The Scribbles of Anlarye

Bob vander Plaats has been making bad endorsements for the past decade. The latest in this long line of losses was the endorsement for Adam Steen for Iowa Governor in this week’s primary election. And the first was picking Senator Cruz over the people’s choice of Donald Trump in 2016.

Donald Trump was a guest of The Family Leader a year or two before he decided to run for President. And Bob himself made a couple of trips out to NYC and Trump Tower. He spent time with the future President. But throw it all away.

He could have been a great voice for Christ and supported Trump’s bid for President in 2016. But he didn’t. The question has always been “why didn’t Bob vander Plaats do this?”

There have been several possibilities floating around for years. They had a falling out was one. The companionship formed with Steve Deace is thought to be another. And on the surface these are all valid reasons. But they too are just more symptoms of the Kingmaker’s fall.

No the real reason is due to the loss of the one person that kept Bob vander Plaats from being his own worst enemy. That one person, in Bob’s own words, “knew where they bodies were buried,” at The Family Leader.

The same person who was wrote the very letter that was given to then governor candidate for the 3rd time, Bob vander Plaats, on the night he lost that primary race. The letter that offered him the presidency and CEO position at the Iowa Family Policy Center that would later be renamed as The Family Leader.

That person was Kristen Rheinherren, nee Major. The Director of Development at the Iowa Family Policy Center. She is 100% responsible for text of that offer that Bob took. She wrote that recruitment letter.

And in June 2015, Kristen resigned from The Family Leader to pursue other opportunities. The date is strikingly haunting considering it’s when Bob started down that path of bad endorsements just after that departure.

Since 2015 Kristen hasn’t been around to give her voice to the staff meetings and private meetings with the leadership of The Family Leader. Kristen you see was a prayer warrior the likes of which are rarely seen. And without her, The Family Leader has suffered.

Bad choices in endorsing candidates and causes, one after the other. None of which Kristen would have supported and could have possibly talked Bob out of endorsing them publicly.

Kristen passed from this world and into Christ’s loving arms in 2020. So there is no way for her to ever return to The Family Leader to offer her thoughts and speaker her mind. And they will likely to continue to be more and more irrelevant in Iowa and national politics in the future.

ICE is cracking down on the illegal aliens and those who protect these criminals within our nation. The most dangerous cities are all filled with illegal aliens that need to be deported and even barred from re-entry. And these most dangerous cities are all “sanctuary cities” and in Democratic controlled states. Thus, the Democratic party is the party that is against Law and Order. Against American Values. Against lawfulness.

President Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act against all Democratic controlled “sanctuary cities” and states. Arrest and remove these rebellious Leftist from our communities.

There is a growing movement across the Left and Social Media, where people are happily posting 86 with the number of the current President. These people are Evil and Wicked.

Everyone knows that 86 means to remove, get rid of, delete, throw away, and other terms when applied to a thing or idea. When applied to a place, it means to destroy it or bomb it. And then when applied to a person. There is only one thing it means. And that is to kill, to commit murder.

So when someone says they want to 86 the President of the United States. They are advocating murder or the assassination of the President. They are threatening the President’s life. And they should be charged, arrested, and put into prison for 5-10 years.

This is not humor. This is serious. And should be treated as such. End this Trump Derangement Syndrome and not tolerate it.

During the early run of the Babylon 5 television series there was a war between two of the major powers. The Narn and the Centauri. Old rivals for sure with a long backstory and history between them.

As the war breaks out, both sides are trying to get Earth involved on one side or the other. At some point during this Commander Jeffery Sinclair, the Earth Ambassador and commander of the Babylon 5 station is in a conversation with the Vorlon Ambassador, Kosh. This is the exchange:

Kosh: “They are alone. They are a dying people. We should let them pass.”
Cmdr Jeffery Sinclair: “Who, the Narn or the Centauri?”
Kosh: “Yes.”

Reflecting on this I see it can be applied to today’s real word just as easily. With a few changes to the players it would read as this:

The USA: “They are alone. They are a dying people. We should let them pass.”
Europe: “Who, the Ukrainians or the Russians?”
The USA: “Yes.”

I’ve written about a few of these topics in the past and I’m sure they will be revisited again in the future. In our modern world connected as we are through the technology of the internet. There is still a need for text only based real time chatting between 2 or more people.

