, and you know that the majority of EVERYONE searches for something online and probably does not own an actual phone book. By now we know all of that, so how do we capture our piece of this online searching activity?

Know your business Before creating or improving your business for better online lead generation you need to know yourself and your business inside & out. You need to be able to tell a compelling business story while promoting what you do. Identify why you are in business and how to best promote yourself by asking: what are your advantages, what benefits will your customers receive, what problems are you solving and how do you make it easy?

Website (Base Camp)

The best way to become the authority in your market is to produce helpful content that caters to your potential clients questions and concerns or objections on a well designed & optimized website. All of this content can be created in different ways but must be under one roof. This is why your business website is so important, it is where you need to send leads to be converted, and it needs to be the main source in which they found you.

Content Pages & Blog posts

Videos

Brochures

PDFs

Low risk offers

Content Syndication:

As you create the content at Base Camp (your website and blog) you will need to syndicate this content to your audience. First create the content that is good, better than the competitor’s, then share that content around to the multimedia channels that might find it interesting or add value.

Social Presence

Getting someone to know about your website might take some offline and online actions. There are some places online where you can direct people to your main website in hopes of getting a sale. Find out where your buying audience is hanging out on social media and leverage a business profile on those platforms to engage with them and make them aware of your business.

Lead Nurturing

As part of the sales funnel leads begin as cold and warm up to becoming hot to make a purchase. While the lead is “cold” you may need marketing assets that help them through this part of the process in a more passive way. By using the blog on your website you can put together compelling bits of information that is helpful but not pressuring to make a purchase.

Email & Follow up systems

Having a way to capture a lead email on your website or sales page is one way that you can followup in a passive manner. If a lead submits their email for low risk offer of good information then you can place them into the respective email campaign to provide them with more related content.

A great way to get an email campaign setup is through: Mail Chimp

This was simply an overview of the things you can do to create an inbound online marketing system for your local business. We encourage you to visit other pages on our site as it relates to you, and if you still have questions just send us an email.

Paying for services like Home advisor can cost you an arm and a leg which is no good for a new business that is trying to break into a local market. We want to provide you with a real sustainable way to keep leads flowing in without spending all of your operating capital in the process.

Our company focuses on training business owners on how to take over their local marketing and how to quit paying those expensive lead gen companies for poor service.

If you have found this article because you are a home service provider struggling with getting new business online we hope this has helped. This is not a comprehensive guide, but we will add more information over time.

The post How to get free leads to my local business appeared first on Nexxus Designs & Marketing.

nexxusdesigns

Article Source

[jrussell009-blog]

web design malaysia

Many small business proprietors have a problem with deciding regarding how to make a good option for designing their website. They search the web for assist with their website and discover the option is harder compared to what they thought. Presently you will find (literally) countless websites who tell you they are professional web designers. However, you have to be cautious in selecting the best person or people to trust their company image. In the following paragraphs, I'll make an effort to classify web designers into manageable groups, and educate the readers the main difference between your types. For more information on graphic design singapore, visit our website today!

Web designers fall under four general groups: freelance amateur, freelance professional, Web Design Company, Web Development Firm.

Freelance Amateur

Nearly all web designers you will find, especially searching the web, are freelancers. That's, those who do web design but aren't utilized by a web design company. Many are self-employed professionals but many of these freelancers are amateur-hobbyist types. They look for a copy of FrontPage? included their Microsoft Office? Suite. They found how fun it may be to create web pages so that they began telling their buddies they could "design" web pages.

The "pros" of utilizing a novice is they are extremely cheap. The "cons" are extremely numerous to say, but I'll explain a couple of. Other product training they've little understanding of why is a good website work they don't understand Web coding or CSS only FrontPage point and click on they don't understand general design and layout concepts and they've little real experience. The greatest reason they must be prevented for that serious businessperson, is the fact that the work they do looks amateurish, making your company look amateurish. Who desires that?

Freelance Professional

An expert is frequently based on truly being compensated. People believe that if you're compensated for something, then you're professional. Maybe that's true within the Olympic games, as well as the business services world, you aren't an expert before you are in place and revered as you from your clients and peers. Freelancer professional web designers really are a giant leap in the amateur in they have established a portfolio of respectable work. They've some kind of qualified experience and training and they've credentials that may be verified by contacting references. There is a good status using their clients along with other professionals. Generally, a great freelance professional web designer could be good person to possess doing all of your site. But they're difficult to distinguish in the amateur when you're just searching the web.

The upside is, if you discover a high quality one they're considerably less expensive than a web design company. But that's normally the only upside. When the budget limits you, a freelancer is going to do for any small project. But anything seriously important ought to be left to some professional company.

