I think there are a lot of Cruz supporters who are worried about whether Cruz has the financial support to win this race. If we were voting with our hearts, we would pick Cruz because he is the most conservative. But we don’t want to support someone who will run out of money and fold halfway through the campaign.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign raised $20 million during the final three months of 2015, according to the Cruz campaign. The end of the year fundraising total represents a marked increase compared to his third quarter fundraising sum of $12.2 million.
Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe wrote a memo to campaign staff that details how the campaign hauled in $45 million during the 2015 calendar year. More than 300,000 supporters donated to the Cruz campaign, and the average donation amounted to $67.
“Some campaigns are focused solely on a man, some on a movement. Ours is a hybrid of the two built to win,” Roe wrote. “There’s still plenty of work to be done to make Ted the Republican nominee and the next President, but as 2015 comes to a close, we are exactly where we want to be. Go. Fight. Win. This is OUR time!”
Roe’s memo also notes that the campaign has coordinators in each of the 163 congressional districts in the 24 states with nominating contests scheduled before March 15th. The campaign also boasts its success in recruiting more than 175,000 volunteers, and a donor base residing in two-thirds of all zip codes in the United States.
Cruz ranks first in the Washington Examiner‘s newest GOP presidential power rankings.
Cruz’s rival Marco Rubio is getting a lot of big money from pro-gay-rights donors and pro-amnesty donors. He is the favored candidate of the Republican establishment. He is famous for trying to push through an amnesty deal. Cruz is the outsider, and he doesn’t have the support of billionaire establishment donors. Cruz fought to stop Obama’s executive amnesty, so the establishment Republicans hate him and they are giving him no support. That’s why this donation-related news is so encouraging. Cruz is keeping up with the billionaire-backed candidates like Rubio because he has the support of so many individual conservative donors.
But there is even more good news if you look at the state of the PACs who are supporting Cruz.
In the mid-year reports, Cruz’s super-PACs disclosed nearly $38 million [in] donations, which put him second only to former Florida Gov. Bush in outside support.
But unlike Bush’s super-PAC Right to Rise — which has been spending its $103 million rapidly on TV advertising — Cruz’s super-PACs have been sitting on their cash.
Bush isn’t getting any kind of bump in the polls for all this spending by his PACs. Meanwhile, Cruz is in first or second place in so many states even though Cruz PACs have not been spending much money at all!
Here is the latest poll from Real Clear Politics that just came out on Wednesday:
Latest poll for the Nevada Republican primary
I think for people who would like to vote for Cruz but are worried whether he can go the distance, the answer right now is a resounding YES. He’s in a much better position financially than all of the other GOP candidates.
This article from Biblical Archaeology covers all the non-Christian historical sources that discuss Jesus.
About the author:
Lawrence Mykytiuk is associate professor of library science and the history librarian at Purdue University. He holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Semitic Studies and is the author of the book Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200–539 B.C.E. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004).
Here are the major sections:
Roman historian Tacitus
Jewish historian Josephus
Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata
Platonist philosopher Celsus
Roman governor Pliny the Younger
Roman historian Suetonius
Roman prisoner Mara bar Serapion
And this useful excerpt captures the broad facts about Jesus that we get from just the first two sources:
We can learn quite a bit about Jesus from Tacitus and Josephus, two famous historians who were not Christian. Almost all the following statements about Jesus, which are asserted in the New Testament, are corroborated or confirmed by the relevant passages in Tacitus and Josephus. These independent historical sources—one a non-Christian Roman and the other Jewish—confirm what we are told in the Gospels:31
1. He existed as a man. The historian Josephus grew up in a priestly family in first-century Palestine and wrote only decades after Jesus’ death. Jesus’ known associates, such as Jesus’ brother James, were his contemporaries. The historical and cultural context was second nature to Josephus. “If any Jewish writer were ever in a position to know about the non-existence of Jesus, it would have been Josephus. His implicit affirmation of the existence of Jesus has been, and still is, the most significant obstacle for those who argue that the extra-Biblical evidence is not probative on this point,” Robert Van Voorst observes.32 And Tacitus was careful enough not to report real executions of nonexistent people.