Text only based chatting has many advantages over both voice or video methods of communication. Far less bandwidth is needed is the biggest advantage. It can work on even the worst internet connections and the slowest of PCs.

In the days of Dial-up internet, were AOL was the king of providers, they had a multitude of chatrooms for many topics and communities across their membership. And outside of AOL and accessible to it, and all other providers were the many servers and networks of Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

During the height of IRC’s popularity it had over a million users signed in across the multitude of networks and servers. Today, with the rise of Social Media, this number has been reduced to a quarter of what it once was.

A vast majority of IRC users are now found on the Discord service. It has a number of similarities to IRC that allows users to feel “at home” there. However there are a lot of differences too between the 2 platforms.

Here are some of the similarities and differences:

Discord has a native “pretty” interface. Granted IRC does not but it’s totally depends on which IRC client one uses to access IRC.

Discard has audio and visual communications options. IRC does not have these functions at all. They are left to other services to provide them.

Discord has Avatars and Profiles. Although IRC at its base level does not. There are IRC clients that provide similar functions.

Both services have bots running on them in multiple channels performing a multitude of various tasks.

Discord requires registration in order to use it. IRC does not require registration, but many networks and servers have registration available and it’s recommended.

Discord has the ability to create channel threads. Topics that filter out of the main channel discussion into a sub-channel without leaving the channel. IRC does not have this unique ability. In IRC one would have to chat privately or form a separate channel with the smaller number of users.

Both services offer the ability to chat privately between users.

IRC is independent. There are networks and stand alone servers. Each one is unique. Discord “servers” are all part of Discord and ran on the same equipment as all others.

This one fact can lead to a single point of failure for Discord. If the Discord service goes down. All of the Discord “servers” are down. Not true at all with IRC since each server and network are independent of one another.

And with the independence, IRC is individually owned. Where as Discord is corporately owned and could change any aspect of its service with a board member vote. Including making the entire service a paid service. Or even closing it down completely forever.

On Discord you can @mention another user of the “server” you are connected to and they would be notified of the mention. IRC doesn’t have this as a built-in function. However, like other functions that are built-in to Discord, many IRC clients have similar functions.

On Discord, if you join a “server”, you are automatically in all the channels save for ones that are role restricted which can cause unwanted notifications of chats. On IRC when you connect to a server you only join the channels you want to join or none at all.

With IRC, anyone can create a new channel just by joining it. And that person gets admin rights in that channel automatically. If there is registration available and the user desires they can register the channel and make it permanent. But on Discord, only Admins can create new channels. It’s the same role given to create, destroy, or modify any channel so it’s not given out to everyone.

Discord has a history feature. Once you join a “server” and are in the channels you can infinitely scroll up to see what was previously said in that channel by anyone. On IRC, there is a +H mode that can be set on some servers or networks that allow a similar functionality but it’s usually not infinite.

Discord admins have the ability to delete chats in a channel. IRC doesn’t have this ability. Once the chat is there it’s there. But new users generally wont see it because of the lack of history available. Users of Discord can also edit their posts, while IRC doesn’t have this ability.

Bots are on both services as previously mentioned. And bots are very handy to have to provide functions and features that aren’t part of the system. With Discord, you have to have Dev permissions to create a bot. And that bot cannot run on a regular member’s account. Doing so would get the bot and user banned from Discord. On IRC however, there are a variety of scripting options available. Some are based on the client program use to connect to IRC and others are dependent on the bot being used. And you can run scripts from your own client as well.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to comparing IRC and Discord. Just looking at this list the favor leans towards IRC over Discord despite some of its unique features. Many Discord features can be duplicated or simulated in IRC with a bit of scripting or simple options enabled on one’s client program.

I will always be an IRC enthusiast. After all I have ran my own IRC network/server for 25 years. And in this day and age of cancel culture, the freedom of an IRC server is just what is needed.

I am sad to say that I have lost a few IRC channels to Discord. And looking at those Discord “servers” I could have over a 1000 users on my IRC network if they stayed or came back.

But if you are looking for a place to have an online real-time text based chat. I’m happy to help you get setup on IRC. You can connect via a browser at https://web.communiti.chat or point you favorite IRC client program to irc.commuinit.chat and get setup to go.