Past Commentary

Immigrations
April 15, 2006

Yesterday we drove to the US embassy in Manila for three things. One, to take Leah's cousin, Wheng, and her seven month old child to get a US passport. Wheng's husband, Randy, is an American citizen and working in North Carolina, trying to save up to bring his family over. The process to get the passport for the baby because he was born here, has taken months and required all kinds of identification and testimonial to ascertain his identity. By the way, the final person she talked to after being handled by Filipinos for all these months, was an American. The baby, Jared, was approved and soon they will be going to the States legally.

While we were there, we checked on Jonathan's passport renewal. Fortunately, the Filipina we talked to was very helpful and attached a note to our file explaining our situation and requesting our file to be expedited and hopefully we will be able to get an appointment next week. We may have to delay our departure a week or so because the idiot system still requires Fedex to deliver things. You can't hand deliver anything to the embassy. I also complained about the performance of Fedex making a wasted trip and tacking on four extra days picking up our passport renewal forms in the first place. (After we had previously visited the embassy to get the proper forms, we scheduled Fedex to come pick them up. Fedex brought us more forms, but the driver refused to take the forms we had filled out back because he wasn't tasked to do it, which led to an extra wasted trip four days later.)

Next, we checked on Leah's sister's immigrant status. We had petitioned Leah's mother and she came legally to the US in 1997. She then petitioned Rachel, since she is the only remaining relative of the immediate family still living in the Philippines. She was approved and given a letter in July 98. She received a second letter in 2001 updating her status and telling her to be ready if she is called. The process used to take about five years.

However, Rachel's case was retrograded a couple years ago and she was told it would be around 07 before she could immigrate. A few months ago that was pushed back to 08. Yesterday we were told her category was being retrograded again and it would still be more than two years. If she ever gets approved to immigrate, she will have waited over ten years at least.

So, here's Rachel, who speaks excellent English, who has no criminal record, who is an outstanding Christian woman who would make an outstanding US citizen, patiently waiting for the legal process to take place so she can legally come to the States.

And the president and the Senate want to give 11.5 million illegal hispanics, who are criminals, run in gangs, don't speak English, and march through the streets waving Mexican flags amnesty and citizenship within two years without going through any of the normal channels? Where's the justice? Where are the patriots who love America first? Are there any clear-headed thinkers left? What insanity has brought America to the place that our government protects illegal criminal aliens before it protects its own people?

If you'd like to help protest, I suggest an organization called Grassfire. Grassfire just delivered over 1.5 million faxes protesting the illegal amnesty bill to the Senate last week, which apparently is why they recessed without passing the bill. Here's the website:

http://www.grassfire.org/4042/offer.asp?rid=100060035

I believe 9/11 and the Homeland Security Department is the cause of all the legal delays in immigration, and I'm all in favor of increased security. But letting 11.5 million illegals off the hook because you don't have the guts to deal with it doesn't increase our security. It opens the doors to more criminals and terrorists.

Lance Patterson

Democrat Identity
May 26, 2006

The Democrats are unwilling to publish an agenda because the only plan they have is to criticize Republicans and then steal Republican successes. Remember Clinton in 1992 saying it would take ten years to balance the budget? In 1994 he revised it to twelve years. Then the Republican Revolution turned the economy around and balanced the budget in three years. Clinton stole the Republican agenda, rode the economic recovery to reelection, and then took credit for the balanced budget.

Gary Hart, speaking with a forked tongue, once refused to be labeled a liberal. He said that if being strong on defense meant being liberal, then he was a liberal; if it meant being conservative, then he was a conservative. In that vein, every left wing extremist in recent memory has tried to protray himself or herself as a moderate.

Democrats refuse to identify themselves, their agenda, or anything that they could be held responsible for, because then they would be unable to change positions when it was to their benefit to do so.

Lance Patterson

Hanoi Jane and Other Things
July 30, 2006

I've been meaning for some time to make a few comments about things in general, but I keep putting it off and now I've got several things to say.

A couple months ago I wrote about the crazy immigration amnesty the president and the Senate want to pass that will legalize 12 million illegal aliens over night and make them citizens in two years. The Senate is trying now to pass a compromise bill through the House that will make all those illegals legal by simply going out of the country and coming back in, and after 17 years they can become citizens. It's plain lunacy. And in the mean time my sister-in-law, who is the only member of her family not in the States, after waiting eight years still has four years to wait just to get in the country, much less get a job, or try to help other relatives. The House plan is the only way to go. It deports illegals for breaking the law, which is as it should be.

About four months ago now I saw Larry King interview Jane Fonda. King asked her about being "Hanoi Jane." She said that she long ago realized that it had been a mistake and apologized for it, but the "religious right" won't forgive her or let it die. Let's see, the fact that her apology was worded, "If my actions caused any POW's to be harmed...", may have something to do with it. The fact that she still thinks the war was wrong and that America was at fault probably has more to do with it. The fact that she stood by John Kerry in 04 and very hypocritically called him a war hero when she has called every patriot who served there a war criminal might have a lot more to do with it

She also talked about her conversion to Christianity. It came about after she moved to Atlanta when she married Ted Turner. She said something about her life seeming empty and then a light came over her that sort of told this was the way. She started going to Bible studies with the Carters (President Jimmy and Roslyn, that is).

If you remember Carter began his campaign in 1976 by telling everybody that he was "born again." What is not well known is what he meant by that. His sister, Ruth Stapleton, was a charismatic preacher who held seminars at a get away retreat place. Many people, even celebrities, went to her retreat. Born again according to Stapleton was this: they went through some kind of yoga exercises to empty their minds of their pasts. Then on an appointed day they all got into a room and huddled into a fetal position. On cue they started opening up, crawling around, touching everybody and everything, just as if they were new born babies learning about life all over again.

If that's Jimmy Carter's born again experience, it's meaningless. And if Jane Fonda's experience just involves seeing a light, it's meaningless. Interestingly enough, in that interview she never mentioned the name of Jesus Christ. When King asked her about her divorce from Turner she said that at first she thought it was wrong and felt guilty because of what she had learned in the Bible, but then realized that all of that fundamentalist stuff wasn't right for her and that divorced for her was okay.

Well, you know what I think of that kind of Christianity.

When special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald decided not to indict Karl Rove over the leakgate afair involving Valery Plame, some of the Democrats' comments included these: "This man lied to the District of Columbia grand jury and he gets off scott-free? Where's the justice?" And, "It's really, really bad precedent to allow a criminal to have free rein in the White House."

Uh, let's see. When President Clinton lied to a grand jury, and to Congress they said it didn't rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Is there some reason why it was not bad precedent then but it is now? Is there not some hypocrisy here? Where was the justice then?

Move forward to this last week in the Middle East. Syria, a nobody nation, started squawking that if there is to be peace the US and Britain would have to talk to them. They are the only ones who can stop Hezbollah. Really? If they can stop them, why don't they do it and show the world how important they really are. My guess is that both the US and Britain would be willing to talk with Assad if he'd do something worthwhile like bring an end to terrorism rather than being the cause of it.

We've had a great advantage here lately that I think you may be missing in the US. Sky News from Britain has presented a very objective view of the news in Palestine. Their reporter in Haifa, who had to move to Jerusalem because of all the Hezbollah rockets, Jeremy Thompson, has been interviewing Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese spokesmen, and he's not letting anybody off the hook. When the Syrian spokesman said, "What is Israel hoping to gain by attacking Lebanon?" Thompson said, "What are you hoping to gain by sending rockets to Hezbollah to fire at Israel?"

Something else we haven't seen on CNN, although we watch Sky News most of the time, is that the Israelis have been dropping leaflets over every area they intend to bomb warning the people first. And, an Israeli spokesman pointed out to Thompson, that many of these "innocent civilians" in Lebanon have been hiding rockets and other weapons in their homes, Israeli intelligence has found them, and that's why a lot of these places have been bombed.

Something else that is quite significant I think. When they interview the Lebanese, they are screaming and wailing and making a lot of noise about how unfair everything is. When Thompson suggested to the Lebanese Prime Minister that Israel was only responding to unprovoked attacks he answered angrily that Israel was looking for an excuse and that they would have attacked Lebanon even if Hezbollah hadn't fired the rockets. Israelis on the other hand are very calm, without fanfare or foofurah, very reasonably stating their case.

The terrorists shout irrationally because what they are saying is mostly lies, and the only way to get anyone to believe it is to keep shouting. It works, as you can tell by most of the main stream media.

Finally, there were two items in the news in the last couple of weeks that I've not heard anybody commenting on, political or theological, but both of which I think are significant to the days we live in.