2. His personal name was Jesus, as Josephus informs us.
3. He was called Christos in Greek, which is a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, both of which mean “anointed” or “(the) anointed one,” as Josephus states and Tacitus implies, unaware, by reporting, as Romans thought, that his name was Christus.
4. He had a brother named James (Jacob), as Josephus reports.
5. He won over both Jews and “Greeks” (i.e., Gentiles of Hellenistic culture), according to Josephus, although it is anachronistic to say that they were “many” at the end of his life. Large growth
in the number of Jesus’ actual followers came only after his death.
6. Jewish leaders of the day expressed unfavorable opinions about him, at least according to some versions of the Testimonium Flavianum.
7. Pilate rendered the decision that he should be executed, as both Tacitus and Josephus state.
8. His execution was specifically by crucifixion, according to Josephus.
9. He was executed during Pontius Pilate’s governorship over Judea (26–36 C.E.), as Josephus implies and Tacitus states, adding that it was during Tiberius’s reign.
Some of Jesus’ followers did not abandon their personal loyalty to him even after his crucifixion but submitted to his teaching. They believed that Jesus later appeared to them alive in accordance with prophecies, most likely those found in the Hebrew Bible. A well-attested link between Jesus and Christians is that Christ, as a term used to identify Jesus, became the basis of the term used to identify his followers: Christians. The Christian movement began in Judea, according to Tacitus. Josephus observes that it continued during the first century. Tacitus deplores the fact that during the second century it had spread as far as Rome.
I remember reading the 1996 book by Gary Habermas entitled “The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ“. This book is a little before the time of most of you young Christian apologists, but back before the time of Lee Strobel and J. Warner Wallace, this is the stuff we all read. Anyway, in the book he makes a list of all that can be known about Jesus from external sources. And fortunately for you, you don’t have to buy the book because you can read chapter 9 of it right on his web site.
From Tacitus he gets this:
From this report we can learn several facts, both explicit and implicit, concerning Christ and the Christians who lived in Rome in the 60s A.D. Chronologically, we may ascertain the following information.
(1) Christians were named for their founder, Christus (from the Latin), (2) who was put to death by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilatus (also Latin), (3) during the reign of emperor Tiberius (14 37 A.D.). (4) His death ended the “superstition” for a short time, (5) but it broke out again, (6) especially in Judaea, where the teaching had its origin.
(7) His followers carried his doctrine to Rome. (8) When the great fire destroyed a large part of the city during the reign of Nero (54 68 A.D.), the emperor placed the blame on the Christians who lived in Rome. (9) Tacitus reports that this group was hated for their abominations. (10) These Christians were arrested after pleading guilty, (11) and many were convicted for “hatred for mankind.” (12) They were mocked and (13) then tortured, including being “nailed to crosses” or burnt to death. (14) Because of these actions, the people had compassion on the Christians. (15) Tacitus therefore concluded that such punishments were not for the public good but were simply “to glut one man’s cruelty.”
And from Josephus he gets this:
(1) Jesus was known as a wise and virtuous man, one recognized for his good conduct. (2) He had many disciples, both Jews and Gentiles. (3) Pilate condemned him to die, (4) with crucifixion explicitly being mentioned as the mode. (5) The disciples reported that Jesus had risen from the dead and (6) that he had appeared to them on the third day after his crucifixion. (7) Consequently, the disciples continued to proclaim his teachings. (8) Perhaps Jesus was the Messiah concerning whom the Old Testament prophets spoke and predicted wonders. We would add here two facts from Josephus’ earlier quotation as well. (9) Jesus was the brother of James and (10) was called the messiah by some.
So when you are reading the New Testament, these facts are the framework that you read within. It’s a good starting point when dealing with people who have never looked into who Jesus was and what he taught and what his followers believed about him, right from the start.
