This is an example of what is wrong with mainline churches.

ACalifornia community is reeling after hearing the news that a local pastor was allegedly caught trying to meet a person he thought was a minor for sex.

James David Stockton, 54, was arrested on Saturday by Signal Hill police after an online citizen group called "Caught Fished" said it had documented inappropriate messages with the pastor.

Stockton is the pastor at South Bay Church of God in Torrance. He ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2024, and before that he was a leader of the NAACP in Marion County.

Stockton knew the decoy was claiming to be 16 years old and in high school.

"What time you get out of school today?" read one text allegedly from Stockton.

"I promise to be gentle and make sure you are enjoying it," read another.

This was a letter to the editor I read that explains why Canada is no longer a top ten country to live in. We are barely top thirty.

It does not even touch on the 800 pound gorilla in the tea shop - flooding the country with millions of low skilled unproductive third world imports.

QuoteCanada entered the 2020s with an energy strategy grounded not in engineering or economics but in climate narratives and regulatory zeal. Carbon taxes and pipeline constraints raised the cost of fuel not through scarcity but through deliberate policy choices. A modern economy cannot escape the mathematics of input costs. When energy policy forces fuel prices upward, every other price follows. Inflation rose even before global shocks arrived. Deficit spending surged during the pandemic. The Bank of Canada resumed large-scale purchases of government bonds but not as part of a national development strategy. Instead, it was a crisis reflex that underwrote consumption rather than investment. When inflation accelerated, the Bank again raised interest rates, repeating the dynamic of the early 1980s but without the industrial strength Canada once possessed.

Investors responded rationally. Capital left for jurisdictions with stable regulatory frameworks and predictable policy paths. Domestic firms hesitated to expand. Foreign companies scaled back operations or withdrew entirely. Productivity declined because investment collapsed. Meanwhile, the welfare state grew costlier because demographic pressures mounted while the tax base stagnated. The consequence was not ideological. It was arithmetic. A country that undermines its productive sectors while expanding its dependent sectors will run deficits, accumulate debt, and lose competitiveness.

This brings us back to the question that opened this essay. Canada's economic deterioration was not mysterious. It was the long-term consequence of abandoning sovereign credit, embracing a regulatory culture that treated markets as subordinate to ideology, and filling the machinery of government with people who lacked the knowledge and humility required to manage complex systems. When merit declines, confidence often rises. This is the Dunning–Kruger effect in national form. Leaders who know least believe they know most. Leaders who know most understand the limits of their knowledge and tread carefully.

Canada once understood those limits. It built railways and ports when private capital could not. It used the Bank of Canada to finance growth efficiently. It kept regulation within the bounds of practicality. It relied on people with real experience to run portfolios that required expertise. In later decades, it did the opposite. It regulated at every turn, spent without discipline, taxed energy out of ideological conviction, and placed heavy responsibilities in the hands of those who did not understand their own tools.

The outcome is the economy Canadians now face. Investment has fled. Productivity has fallen. The cost of living is rising. Debt is growing. The welfare state has expanded faster than national income. None of this was inevitable. It is the product of choices, institutions, and leaders. Canada can recover what it lost, but not until it recovers the one thing that sustained its greatest successes: a governing class chosen for competence rather than conformity.

Quote from: DKG on Today at 07:48:30 AMThe media swept that under the rug.

Proof?

Name, time, date of the incident?

Quote from: Oliver the Second on Today at 11:57:19 AMInstead of a second strike the survivors should have been picked up, shot full of truth serum and interrogated, then returned to the same spot in the ocean after being pushed out of a plane flying over it.

Best suggestion.

Quote from: Biggie Smiles on December 04, 2025, 12:30:33 PMAny organization that professes allegiance to the words contained within the bible which then advocates a position in direct opposition to what that very same bible mandates should be dissolved immediately.

It's about as stupid as hiring a basket ball coach to prep an NFL team during the off season with basketball drills and playbooks.

If the bible says God disapproves of homosexuality then the proper approach for any christian is to condemn the activity while maintaining a christian viewpoint to towards the offender. You can hate the sin but love the sinner and loving them doesn't mean you bend your own stance to allow for their activities in your fold.

Only stupid and narcissistic people demand otherwise

one hundred percent

Instead of a second strike the survivors should have been picked up, shot full of truth serum and interrogated, then returned to the same spot in the ocean after being pushed out of a plane flying over it.

I love racist cartoons.

ICE arrests multiple Afghan nationals with criminal convictions released into US by Biden-era programs: DHS

ICE arrested multiple Afghan nationals with criminal convictions, including kidnapping and child abuse, raising significant national security concerns nationwide.

Source: ICE arrests multiple Afghan nationals with criminal convictions released into US by Biden-era programs: DHS

Quote from: Shen Li on December 04, 2025, 11:16:12 PMChinese cartoons make the Japs look a lot worse than that. And those cartoons are not 83 years old.

I'd like to see em!