Some disadvantages in utilizing a freelance pro are that they're usually part-time, meaning they're limited in the length of time they are able to dedicate to any project. They're also limited with what they are able to provide for you. Most freelancers are specialists in a single area and generalists in anything else. Some don't have any skills in anything except their one niche and frequently you'll have to find others to fill roles. Additionally, freelancers aren't always cheap although most of them are ambitious to produce their very own company many are highly searched for after and charge $100 each hour or even more for his or her work. My advice here's, for those who have much to invest, decide on a company which has a group of professionals to complete the job inside a timelier manner.

Web Design Company

This happens beyond an independent professional. The web design company provides the "whole show". They offer real project management software and also have pulled together a group of web experts to obtain a wider selection of jobs done. A company can offer a significantly greater degree of knowledge of web design, programming, content development and much more. Want to know more about web design company? Visit our website for more information.

This type of company is generally really small, yet big enough to deal with bigger scale projects. When compared to most highly qualified freelancer, a company includes a diversity of talent and collaboration employed by them. The finish-result is generally a much greater quality product.

Really the only drawbacks take presctiption the main one hands, the web design company is much more costly than the usual freelancer since there are a lot more people at work. However, you receive that which you purchase rings true. However, for large projects or lengthy term development, web design companies might be not big enough and tend not to possess the human recourses to support that $500,000 contract. Within the finish, for serious business people searching for quality and professionalism, reliability , who can not afford the large firm, this is one way to visit.

Web Development Firm

Because the title implies, a web development firm is much like any traditional company. There is a staff of workers in offices, they've proprietors and officials, and they've a group of gifted experts who are compensated a great salary for his or her work. They frequently possess a sales pressure which do inside and outdoors sales. The caliber of the work they do is obvious, while you couldn't be very well-established by doing shoddy work. These lenders offer groups of very gifted experts who focus on any project and complete the job inside a timely and very joyful manner. Furthermore, they often cover every aspect of website development including marketing and advertising. They've already groups of specialists that they'll deploy for your location and operate in-house within temporary contract. The options are endless.

If cost isn't an issue and also the greatest quality jobs are necessary, this is who for you to do the task. For smaller sized budget companies, an estimate from your established web development firm might knock you off your chair, but realize that companies who've project needs that achieve thousands and thousands of dollars be aware of score. Thus, really the only drawback for any web development firm is they are often very costly. On the other hand, price is relative and larger the likes of to utilize bigger companies.

In conclusion, it's your choice. I would suggest for that serious businessperson, that you simply budget a respectable amount of dollars to correctly design and perform professional website. I'd steer clear of the amateur and delegate for an individual or company with higher experience and reasonable rates to produce my web presence. If money weren't any object, i then would only cope with established firms and spend the money for big dollars to complete the job right and succeeded.

[nolimitsongrace]

July 21: Spiritual Warfare of a Different Kind

Spiritual Warfare of a Different KindJuly 21, 2019

Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. — Revelation 2:16

Today the Church is facing a crisis of morals. More and more, society has no stomach for spiritual or moral absolutes. Pastors and spiritual leaders who decide to “take a stand” and preach the Gospel in its pure, unadulterated form are derided as irrelevant and intolerant hate-mongers.

The public reaction to biblical truth is often so adverse that many pastors are hesitant to take strong positions on issues of morality, even though these truths are clearly stated in the Word of God. Rather than answer difficult moral questions, they are tempted to dodge the questions and skirt around the issues in an attempt to avoid conflict.

This same issue plagued the Early Church nearly 2,000 years ago. Toward the close of the First Century AD, there was a group of spiritual leaders who intentionally “watered down” the message of the Gospel to make it less demanding and more accommodating to other points of view. Because the culture couldn’t stomach the idea of a strict exclusionary faith that claimed to be above all others, this group of spiritual leaders attempted to entice Christians to make their faith more inclusive of everyone else’s beliefs.

*[If you started reading this from your email, begin reading here.]

The problem grew so rampant at the close of the First Century AD that Christ issued a strong rebuke to the people who were spreading this toxic doctrine when He supernaturally appeared to the apostle John. Addressing these erring spiritual leaders, Jesus sternly warned, “Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth” (Revelation 2:16).

The word “fight” is in this verse is the Greek word polemos, a well-known Greek word that describes a full-scale battle that is fought until victory is achieved. This emphatically means that Christ is not willing to surrender His Church to anyone, and He will fight for His Church until it is solidly back in His hands. He refused to stand idly by and let these individuals corrupt His Church. If errant spiritual leaders did not repent of their active or passive tolerance of this false teaching, Christ would rise up against them with His mighty sword.

Christ’s warning to the Early Church applies to the Church in all ages, and it is clear to see why His words are especially relevant to believers today. Although there are many God-fearing pastors, preachers, and spiritual leaders in the modern Christian community, a host of spiritual leaders are replicating the grave errors made by errant leaders in the First Century. In pulpits and congregations around the world, truth is being watered down and altered to reflect the inclusive values of a changing culture. In many congregations, pure, sound doctrine has been completely replaced by soft, “feel-good” messages, and the majority of people in the pews are ignorant of even the most elementary tenets of the faith.