First, one report we heard stated that the EU now gives more money collectively than the US does in foreign aid. The significance is that the EU is basically the so-called Revived Roman Empire from which the Beast, or Antichrist, will come from. It will dominate the world during the Tribulation. The fact that it is surpassing the US in foreign aid shows that it is rising to that position of influence.

The second, is that the UN observers in Lebanon have failed to do anything to stop Hezbollah from attacking Israel. Since the UN is a failure at peace keeping, Israel stated last week that they would accept a buffer zone patrolled by NATO troops. In other words, the EU plus North America. The US is no longer the primary nation involved in this. It is the EU. Israel is already positioning itself to accept a peace brokered by the Antichrist.

It seems to me that more pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

Lance Patterson

Who Really Won?
August 15, 2006

Let's see. Israel drove all the way to the Litani River and chased Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, killed 550 Hezbollah fighters who were so cowardly that they wore civilian clothing and tried to hide among their own people, losing only about 50 of their own soldiers in battle, killed over 1100 civilians whom Hezbollah was totally incapable of protecting, and in fact, had used as human shields, with a loss of about 124 of their own civilians (both 10-1 ratios which are outstanding in anybody's war), turned several Lebanese cities and towns into rubble, and only allowed Lebanese civilians to return across cratered roads to the hovel when they were ready to leave.

Only a Muslim or a liberal news media analyst could call that a Hezbollah victory.

Lance Patterson

Gore's Hysteria
September 6, 2006

Sundays on Sky News out of England they have an interview program called One on One. The interviewer chats with various people in front of a live audience. A week ago Sunday the guest was Al Gore and they discussed his new propumentary (a new term which I just invented combining propaganda and documentary). He warned that the world would end in about ten years due to global warming, but there was still time to save us if everybody joins the Kyoto Protocol, which will basically make Americans stop driving cars. Then he predicted that within two years President Bush would agree with him and sign the protocol and if he does that there is still time to save the world.

Gore's propumentary says global warming is what ended the Great Ice Age and as the polar ice caps continue to melt great portions of the earth, like the entire state of Florida are going to be under water. According to evolution the earth was first an unstable mass of erupting volcanoes that eventually formed land masses and oceans, so I've got a question for these environmentalist wackos. Since it was hotter then than it is now, how did we have a Great Ice Age in the first place? You know what I think: CHICKEN LITTLE.

Lance Patterson

CNN Remembering 9/11
September 11, 2006

If you have CNN I hope you were able to see their special yesterday, Remembering 9/11. CNN has never done anything better. They did a minute-by-minute account of the events as they unfolded five years ago with cameras on the ground getting the reactions of people, showing the shock, the tears, and the devastation. Ted Kennedy, John Murtha, John Kerry and all the rest of those slops opposed to the war on terror ought to be made to sit through that report over and over until they get it. It was a tremendous program.

Unfortunately, CNN Overseas turned around and showed its true colors following the program with an interview by Hugh Rimington of three Iraquis, a professor, a student, and a woman's activist. I'm not sure if his program was taped in Britain or Hong Kong, but Rimington has always been an anti-American liberal slug and his bias was never more apparent than in this interview.

The three Iraquis were hand picked, probably Sunnis who supported Saddam Hussein. They kept complaining that the American war in Iraq has caused nothing but trouble. All the while Rimington is sitting there with a smug smile on his face nodding his head knowingly. The woman said, "Why do we have to pay for what America is doing?" At that point I had to turn it off.

What a bunch of ungrateful, wretches. That woman couldn't even have been an activist under Hussein, and now she's blaming America for all their problems! The professor and the student no doubt wouldn't even be able to teach or study overseas, or at all, under the Baathist regime that we have overthrown. And CNN, they can go you know where.

REMEMBER 9/11!

Lance Patterson

The Winning Side
September 12, 2006

Did you hear al-Zawahiri yesterday? He said that they've already attacked America and now it is Israel and the Gulf States turn. The reason for that of course is that their war on America has been a total disaster for Alqaeda. They haven't been able to attack us again, and all their leaders are hiding in caves afraid to show themselves. He can warn us all he wants about our troops being doomed, but his operatives couldn't even carry out a successful bomb attack against the US Embassy in terrorist friendly Damascus today.

What Zawahiri is trying to do is deflect attention from Alqaeda's dismal failure and convince us through propaganda means that we are losing and should give up. Unfortunately, his delirious rantings are convincing the "we can't win" liberal news media which only focuses on the resurgent Taliban and the suicide bombers in Iraq and anything negative to turn the country against President Bush. Makes you wonder whose side they're on anyway.

Well, let's put it back in perspective. We already won the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we are helping people with fledgling democratic governments who have no experience in governing learn how to rule and defend themselves against cowardly, lawless terrorism. We keep hearing about the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, but what the media is conveniently not reporting is that the resurgent Taliban is getting its rear end decisively kicked.

The peace may be harder to maintain than the war was to win, but we are winning in spite of the naysayers. The god of Islam is powerless to stop us and all the ravings of Muslim clerics around the world will never change that. What will change it is if we as a nation ever totally forget the God of our fathers, Who of course, is the only true God.

I personally believe Islam is doomed. God said in Isaiah 42:8 that He will not share His glory with another, and since the Muslims have made this a "holy war" to the glory of Allah, I have no doubt that the True Holy God will one day pass judgment on them. You can look all through end times prophecy and you will find nothing to indicate a Muslim presence. The armies invading Israel from the North foretold in Ezekiel 39 will be destroyed at the beginning of the Tribulation Period. The nations mentioned in that invasion are predominantly Muslim. God is going to hold Islam accountable one day.

They can threaten, warn, rant and rave all they want, but we are on the winning side.

Lance Patterson

What Does the Midterm Election Really Mean?
November 11, 2006

Last night on the BBC a news analyst trying to wax eloquent and explain the midterm elections in the US said, "The ideologues lost, and the realists won."

As is usual with politics the liberal left wing and their news media lackeys manage to twist, misuse, and redefine terms to their own benefit, and this is no exception. The analyst threw the term "ideologue" at conservatives as if it is something to be ashamed of, but an ideologue is simply an advocate of a particular ideology. Liberals are also ideologues, and the fact that they won this election does not necessarily make them realists. In fact, far from it.

There was very little realism in Nancy Pelosi's victory speech when she closed with the common political blessing, "God bless America." The Democrat party, particularly its liberal left wing, of which Pelosi is a leader, is not only anti-Christian, it is anti-God. It is not very realistic to call for God's blessings while you defy God's teachings, yea, His very existence, with every breath you take.

Neither is it realistic to try and scare the world into parking all cars and shutting off all air-conditioners in order to stop global warming, which, according to Al Gore is going to destroy the world by 2016. In 1970 these same environmentalists were warning that global cooling was going to take us into a new ice age by the year 2000. And even as 6000 delegates to the UN global warming conference taking place in Nairobi are meeting, we are having the coldest weather spell here that we've had in seven years. Denying global warming may have cost an Oklahoma Republican senator his job, but it does not prove the victor a realist.

Environmental issues are important to be sure, but preventing drilling for oil that could make America energy independent in order to save Alaska's pristine wilderness where nobody lives for a hundred square miles is not realism, it's stupidity.

The Democrat Party, which crucified Tom Foley for writing a dirty letter to a male page and called for an investigation against the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, is the same party that sat by and piously intoned that President Clinton's adulterous afair with a female page and his lying, not only to the public, but to the Congress, did not "rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors." That is not reality, that is hypocrisy.

This is the same party that will put you away for years for cruelty to animals, but won't budge one iota on a woman's alleged "right" to abort her baby on demand at any time during her pregnancy and have the government pay for it. They wring their hands over unwanted pregnancies and the inconvenience it causes to sexually active teens as well as adults, but they could care less about 45 million murdered babies. They want to spend millions to allow perverts and homosexuals to provide sex education (read "promote sex") to your children in the public schools, but they won't let you discuss the consequences of disease or teach abstinence as a safe alternative. That is not reality, that is destructive, murderous hedonism.

These people wave the flag and call themselves patriots all the while defending the "rights" of illegal aliens to freely invade our country, and walk all over and burn our flag. They complain that the Patriot Act and the war against terror are violations of the Constitution, yet for sixty years liberal, Democrat appointed judges have been overturning the Constitution by judicial fiat, which is itself illegal.

By the way, two border patrol agents in Texas were sued by an illegal, drug carrying alien who shot at them with a gun, and have been sentenced to eleven and twelve years in prison for violating the criminal illegal alien's rights. What about the rights of these American citizens who were doing their jobs protecting their country? Where was the outrage on the news services, or for that matter, in Congress by either side? This is not a realistic judicial system or border policy. It is insanity.