How climate scientists adjust the data to prove they need more grant money (see #10 in the list below)
My friend Bruce posted this article from the the Daily Wire, and I think it’s a good summary of the scientific evidence against global warming alarmism. After we go over this, I’ll take a stab at explaining why so many non-scientists desperately want to believe that global warming is true, and why they try to push everyone else to believe it, too.
First, the list:
Temperature records from around the world do not support the assumption that today’s temperatures are unusual.
Satellite temperature data does not support the assumption that temperatures are rising rapidly
Current temperatures are always compared to the temperatures of the 1980’s, but for many parts of the world the 1980’s was the coldest decade of the last 100+ years
The world experienced a significant cooling trend between 1940 and 1980
Urban heat island effect skews the temperature data of a significant number of weather stations
There is a natural inverse relationship between global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels
The CO2 cannot, from a scientific perspective, be the cause of significant global temperature changes
There have been many periods during our recent history that a warmer climate was prevalent long before the industrial revolution
Glaciers have been melting for more than 150 years
“Data adjustment” is used to continue the perception of global warming
So, we can’t look at all of these in one post. Obviously, the satellite measurements are the best thing to look at, since they cannot be tampered with as easily as the ground measurements, and they show no warming for 18 years.
But let’s look at number 8 instead:
Even in the 1990 IPCC report a chart appeared that showed the medieval warm period as having had warmer temperatures than those currently being experienced. But it is hard to convince people about global warming with that information, so five years later a new graph was presented, now known as the famous hockey stick graph, which did away with the medieval warm period. Yet the evidence is overwhelming at so many levels that warmer periods existed on Earth during the medieval warm period as well as during Roman Times and other time periods during the last 10,000 years. There is plenty of evidence found in the Dutch archives that shows that over the centuries, parts of the Netherlands disappeared beneath the water during these warm periods, only to appear again when the climate turned colder. The famous Belgian city of Brugge, once known as “Venice of the North,” was a sea port during the warm period that set Europe free from the dark ages (when temperatures were much colder), but when temperatures began to drop with the onset of the little ice age, the ocean receded and now Brugge is ten miles away from the coastline. Consequently, during the medieval warm period the Vikings settled in Iceland and Greenland and even along the coast of Canada, where they enjoyed the warmer temperatures, until the climate turned cold again, after which they perished from Greenland and Iceland became ice-locked again during the bitter cold winters. The camps promoting global warming have been systematically erasing mention of these events in order to bolster the notion that today’s climate is unusual compared to our recent history.
That’s right, the world was much warmer than it is now during the Medieval Warming Period… so warm that you could actually farm on Greenland. But now it’s all frozen over.
Bruce also posted this article from Forbes magazine about the so-called consensus about global warming among scientists.
It says:
It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.
[…]Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.
According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model. The scientists in this group “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”
The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.
[…]Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.
Many people listen to Obama, who never passed a science class in his life, talk about how most scientists support the idea of man-made global warming. But the truth is that his statements are just more “you can keep your health plan” and “you can keep your doctor”. He says what he wants people to believe so they will like him and rely on him to save them. But he has no knowledge of climate science any more than he has knowledge of health care policy.
Why do people believe weird things?
So why do people believe these things? People believe these things for the same reason that primitive people would sacrifice animals in order to get a bountiful harvest or be spared being struck by lightning. They fear the future, and they want to believe that they are doing something in order to save themselves from doom. There is something credulous in us that seeks to know and control the future. When we are told a noble lie by grant-seeking, attention-craving academics, we believe it because we want to believe it. We want to believe that the future is going to be OK, especially when all we have to do to make it OK is recycle cans and turn off our lights when we are not using them.
This is the real psychological motivation behind the desperate desire to believe in the global warming myth. We are scared, and we want someone to save us from the future. And we jump at the chance of controlling the future, especially when it means recycling cans, rather than having to deal with our own sinfulness. We invent a new morality that justifies us rather than having to comply with the old morality. Freedom to commit adultery, as long as we recycle cans to save the planet. Sanctification through purchasing carbon credits, instead of sanctification through chastity, sobriety and self-control.
WINTERY KNIGHT 