Despite their ability to communicate masterfully, many modern-day ministers lack a basic education in fundamental Bible principles or have simply chosen to avoid teaching sound doctrine in favor of more popular motivational messages. To be direct, it appears that some have been duped into taking a politically correct position on many biblical truths instead of declaring truth — because the truth would put them on a collision course with the society that surrounds them.

This drift away from the Bible has created a doctrinal vacuum in the Church — a void currently being filled with dynamic business ideas, financial advice, and motivational messages instead of the Word of God that the Holy Spirit is bound to honor with signs and wonders. It is certainly true that some of the motivational messages delivered from the pulpit are beneficial in people’s lives, but this help is temporary and can often be found in a book by some psychological guru. When everything is said and done, only the Bible has the power to permanently transform.

Unfortunately, what we currently see and feel is only the beginning of the rift that is developing within the Church world. Unless a major revival occurs, this rift will only grow deeper and wider. If repentance doesn’t melt the hearts of people throughout the Church world, it will eventually seem like there are three churches:

A Church that holds fast to the truth and faces the brunt of opposition because it refuses to bend.

A Church in the middle trying to “ride the fence” through accommodation in order to avoid persecution and societal rejection (see Revelation 2:12-17).

A lukewarm, “Laodicean-like” Church (see Revelation 3:14-22) that has allowed compromise to run its full course, stripping it completely of the power of God and leaving Jesus standing on the outside.

It is not too late for the Body of Christ to make a recovery. In fact, it is never too late as long as there are believers who are willing to hear and hearken to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church. However, in order for the Church to receive the divine power it needs for correction, change, and restoration, it must undergo a transformation from the highest to its lowest levels.

The Bible makes it clear that if spiritual leaders refuse to take a stand for truth in these turbulent times, Christ will fight against them with His mighty sword. This is a battle that they cannot win. Absolutely no one may mitigate the truth of the Gospel — even for the purpose of purchasing peace with the world around them. The only true recourse is to surrender to the Holy Spirit and do what is right, even if it is wrong in the eyes of the world.

Early believers endured bullying, ridicule, imprisonment, and were even put to death because they refused to conform to the world that surrounded them on all sides. Although some believers collapsed under this pressure, many steadfastly resisted this coercion to conform and held fast to their faith. God has always had His remnant — those who will not bow to external pressures. In these last times God will have that remnant once again, and those who refuse to fear or to compromise their faith in Jesus Christ will experience previously unknown levels of the power of God as a result of their commitment to stand by truth.

I realize this is a very different type of Sparkling Gem, but I felt it necessary to write and memorialize what I believe are the greatest struggles facing the modern Church. I encourage you to stay faithful in praying for those believers and spiritual leaders who refuse to succumb to the pressures of the age and stand by absolute, biblical truth, regardless of what the world around them dictates. Why not make a fresh consecration to the Lord today that you will always be counted among that faithful number? Make a quality, immutable decision for your own walk with God: “From this moment forward, there’s no fence left to ride! Compromise in my commitment to Jesus is NOT an option!”

MY PRAYER FOR TODAY

Dear Father, I ask You to help me understand the relevance of this word I’ve read today. I pray that You will strengthen the present leadership of the Body of Christ to stand for the absolute truths of God’s Word even if that stance places them in direct opposition to the world. I ask You to raise up strong leaders in the Christian community who will lead the way and courageously stand for truth, regardless of the price that must be paid. I pray for my pastor and for other spiritual leaders. Father, I ask You to help them hear what the Spirit is saying and grant them boldness to call the Church to a time of holiness and separation, even if it is opposed to the voice of the world around them.

I pray this in Jesus’ name!

MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY

I boldly confess that I will stand by the truth of God’s Word, regardless of what the world around me tries to dictate as morally right or wrong. A day will soon come when we will all stand before Christ’s high court of reckoning and give account for how we upheld truth or how we forfeited it to accommodate the world around us. I have made my decision! Regardless of what the world says or what names it calls me, I am going to stand by the Christian values that have guided the Church for 2,000 years. Truth has not suddenly changed — it is society that has changed. I am determined to stand by biblical truth regardless of the price I must pay.

I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO CONSIDER

Today’s television programs often depict homosexuality as the norm. Can you think of other examples in modern society where biblical truths are undermined and exchanged with a new code of ethics?

As a Christian do you believe you should merely go with the flow of what’s happening, or is it your responsibility to uphold the absolute truth of the Gospel?

If it personally costs you to take a strong moral stance that is in line with God’s Word, are you willing to pay that price? How far are you willing to go in your commitment to biblical truth?

[iratogold81-blog]

What's Holding Back the fix and flip calculator Industry?

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