The liberal left tells us we can't have Christianity in the government or public schools by turning the phrase "separation of church and state" around to mean exactly the opposite of what Jefferson meant by it, and then they very authoritatively tell us that the Founding Fathers wanted it this way. The truth is these modern intellectuals have rewritten or ignored completely the Founding Fathers in order to overturn our history, our culture, our way of life, and our very Constitution. This is not realism, this is revolution.

There are two ideologies involved here. One is for a strong, influential America built on America's traditional Christian, moral and family values and ruled by our Constitution. The other is for a global community in which America's strength and influence declines, where open borders and international law take precedence over our own security and laws, and where our Constitution becomes irrelevant. This ideology is "tolerant" of every subversive, abusive, destructive and aberrant philosophy in the world, but will not stand for freedom loving, peace keeping, God fearing, patriotic, Christian Americans.

So why, after twelve years in power in the Congress, and six in the White House did the Republican Party suffer such a humiliating defeat? The Democrats will tell you that it was because of Iraq, and they successfully made that the issue of the election campaign. Yet, two years ago Iraq was what rolled President Bush to a second election victory.

No, what happened was this: The Democrats have been vilifying the "religious right" as if it is some kind of pariah. The Republican leadership, bowing to the criticism, moved toward the center trying to appeal to moderate Democrats, ignoring the religious right and forgetting that they were the swing voters that put them in power in the first place. As a result, they didn't get the vote of the religious right, and they didn't get the moderate Democrats either.

However, there may be a silver lining in this dark cloud. This could be a wake up call to the Grand Old Party to refocus on the issues that got them into power: balanced budget, lower taxes, energy independence, pro-life, pro family and Christian moral values, strong military, secure borders, and patriotism wrapped in love of country, not in meaningless, self-absorbed, self-promoting rhetoric. In other words, Reaganism. Reagan was a true realist, and re-adopting his ideology would truly be realistic.

Lance Patterson


Looney Tunes
January 29, 2009

Well have you followed all the looney tunes going on this last week? This economic stimulus package is about 90% pork and it all goes to the rich. Whatever happened to spreading the wealth around? Nancy Pelosi came out saying that condoms will stimulate job growth. HuH?? I don't believe I've ever heard anything quite as Freudian and insane as that.

How will 7 billion dollars to ACORN create jobs? Oh yeah, it will ensure that President Obama and all the other liberal community organizers will be able to entrench themselves in their positions forever. Is there some kind of conflict of interest there?

Today Al Gore told Congress that adding global warming to the stimulus bill will save the world from destruction. He flew to Washington in his own private jet in spite of the dangers that the exhaust emissions from his plane were causing global warming, but that's because his mission is so important he had to get there fast. He apparently really believes this stuff in spite of the fact that the last two winters were the coldest in 20 years (interpretation: global cooling has started) and this year is following suit. Some scientists in Europe have already begun to predict that we are about to enter another ice age. Let's see, the Green people were predicting that in 1970 too.

Isn't there something wrong with this cycle of thinking?

And did you hear the President speaking out against free speech this week? Just to make sure everybody stays in line Obama has warned Republicans not to listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. Me thinks he doth protest too much. He knows his policies couldn't stand up to serious examination in the court of ideas, so he wants to first deny first amendment rights to Conservatives by badgering people not to listen to them, which is the first step toward re-establishing the (Un)Fairness Doctrine to shut up talk radio.

At least the previously fiscally irresponsible Republicans didn't cave in today. In the House all Republicans plus 11 Democrats voted against the stimulus bill. Well, that's a positive step toward re-establishing the party's moral compass. Some economic guru on Hannity tonight was predicting that we will come out of the recession in a couple of years, but all the spending is going to result in sky high inflation by 2011 and 2012. In other words, Obama will be nothing more than a reincarnation of Jimmy Carter. This can only bode well for Republicans in 2012 if they can get their act together by then.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Lance Patterson

Administration Follies
February 6, 2009

Did you see the President's tirade last night at the Democrat retreat? There is no end to the foolishness of the new administration. His continuing pessimistic outlook for our future is discouraging to say the least, and that's an understatement. He was the "messiah" who supposedly had all the answers. He was Abraham Lincoln, JFK, and Ronald Reagan combined. He was going to bring change and a bright new day to America. Seventeen days into his administration it looks like an eternal night is about to fall on us.

Obama made a speech to the House Democrats at their annual retreat at a resort in Virginia and got quite animated. Raising his voice in anger he piously declared this stimulus package he wants passed is the only thing that can help America, and if it isn't passed our economy will collapse into a catastrophe from which it will NEVER recover.

Let's see. How serious can he and the Democrats be? They talk about making hard decisions concerning finances. They blast AIG executives for their half a million dollar retreat last November after getting their bail out check, and now will insist that CEO's of companies that get future bail outs will have to reduce their multi-million dollar salaries to $500,000. (Actually, that's not a bad idea!) But then they go on an all expense paid by the government retreat. And what kind of rooms do you think they're staying in, and what kind of food do you think they're eating in their mega-bucks buffets? They don't pay for it out of their salaries, they pay for it out of our tax dollars. How many hundreds of thousands is this costing?

These people aren't serious about fixing the national debt. Their interest is to entrench themselves forever with pork spending that will buy the votes of unintelligent, non-thinking people, who will smile all the way into a socialist state that will ultimately take away all their freedoms.

And they can no longer deny that socialism is the goal. Yesterday ultra left-wing liberal Congresswoman Maxine Waters, in defending the House spending bill, caught herself in the middle of the word socialist. It went something like this: "We have to pass this stimulus bill in order to have a sociali...." She stopped, then stammered looking for a word, and finally mumbled something to finish her sentence, trying to cover up what was coming out of her mouth.

That's what this is all about: socialism and the destruction of our free society. Why? Simple. So Democrats in power can live high on the hog in a dictatorial government in which they will tell you how much money you can or cannot have, what you can and cannot do, and in which no one will have a first amendment right to complain.

Think that's far-fetched? Pelosi and Reid have both been talking for months about a new Fairness Doctrine to shut down conservative talk radio, and in his speech last night the President referred to cable talk and the internet that are spreading lies about his program. It's a shot across the bow and no doubt the fight for our first amendment right of free speech is coming.

Obama's appointments continue to run into ethics problems. Another appointment has withdrawn over non-payment of taxes, and the nominee for Secretary of Labor also has tax-evasion problems. Then there is the assistant attorney general nominee, David Ogden. Ogden is an anti-family, pro-pornography defense lawyer who is against protecting children from sexual predators. How can he be depended upon to uphold the law?

This is the change Obama promised? Everybody in his administration is a crook or has some kind of skeleton in his closet.

He says he wants this stimulus package for the people. But in two weeks the support of the people for this bill has dropped from over 50% to less than 37%, and opposition has increased from 36% to 45%. Obviously the people are not real sold on this spending package, but the President and Democrat leaders are continuing to try and push it through. They don't care about the people!

The people are jamming the Senate and House switchboard with calls opposing the bill. So many, in fact, that the switchboard is effectively shut down. I know because I just tried to call and I can't get through.

History, of course, is something that is also foreign to Democrats. They keep referring to the current crisis as the worst since the Great Depression in the 30's. Actually, it hasn't even gotten as bad as the Carter recession of 79-80 yet. But today VP, Joe the plagiarizer Biden, referred to the Reagan recession of 82 as the worst since the Depression. Democrats are also fond of reciting the mantra that tax-cuts to stimulate the economy are a failed policy that has never worked. Obama is on TV right now as I write announcing his economic recovery team, and he just said it again. History is continually rewritten by those who don't know or understand it in the first place, or because they are intentionally lying to gain votes.

Reagan inherited Carter's recession and it took about two years for the country to fully recover from it, and then it grew into the longest peace time expansion of our economy in history. "Reaganomics" works. "Reaganomics" is what created four straight years of budget surpluses during the Clinton administration as well. Move forward to 2001. George Bush inherited the inflated bubble recession that burst in 2000 during Clinton's last year in office. Then 9/11 happened and again it took about two years for the economy to recover. And in spite of Republican greed and out of control spending led by President Bush, the economy grew for five years until the bubble burst last September.

So last night Obama self-righteously declared "I inherited this recession," as if that should somehow shut up his critics. First, nobody's blaming him personally for the current recession. The criticism is of his pork spending bill that will stimulate nothing. And second, the Democrats and their liberal media allies blamed both Reagan and Bush for the recessions they inherited, and never gave them a moment's rest from day one. So why should the new president think he should be above any opposition?

The simple fact is, government spending created this mess and more government spending is going to make it worse. They can't even keep track of what they've already spent. Did you see the report last night on the 350 billion that was doled out last November on the bail out? Seventy-eight billion, that's right, 78,000,000,000 is unaccounted for and nobody knows where it went. The "stimulus" package was a poor swan song for President Bush, but it was the Democrat controlled Congress that spent the money and lost the 78 billion. Can we really trust them with 800 billion more dollars?

I think not. This stimulus package is going to create a catastrophe if it goes through unchecked.

I'm glad I know the Owner of the cattle on a thousand hills.

Lance Patterson

Favorite Movie Star
February 9, 2009

The Harris Poll does a favorite movie star poll every year. In the last fifteen years, Clint Eastwood was in the top ten fourteen times, more than any other but one. One actor has reached the top ten every year in the last fifteen years. He was number one in 1995, number two five other times, and this year for the third time in the last four years he was number three, and he has never been lower than seventh. What is most incredible about this statistic is that this actor hasn't made a movie since 1976, and he's the only actor to make the list posthumously. By now you may have figured it out: John Wayne.

Makes you wonder what mainstream America's values really are. Martin Sheen, Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Danny Glover, Gwyneth Paltrow, those who blame America first, cavort with enemy dictators, who said they'd leave the country if President Bush was elected and then didn't leave; not one of them made the top ten even one time.

"There is no one who more exemplifies the devotion to our country, its goodness, its industry and its strengths than John Wayne." - President Ronald Reagan

I've never been asked to participate in one of these polls, but if I ever am, you'll know who my number one pick will be.

Lance Patterson

Tea Party
April 16, 2009

This afternoon we went to a tea party here in Springfield. When we arrived a little after four there were a couple hundred people there, but they kept drifting in and eventually several hundred people showed up, maybe close to a thousand. There were speeches made about the Fair Tax, the second amendment, immigration and border control, and some other things. Two hundred or more people lined up along Chestnut Avenue, a broad four lane with a turn lane at the corner where we were meeting, waving flags and banners. Cars and trucks honked in support as they went by bringing cheers from the crowd. Others milled about and a large group, including us, stood below a flatbed trailer where the speeches were made. They had petitions to sign, yard signs and bumper stickers to pass out. All in all we had a pretty good time. The only problem was most of the speakers were not accomplished speech makers and some of them were a little boring.

Of course, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the networks had very little coverage on it. On MSNBC some so-called expert gave his evaluation of it as being a little bit nutty. The host, uber left wing and truly hate-filled Keith Obermann mocked the tea parties showing that he and all his ilk have no understanding of true America, and asked, first you have a tea party, what's next, a civil war? That's to be expected from his kind. He's not interested in free speech, or even discovering what the tea party movement is about. Neither does he have a legitimate argument to make against it so he starts calling names. Typical leftist tactics.

What was more disappointing to me was the local channel ten news which is a Fox News affiliate. Their clip on the tea party in Springfield was very short, but they did show what was going on in Branson and even interviewed a few people there. But what the guy said about our party here was infuriating.

First he said several hundred people had gathered, at times blocking or impeding traffic on Chestnut. The guy obviously wasn't there himself. We were there for two and a half hours and not once did anyone cause any traffic to be impeded. It was a flat out lie. Then he made a comment about tea parties going on in several hundred cities around the country. Wrong! They were in over 2,000 cities around the country. Then he went on to make a comment about the "infamous" Boston Tea Party in 1773. Infamous, of course, implies something that is bad, which, of course, is a slam against the Patriots who founded the country in the first place. So much for objective news reporting. Oh, I forgot; over 90% of the media is Democrat and they are in BHO's pocket. Objectivity died when he began his campaign for president.

What was good to see, however, was the coverage on Fox News. They followed the tea parties all over the country and it was encouraging to watch Glen Beck at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas with literally several thousand people attending. The same was true for Hannity in Atlanta.

I think, and I hope, a movement has started that isn't going to stop. BHO, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest have bitten off too much and they've riled the homeland. This could be a good thing if the momentum continues to grow.

I hope you will get involved so we can take our country back from the godless party and reclaim our heritage as a Christian nation.

Lance Patterson

Terrorism
April 17, 2009

Did you know that I'm a terrorist? Well, actually you probably are too. The new head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Janet from another planet Napalitano, issued a report that said veterans, pro-lifers, and those who support the 2nd amendment, are a security threat and could be persuaded to become right wing extremist terrorists. If this doesn't give you an idea of how out of touch everybody in this administration is nothing will.

Napalitano ordered the word "terrorist" to no longer be used in reference to Islamic terrorists, but when it comes to right wing conservatives the word "terrorist" is okay.

So, by her definition that makes me a terrorist. I'm a veteran, I'm pro-life, and I'm a life member of the National Rifle Association. In fact, so is Jonathan. I've got a 14 year old terrorist running around in my house. (Of course, none of us can keep up with our 16 month old terrorist!)

I think what needs to happen next is that we organize terrorist tea parties around the country in response to DHS's accusations. We could have demonstrations on how to make bombs out of tea bags!@!!

The Lord must be coming soon. Our country has never been so irrational or off its rocker.

Lance Patterson

Apology Tour Continues
April 18, 2009

I can hardly contain myself. The president continues to apologize for the United States; this time for the drug war on the US/Mexican border. Then he loosened travel restrictions to Cuba and shook hands with Hugo Chavez with a big smile on his face. Yeah, he's bringing peace to the world through a change of policy all right. Instead of "peace through strength," now it's "appeasement through apology."

And where is all of this change getting us? French president, Sarkozy, was quoted this week as saying Obama is a delightful person, but NOT VERY INFLUENTIAL!!!! That's what we get for trying to appease everybody.

The president continues his anti-Christian crusade as well. Speaking at Georgetown University, which I believe was founded as a Catholic school, he insisted that a school emblem with a Christian logo written in Latin be covered up in the auditorium where he was to speak. He has also appointed to a circuit court in New York a judge who has ruled that you cannot pray to Jesus in public, but that it is okay to pray to allah. His Muslim faith is slowly becoming more apparent.

As if that wasn't enough, he then proceeded to order classified documents about interrogating prisoners released to the public. Why? It's an outright attempt to embarrass the Bush administration and the CIA by calling the procedures torture. The worst thing they did was water boarding, only three times, and all three occasions produced massive amounts of information which have helped to keep America safe from terrorist acts over the last several years. By exposing the CIA BHO is weakening our security, just as Clinton and Carter did before him.

And by the way, water boarding was not invented by the USA. It was used on US POW's in Vietnam, and was one of the "tortures" we were exposed to when I went to SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) school in 1985.

Oh, and remember all the criticism of wire tapped phone calls in the campaign last year? They accused Bush of tyranny and invasion of privacy and BHO promised to end the practice. But has he? NOPE. Instead, he is using the same law Bush used, only evidence is already turning up that BHO and DHS is using the wire taps to target conservatives and political opponents! The very thing they were accusing Bush of doing when he wasn't, they are now doing.

Let's see; Hitler's DHS was known as the Brown Shirts. Remember all the liberal comparisons of conservatives to Nazis? The truth is coming out and the real Nazis are the far left!

I wonder if Michael Moore has found his country yet. He obviously didn't like it when we were free.

Lance Patterson

Leadership
April 22, 2009

The weakness of the president as a leader continues unabated. After releasing certain memos about interrogation techniques without releasing memos that showed the valuable information obtained by using those techniques, the president said no one involved would be prosecuted for what he obviously considers crimes. Yesterday he waffled on that saying he would be open to prosecutions, but today he would not commit himself either way, saying it was up to the Attorney General to make the decision. Once again he follows the whims of leftist pressure, but then throws the responsibility off to someone else.

It is also interesting that he keeps finding it necessary when discussing national security to defend himself by saying he "is not naive." That is the kind of response that only one who is naive would feel he had to make.

He continues to insult his own country by sitting silently by while Marxist dictators rant against America's sins, and then acknowledges that we must confess to our own guilt. While he's thinking that his new apologetic approach to the world is going to give us world peace, the world is laughing at us because they don't have to do anything to tear us down anymore. He's doing it all himself.

The proper response to Chavez interrupting him while he was speaking to give him an anti-American book would have been to throw the book on the floor and start reminding Chavez and everyone else involved that it is the US buying their oil that keeps them alive, not to mention all the other things we do for the world without asking anything in return. But no, he "graciously" accepted the gift and the insult. Two months ago Chavez called him an ignoramus, but now Obama warmly shakes his hand as if it was nothing.

Obama is a personality cult. He thrives on being liked by people. That's why he never commits himself to any position, but casts the responsibility onto others so he won't make any enemies. His foreign policy is designed to do the same thing. He listens without challenging so that everyone will like him. But the result of all his arrogant self-serving feigned humility is no influence, no respect, and no true friends. No one outside his equally naive die hard supporters, liberal ideologues, and sold out left wing media hacks likes him.

He is not a unifier, neither is he a strong leader. Without a Pelosi and Reid and the Democrat Congress behind him he'd be accomplishing nothing. With the sold out Democrat Congress the only thing he is accomplishing is the destruction of our Constitution, our country, and our freedom.

But an even bigger problem at the moment is that the Republican Party has been unable to unify itself behind a strong leader who would take us back to constitutional, Christian, and family values.

Our country right now is foundering in blind followers behind blind leadership. And that's going to take us right into the ditch if not over the cliff.

Lance Patterson

Dandelions
May 5, 2009

Today I finally got around to some long overdue yard work. Our lawn is overrun with dandelions. A couple weeks ago I sprayed weed poison on as many as I could, but there were so many that I used up a gallon container before I got all of them sprayed. Then last week it rained most of the week and I haven't been able to get at them until today. This morning I took hoe and spade in hand and began digging out the dead roots, a task that took over two hours (and I still didn't get all of them) and then I mowed the tall, still damp grass.

Did you ever take a close look at a dandelion? You first notice them when a little yellow bloom adds a brief beauty to your yard. But after a few days the bloom disappears in favor of grayish-white seeds and long slender stalks rise for the wind to catch the seeds and spread them all over the lawn. What's left are ugly, skinny stalks and even uglier broad green leaves that at first corrupt your yard, and if left untreated, eventually overwhelm and kill all the grass leaving your once beautiful lawn overgrown with weeds.

While I was digging up the dead roots this morning something else caught my attention. The long, tall dandelion stalks are hollow. There is just enough stem to draw water up to the flower, but no substance to give it depth or permanence. The whole purpose of its existence is to hang on just long enough to spread its seeds and wreak its havoc, and then leave everything in ruins.

The president is a dandelion. Oh he sounds good when he's reading a teleprompter, but he has no character or substance to give himself depth or permanence. He campaigned more as a centrist, but as soon as he was elected his true colors came forth and he "transmogrified," as Calvin would say, back into the ultra left wing liberal that he's always been. First he scared the country to death predicting a depression if the government didn't act, but after his 787 billion dollar stimulus bill was passed and his 1.2 trillion dollar deficit spending package was submitted to Congress, he started sounding like a conservative, talking about the hard choices we have to make to tighten our belts and spend money responsibly in order to recover from the financial crisis we are in. On the surface he sounds like the beautiful, yellow flower, but underneath he's a hollow stalk spreading his seeds and wreaking his havoc.

Congress is also a dandelion. I received an e-mail from our Missouri Democrat senator, Claire McCaskill, in response to a letter opposing the proposed budget. She said that Congress has worked hard to tighten its belt and cut 15 billion dollars from the current budget proposal. Considering the deficit they are proposing is 1.2 trillion, almost three times higher than Bush's worst budget deficit, 15 billion is monopoly money.

Do you know there are Christians who are dandelions. They talk a good talk about "faith in God," but they don't walk the real walk of a close relationship with Jesus Christ. Their faith is a hollow stem with no substance; words without actions; appearance with no convictions. If we want to change America we've got to be more than dandelion Christians. We've got to have spiritual convictions rooted in the Word of God; convictions that will stand firm and not waver in the wind of every false doctrine that blows by. And we've got to have political convictions rooted in the Constitution; convictions that will stand on the substance of the rule of law and not the hollow-stemmed whims of liberal, activist judges, or the emotional feel-good impossible promises that come from a silver-tongued "orator" (even if he can't speak without a teleprompter).

Lance Patterson

History
June 5, 2009

Today Obama told the Egyptians that he is a student of history and that Islam provided the enlightenment that led to the European Renaissance. As a true student of history, as opposed to a revisionist non-student of history, I will tell you that Islam was prevented from invading western and northern Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732. If they had been successful Europe would no doubt be as primitive and uneducated as most of the Middle East is today and no Renaissance would ever have taken place. The president is an absolute fool.

BHO knows nothing about history. He is a more consumate liar than Bill Clinton. When Joe the Plumber suggested his polices were socialist he laughed and mocked such an idea, but his intent is so obvious to remake America into a socialist country that it can no longer be denied.

By playing the race card BHO is creating a racially divided nation that will be ruled indefinitely by minorities who have no consideration for the Constitution or rule of law. What he is doing in consolidating his power is very similar to how Hitler remade Germany in the 1930's.

It also bears a remarkable similarity to Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. When Marcos's tow terms as president were up, he manufactured a crisis, declared martial law, and held on to power for 20 years. I don't pretend to be a prophet, but my guess is, if America isn't smart enough to put a stop to BHO's power grab in the next election cycle, in eight years he will provoke something to establish himself as president indefinitely.

Benjamin Franklin's warning that America will never be conquered from without, but will collapse from within is happening before our very eyes. Is the nation so blind it can't see it? If the main stream media, which has sold their souls to BHO are any indicator, the nation is blind. Left wing extremists, minorities and liberals looking for handouts are blind.

And what about the rest of us? Are we asleep? If we don't wake up now, we'll wake up one day to find ourselves enslaved to a marxist dictator with all of our freedoms gone. What then?

No, the better question is, "What now?" Now the silent majority better get involved in the polictical process as well as the spiritual process and uphold true constitutional values, not the ones BHO, Pelosi and Reid so sanctimoniously talk about, and true spiritual values as taught in the Scriptures, not the Koran. We need to stop pussy-footing around when it comes to expressing our opinions and beliefs. Political correctness can go to blazes. Its only purpose is to stifle conservative free speech. It is time for conservatives to speak up, speak the truth, and stop worrying about who is offended.

I'm offended by BHO. I'm offended by socialism. I'm offended by pro-murder abortionists and NARAL and the ACLU that defends them. I'm offended by Islam that considers America the Great Satan. I'm offended by a Supreme Court nominee who will judge based on her racist upbringing rather than the Constitution.

I'm offended by ambulance chasing lawyers who have turned our judicial system into a joke. I'm offended by atheists and Darwinists. I'm offended by pseudo-science taught by ungodly, humanist, propagandist educators who think they are smarter than God. I'm offended by those who dare to rewrite our history and say we are not, nor have we ever been a Christian nation. I'm offended by those who accuse Christians of being intolerant. It is only because of the tolerance of our Christian founders and the Christian influence through our history that intolerant beliefs such as Islam have been allowed in America at all.

It is time we stand up for our freedom before it is lost forever. It is time to defend the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees, not the phony rights created by activist, liberal judges who overturn the Constitution every chance they get. It is time to stand up without apology for our Christian heritage. That's what made us a great nation. Islam had nothing to do with it. African animism had nothing to do with it. Polytheistic Asian religions had nothing to do with it. Native American peyote religions had nothing to do with it. Christianity is what made America great and if we don't get back to it we're lost.

The time to start turning this around is now. The time to start preparing for the next election is now. I'm sick to death of hearing people say, "I never discuss religion or politics." That's the stupidist thing anybody could ever say. Religion and politics are the two most important things you can discuss. Religion determines your eternal destiny, but politics determines what kind of lifestyle you're going to live for the rest of this life. Start talking up conservative ideals, exposing the hypocrisy of the current government, supporting conservative candidates, and for heaven sakes make sure you vote every time there is an election.

And I've got more to say too!

Lance Patterson

Are We Asleep?
June 10, 2009

Last week after I caught the news sound bite of BHO's speech in Cairo I was so furious that I started writing on Facebook. I don't have all my addresses entered into my new laptop yet, so I was on Facebook, but it was too slow going so I finally gave up. Now that I'm home I'm going to rewrite it, and add some more because so much has happened in just a few days. This might be a little long, but it's been awhile since I've written and there's a lot on my mind. So, enjoy, or not.

Last Thursday, Obama told the Egyptians that he is a student of history and that Islam provided the enlightenment that led to the European Renaissance. As a true student of history, as opposed to a revisionist non-student of history, I will tell you that Islam was prevented from invading western and northern Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732 and had nothing to do with the Renaissance. If they had been successful Europe would no doubt be as primitive and uneducated as most of the Middle East is today and no Renaissance would ever have taken place.

But it didn't stop there. He went on to attribute just about every great accomplishment in history to the Muslims. They invented algebra, the compass and the printing press, and have given us great music and architecture in great arches and spires. What??????? What history is he reading? The ancient Greeks invented algebra, the Chinese invented the compass, and Gutenberg, a German, invented the moveable type printing press in 1456. What great music? Can you name one Muslim composer of any significance? I've heard their music. You can't even write it down on staff paper. It contains only a melody that rambles all over the place, and if there are any musical instruments involved, they ramble on just the same, not in harmony, but just making noise. And what architecture? The only thing Islam has given us are minarets and domed mosques.

The president is an absolute fool. He knows nothing about history. He is a more consummate liar than Bill Clinton. When Joe the Plumber suggested his policies were socialist he laughed and mocked such an idea, but his intent is so obvious to remake America into a socialist country that it can no longer be denied.

By playing the race card BHO is creating a racially divided nation that will be ruled indefinitely by minorities who have no consideration for the Constitution or rule of law. What he is doing in consolidating his power is very similar to how Hitler remade Germany in the 1930's. It also bears a remarkable similarity to Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. When Marcos's two terms as president were up he manufactured a crisis, declared martial law, and held on to power for 20 years. I don't pretend to be a prophet, but my guess is, if America isn't smart enough to put a stop to BHO's power grab in the next election cycle, in eight years he will provoke something to establish himself as president indefinitely.

Interestingly enough, he's playing both sides of the isle. He's Hitleresque in his take over of the government, but he's also the Neville Chamberlain of our time. In 1938 the Prime Minister of England, Chamberlain, went to Munich and met with Hitler. He gave up Czechoslovakia to the Nazis with the promise that England and Germany would never go to war with each other and returned home saying he had achieved "peace in our time." A year later World War II erupted.

Obama has discarded the "Carry a Big Stick" philosophy of Teddy Roosevelt, and the "Peace through Strength" philosophy of Ronald Reagan in favor of the same old left wing Chamberlain drivel that we can keep the peace by negotiations and showing our good will. On his first apology tour through Europe, while he talked about nuclear arms reductions, the North Koreans exploded a bomb and fired a missile over Japan. They have become increasingly belligerent as the days go by. Now just after he gave his speech in Cairo Islamic terrorists (whom he refuses to call terrorists) blew up a western style hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan. The left wing main stream Obama press immediately called it a Taliban attack, but nobody has claimed responsibility for it yet. Just as likely it's Alqaeda's response to the olive branch BHO is handing them.

BHO was quick to criticize Bush because Iran was on the brink of nuclear power. Now as they get closer he tells them they have a right to nuclear power as long as it is for peaceful use. Who is he kidding? Iran is the number one promoter and supporter of terror around the world. Does anybody think they will only use nuclear power for peaceful means? They want to destroy Israel.

And by the way, if nuclear power is good for Iran, why isn't it good for us? All the idiot green people want clean energy. Nuclear power is the cleanest energy there is. Why can't we use it?

What the left doesn't understand, and has never understood because they don't study history is that the only way to deal with terrorists is to show them you have the resolve to blow them all to hell if they don't back off. What the world sees in BHO's apologies for America's greatness is weakness and just like a wild dog, when it senses weakness it attacks.

The Muslim world is laughing at us, but the formerly socialist/communist world is warning us to stop heading in the direction we are going. Have you seen the Pravda article that came out last week? Pravda was formerly the propagandist tabloid of the Soviet government. They ran an article that describes America as going the same way the USSR went and warning us to change directions before we destroy our economy the way the USSR did. Saturday elections were held all over the EU, and while BHO was over there telling everybody to follow his lead, French president, Sarkozi, and German chancellor, Angela Merkel, rejected his advice, and conservative democrats were elected in countries all over Europe in repudiation of the socialist governments that have been driving them into the poor house. China is so scared that our economy is going to collapse that they won't give us any more loans. It seems that Americans are the only people in the world that can't see through BHO's policies.

Benjamin Franklin's warning that America will never be conquered from without, but will collapse from within is coming to pass before our eyes. Is the nation so blind it can't see it? If the main stream media, which has sold their souls to BHO are any indicator, the nation is blind. Left wing extremists, minorities and liberals blindly accept what is happening because they are looking for handouts, the free ride into utopia that BHO promised.

But what about the rest of us? Are we asleep? If we don't wake up now, we'll wake up one day to find ourselves enslaved to a marxist dictator with all of our freedoms gone. What then?

No, the better question is, "What now?" Now the silent majority better get involved in the political process as well as the spiritual process and start to uphold true constitutional values, not the ones BHO, Pelosi and Reid so sanctimoniously talk about, and true spiritual values as taught in the Scriptures, not the Koran. We need to stop pussy-footing around when it comes to expressing our opinions and beliefs. Political correctness can go to blazes. Its only purpose is to stifle conservative free speech. It is time for conservatives to speak up, speak the truth, speak it loud, and stop worrying about who is being offended.

I'm offended by BHO. I'm offended by socialism. I'm offended by pro-murder abortionists and NARAL and the ACLU that defends them. (And NO, I don't support the dope that murdered the abortion provider last week.) I'm offended by Islam that considers America the Great Satan. I'm offended by a Supreme court nominee who will judge based on her racist empathy rather than by the Constitution.

I'm offended by ambulance chasing lawyers who have turned our judicial system into a joke. I'm offended by atheists and Darwinists. I'm offended by pseudo-science taught by ungodly, humanist, propagandist educators who think they are smarter than God. I'm offended by those who dare to rewrite our history and say we are not, nor ever have been a Christian nation. I'm offended by those who accuse Christians of being intolerant. It is only because of the tolerance our our Christian founders and the Christian influence through our history that intolerant beliefs such as Islam have been allowed in America at all.

I'm offended that my sister-in-law has waited patiently for eleven years to immigrate legally to the United States while the leftists in Congress, Bush and McCain included, want to give amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens and give them free health care, schooling and social security. And I'm offended that Congress, sitting in their ivory palaces in Washington, D.C., are so out of touch with reality that they won't build the border fence that they signed into law in 2006.

I'm offended by a president who calls himself a "Christian," but who refuses to even acknowledge, much less participate in, a national day of prayer, but is quick to quote the Koran when speaking to Muslims.

I'm offended by a president who in 100 days has spent us into more debt than all 43 presidents before him accumulated in over 200 years. I'm offended that this hypocrite now tells us we have to tighten our belts and pay as we go. He obviously has never learned that the best leadership is by example. He has lost his credibility and his "moral" platform to tell us anything about spending money. I'm offended by all the liars that tell us "Reaganomics," which is free market capitalism, doesn't work, and that the 80's had the worst economy in 50 years. Under Reagan the economy sustained the longest peacetime expansion in our history. It is the answer to our economic problems now.

It is time we stand up for our freedom before it is lost forever. It is time to defend the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees, not the phony rights created by activist, liberal judges who overturn the Constitution every chance they get. It is time to stand up without apology for our Christian heritage. That's what made America a great nation. Islam had nothing to do with it. African animism had nothing to do with it. Polytheistic Asian religions had nothing to do with it. Native American peyote religions had nothing to do with it. Christianity is what made America great and if we don't get back to it we're lost.

It's time we stop apologizing to the world and start reminding them of all America had done for the world. The USA saved the world from totalitarian dictatorships twice in the 20th century, and then freed much of the world from communism by winning the Cold War. There are only four serious communist governments left in the world; China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba, and China has adopted a limited capitalist economy because socialism didn't work, and China thrives because Bill Clinton sold our economy to them. American grain feeds starving people in scores of countries around the world. We give billions in aid propping up poor, corrupt governments while they bite the hand that feeds them. America is the great benefactor of most of the world, including Muslim nations, and it is time we stop feeling guilty about it and start demanding some respect.

The time to start turning this around is now. The time to start preparing for the next election is now. I'm sick to death of hearing people say, "I never discuss religion or politics." That's the stupidest thing anybody could ever say. They are the two most important things you can discuss. Your religion determines how you will live in eternity, but your politics determine how you will live now. Start talking up conservative ideals, exposing the hypocrisy of the current administration, supporting conservative candidates, and for heaven sakes make sure you vote every time there is an election.

Let me recommend a book that every American should read. It's called, Liberty and Tyranny, by Mark Levin. It lays out very concisely and accurately what America is, where we came from and how we got here. We can take America back.

But lest this all sounds discouraging, let me give you a personal illustration. If you've heard me preach this year you may have already heard this, but it bears repeating.

When I graduated from college I applied to the US Navy for an officer program, but I was turned down because my degree was from Bob Jones University. So I took my application across the hall to the Marine Corps and they said there was no problem with BJU. I became a Marine and went through flight school and became a pilot. Four years later the Navy was short of pilots and came to the Marine Corps looking for help. I was one of 200 junior pilots out in Yuma, Arizona that asked to transfer over.

I had no desire to go into the Navy then and when I met the detailer I was assigned to I told him I wasn't interested. I was flying A-4s, I was shore based, and I was content. He told me he could give me A-4s and shore based orders and when I asked him where he said, "The Philippines."

Before I graduated from BJU I took the mission course at Baptist Bible College, and the first thought that went through my mind was "mission field." I knew that's what the Lord wanted me to do, so I went into the Navy, spent two years in the Philippines, and joined a Baptist church where I met Lhey. When I returned to the States I put in my letter to resign, but a certain Navy captain took a liking to me and asked what orders I would take to stay in. I told him I would go back to the same squadron in the Philippines. I didn't think it was possible, but two weeks later I had orders to the Philippines so I rescinded my resignation and went back over.

On the second tour Mt. Pinatubo erupted and there were 100,000 refugees in a camp outside our city. Our church gathered food and clothes and every Saturday I drove a group of us out to the camp to give away the goods and share the gospel. About 200 people were saved and when they were able to go home and start rebuilding we were able to help two groups of them start churches, and put up a building for one of them. Our church then planted another church east of town and I was able to help that pastor buy land and build a building, as well as preach for him. Then Lhey and I started a Bible study in a Negrito village in the jungle and we would go out there every Sunday morning before going to church.

So, basically what happened was this: the Navy turned me down for what amounts to nothing less than a policy of religious persecution. Four years later they wanted me for carrier operations, but at my demand they gave me shore based orders, not once, but twice to the same squadron, something that almost never happens, and which did not meet their need for carrier pilots, and I got on the field training in mission work, and the Navy paid for the whole thing.

God got even with the Navy for its policies and glorified His Name in the process.

The other day the editor of Newsweek Magazine described the reaction of the audience in Cairo to BHO's speech. He said they looked at him as if he were a god. Now I've mentioned it before about the comparisons of Obama to the Messiah, but I'll say it again. This president better be careful how he reacts to such comparisons. In Acts 12:20-23, Herod got up to speak and the people said he sounded like the voice of a god. God immediately struck him with a disease and he died.

Unless Obama is the coming antichrist, I don't see how God would let this Audacity go unpunished for very long. But whether he is the antichrist or not (and I don't really think he is) it is not hard to see how easily the world will fall at the feet of the antichrist when he does show up.

The fact is, the world is heading to an inevitable end and God is in control of everything that is happening. So this is not a time to worry, but a time to be excited about what God is doing in the world and what He is or can be doing in your own life.

Now I know this has been long and I beg your patience, but I haven't written in a long time and I'm catching up. But let me finish with the verse of a song I learned a few months ago. The song is called, Every Step, and the chorus goes like this:

Every step that I have taken, Every valley I've walked through, I have seen that your grace cannot be shaken. Every step brought me closer, Lord, to you.

Surely, God's grace cannot be shaken, and it is sufficient to all of our needs. It will carry us through the trials we face day to day, and one day it will take us to glory.

Lance Patterson

One More Thought
June 11, 2009

There was one more thing I wanted to say and realize I forgot it.

Our self-proclaimed historian president seems to have forgotten that the battle cry of the American Revolution was, "No taxation without representation."

BHO told us that 85% of Americans were going to get a tax cut. In January when questioned about it he said our $400 single and $800 married stimulus checks were being written at that very moment. Have you seen yours yet?

No, nobody has. But what we're hearing all the time is how they are going to raise taxes to pay for the new universal health care plan. One of the possibilities being considered is a new ten cent tax per gallon on gasoline.

Let's forget about our Founding Fathers. How about George Bush I in 1988. "Read my lips; NO NEW TAXES." Then in 90 he raised taxes, a recession followed, and he got voted out in 92.

George Santayana, the famed historian, said, "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." BHO is repeating history on the grandest scale history has ever seen.

Hopefully the end result of this is going to be the same thing that happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Lance Patterson

Remembering Two Great Americans
June 11, 2009

Five years ago today the greatest president of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan, was laid to rest at his presidential library in Simi Valley, California. Lest we forget, Reaganomics turned the Carter recession of 1980 around and gave us six years of economic growth. It was Reagan's hard hand, moral high ground and military build up that forced Gorbachev to start Perestroika and Glasnost in the USSR. Let us also not forget that those programs were not designed to dismantle the Soviet Union as Time magazine so piously announced when they named Gorbachev man of the decade in 1990. Those programs were designed to try and rescue the Soviet Union from its impending economic collapse, and they did not work.

The Soviet Union came apart in 1991 and ceased to exist on Christmas Day of that year. What a fitting day that was, and a fitting gift from God to all the world that the atheist USSR disappeared from history. But it happened as Reagan predicted it would. Reagan always had a positive vision for the future of America, and if we can get the conservative movement in America and the Republican Party back to Reagan's policies, maybe "there will always be a brighter day ahead." I miss Ronald Reagan and all that he stood for in America.

The other one I miss passed off the scene thirty years ago today. Known as "Duke," he became the number one conservative in Hollywood at a time when communists were trying to take over the industry. He stood for the American value of liberty and was very loudly outspoken about his beliefs. He became an institution, a living legend, and a symbol of all that was great about America. Mostly through western films, John Wayne became America's quintessential hero.

Duke Wayne has received a lot of criticism, particularly by leftists, because he never served in the armed forces, and while other movie stars had enlisted he was still making movies and money in Hollywood. There is a very interesting story behind all that and I recommend another book to you called, "John Wayne; the Man Behind the Myth," by Michael Munn.

Munn is a British author who has no agenda in American politics, but had several personal interviews with John Wayne and many other Hollywood figures who knew him well. The truth of John Wayne's military service is this. He was deferred from the draft because he had four children. Still, the criticism goes, other movie stars enlisted and served even though they had large families. The fact of that is, most of them wound up serving in rear echelon service areas and not on the front lines. Only Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable of already established movie stars at the time actually went into combat. John Wayne did try to enlist, but he was an up and coming star at Republic studios and he had a long term contract which the studio would not allow him to get out of. And because of his four children the government would not draft him. So he became the number one cheer leader for the American effort in the war through his movies.

More importantly, John Wayne was such a huge rallying figure for America, that both Joseph Stalin in 1950, and Mao Tse-Tung in the 60's put contracts out on him. In a very interesting real life story, John Wayne helped FBI agents capture his intended assassins from the USSR. On another occasion, Yakima Canutt, the greatest of all movie stunt men, put his stable of stunt men on the prowl looking for more agents and caught two of them at Durango, Mexico, where John Wayne was making a movie. It was Nikita Krushchev who finally called off the contract after he met John Wayne and the Duke told him what he thought of communism.

The stories are verified by interviews with Yakima Canutt, Peter Cushing, and other notable movie stars including Orson Welles, who was as far left a liberal as anybody and no friend of John Wayne. But there were many in Hollywood who knew the stories. John Wayne kept it all a secret so that his family wouldn't be worried!

Don't let anybody fool you. John Wayne deserves to have his face on Mt. Rushmore along with Ronald Reagan. And I hope they are both resting in peace.

Lance Patterson

Prophecy
June 14, 2009

Last October the prophet, Joe Biden, warned that Obama would be tested in his first six months as president. It was a prediction so obvious that anybody could have made it, which makes you wonder if the prophet Biden plagiarized it. Everybody in the world except liberal Democrats knew that BHO would be a weak president and rejoiced when he was elected. Now the belligerent little nothing state of North Korea is threatening to go to war with the US.

There's a simple answer to this but I doubt that the president with all his experience as a community agitator will be able to see it. But I would like to ask him a couple of questions.

What are you going to do Mr. President? Do you think more apologies will help? Oh no, I wasn't thinking. Surely all your Muslim friends will come to our aid now that you've confessed to them how bad we are. I mean, they've done so much to make the world a better place already.

It makes me wonder, Mr. Student of History, what history books you've been reading? Oh, I forgot again. You learned your history from Muslim teachers in Indonesia. No wonder you learned to hate America so much. And no wonder you've never been able to connect the dots in historical patterns and learn from the past you claim to study. But then, you're not the only one who has failed to figure this out, neither are you the only American (if, that is, you really are an American) who hates America. The esteemed educators in our universities who turn out little liberal clone graduates all across the fruited plain hate America too. It's funny how most of them seem to be Democrats.

Let's see, North Korea was silent for nearly forty years until Bill Clinton became president. He immediately offered them an olive branch but in 94 they started making trouble. Clinton said he couldn't understand why and sent Jimmy Carter, the one with peanuts for brains, to North Korea to give them four billion dollars and the ability to make a nuclear reactor so they would behave themselves. I wonder what it was they used that nuclear reactor for? Oh yeah, they built an atom bomb!

By the way, did you notice that when the Republicans got control of Congress North Korea kept quiet for twelve years until the Democrats regained control in 2006, and then waited until Bush was out of office to start threatening war against us? Is there a pattern here?

I don't know. Since I didn't study the same history books you did maybe I've got it all wrong. I sure wish the prophet Biden would let us know what's going to happen in the next six months.

Lance Patterson

Prophet Status
June 15, 2009

Well, it looks like Joe Biden is no longer in touch with God, if he ever was that is. With North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il still threatening war and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak coming to the US tomorrow to meet with BHO, Biden declared that "God only knows what [Kim] wants.... We can't guess his motives." Golly Joe, it must be hard to lose your prophet connection so quickly. We were sure hoping you had the answers, because your messiah god president sure doesn't look too omniscient these days.

Lance Patterson

Icons
June 27, 2009

When Elvis Presley died in 1977 I heard for the first time the superstition about celebrities and famous people dying in threes. Within weeks Bing Crosby had a heart attack while playing golf in Spain, and then the actor who played Mr. French on the Family Affair program, Sebastian Cabot, died. The idea of threes intrigued me and I've watched ever since to see if it holds up.

Occasionally it does. When John Wayne died in 1979 two other famous personalities passed away in the next two weeks; Darla Hood, the love interest of Alfalfa in Our Gang, and the silent screen megastar, Mary Pickford. In July 1997 Hollywood lost a trio of major stars when Jimmy Stewart and Robert Mitchum died the same week and 14 days later Brian Keith committed suicide. Only a month later we were all shocked at the sudden death of Princess Diana. Then in September Red Skelton passed away and about six more weeks later John Denver died in an airplane crash. Those three were spread out a little more so it kind of stretches the threesome idea. In June of 98 the two singing cowboys, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, died within days of each other, but there wasn't a third to join them.

This week the superstition came "alive" again (excuse the play on words) with the passing of Ed McMahan on Tuesday, and then Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson on Thursday. Farrah Fawcett was an icon in the 70's with her hair, Charlies Angels and the most famous poster in the world. Any other time her death would have received at least a modicum of attention, but the announcement of her passing had barely hit the wires before it was overshadowed by the news of Michael Jackson and she's already forgotten.

For almost two days now all we've seen on the news everywhere is Michael Jackson. I'm sorry for the guy. He was a talented performer but he became a freak. The way it's being covered his death is turning into the same media circus that his life was. He was the kind of guy you wouldn't want to leave your kid alone with, and yet he became an iconic figure with a cult following world wide, a following much bigger than Obama may ever hope to have.

And that's the problem. You would think that the world stopped while we sit on the edge of our seats following every minute event around Jackson. But while we've been distracted on this the House of Representatives yesterday passed the Cap and Trade bill. The bill is so bad that at least 45 Democrats saw through the global warming hysteria to vote against it. It took eight Republican traitors to pass it. This bill by all accounts is going to raise our taxes on energy, in some areas as much as $3,000 a year. Let's see, didn't BHO promise 95% of us would get a tax cut, and nobody would raise taxes?

This thing isn't about global warming. Average world wide temperatures have dropped slightly for the last three years in a row. The man made "crisis" is already over. But certain people have invested in alternate fuel sources and they stand to make mega bucks if this passes. Who? Let's see, Al Gore for one! Pelosi for another, and surprise, surprise, one of the sponsors of the bill, Merkey. The bill still has to pass the Senate so there's still hope it will be stopped.

The events of the last two days have to make you wonder if the whole world has gone mad. The media, Fox News included, is falling all over itself in almost shameless worship of someone who was absolutely weird except that he could sing.

But it does illustrate the days we are living in. When the antichrist does finally step onto the world scene he's not going to have any trouble convincing people to follow him. Everyone's going to be too busy watching the latest celebrity antics to even care.

Lance Patterson

Happy Fourth
July 4, 2009

Howdy Partners,

(It being the fourth of July I thought it might be better to give you a good old western American greeting rather than my normal Kenyan greeting, 'hamjambo.')

First, let me wish my cousin, Sharon, a happy birthday. She is so patriotic that she couldn't be born on any other day. What's it feel like to be 60? We've been praying for her son, Zach. He is taking chemotherapy for cancer, yet through his trial he has been posting on his blog the most thoughtful, insightful, and encouraging comments about his ordeal and how it is affecting his relationship with the Lord. Please continue to pray for Zach and his family.

Our celebration started last night when our neighbors started shooting off their fireworks. I was surprised how many places around Springfield started early. We could see three shows from our front yard, and on the other side of town a Pentecostal church sponsored a mega show that drew 125,00 people. That's more people than live in this city I think. With that early beginning you have to wonder what's going to happen tonight. Patriotism isn't dead in our corner of the country.

I started my own celebration at midnight by watching a great American western, Big Jake. If you don't already know, I'll give you one guess who stars in that! This morning I forced myself awake with a cup of joe in my 13 ounce John Wayne coffee cup.

It being Independence Day I was reflecting a little bit on America in my devotions this morning and trying to figure out how in the world we ever got to where we are today. I listen to Rush, Sean and Glenn Beck as much as I can these days because when we leave for Kenya two weeks from now we aren't going to get them anymore. They all offer reasons for the insanity going on in our country, but they all seem to overlook two key events that changed the course of America philosophically.

We've left behind our Judeo-Christian roots. We're forsaking the intentions of our Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Glenn Beck blames it on the Progressive Movement which is Marxist to the core and is becoming more and more an openly brazen attempt to overthrow liberty in this country. They all point to the power grab by BHO and greedy, selfish leftists who control the government. To top it all off, we now have a boring, two-bit comedian, who couldn't compete in the political arena on radio or in print, and couldn't win an election without stealing it and having it confirmed by a partisan Democrat court, sitting in the US Senate. What better way to define the joke that our government has become.

The Progressive Movement started about a hundred years ago. Woodrow Wilson, understanding the power that came with the power to tax, got the first income tax passed into law in 1913. It was promised never to be more than 1% of our income or something like that, but as with every government bureaucracy the IRS grew into a monster. FDR, another progressive, then filled the courts with liberal justices which led to the Felix Frankfurter Court ruling in 1947 that turned the phrase "separation of church and state," on its head to mean exactly the opposite of what Jefferson had intended when he penned it in 1802. Separation of "state from church" became a "constitutional right" and has been the foundation of jurisprudence for over sixty years.

The two events I'm referring to that are almost never mentioned, however, are the 1962 and 63 decisions by the Earl Warren Supreme Court that threw the Bible and God out of the public school system. A cultural revolution followed that gave us the hippie movement, flower children, Timothy Leary spouting "Turn on, tune in, and drop out," the Beatles and drugs, the Rolling Stones and satanism, anti-war protests and Jane Fonda, and university hotbeds of liberalism and Angela Davis. Government no longer had a moral foundation, which led to a New Age movement with a "new morality" that began the dismantling of the family unit, and a feminist movement that was given a "right" to abortion which has now murdered as many babies as people were killed in World War II. Crime increased at every level and our public education, once the envy of the world, is now a propaganda system for the ultra leftist National Education Association, and has more drop-outs than ever before. Evolution, humanism and socialism are the important subjects. Capitalism, the foundation of our great economy, is called selfish and blamed whenever there is an economic downturn. Our foundational history can no longer be taught while our children are told that America is the great evil in the world, and environmental protection and Islam are more important subjects to learn that good citizenship.

Any honest cultural study of America will show that our major problems began with those two decisions but nobody in government has the courage to address them. Instead they offer homosexual promoting sex education and condoms and midnight basketball programs to keep kids off the streets, and then punish parents who dare administer spankings to disobedient children. Rather than reward hard work, diligence and achievement, they encourage mediocrity so nobody's self-esteem will be damaged. Rather than prepare young people to compete in a competitive world, they create welfare babies and tell them the government will take care of them from the cradle to the grave. Rather than teach responsibility and living within your means, they steal from generations to come and have a government so deep in debt due to greed, irresponsibility and corruption that it will never recover.

And now we are on the verge of a socialist takeover by an administration that is more forked-tongued than even Bill Clinton's. This was going to be the most transparent government in history. Every bill was going to be on a website for five days for the country to see before it was voted on. No lobbyists would be given a position in government. But there are more lobbyists in government positions now than ever before. The stimulus bill in February and the Cap and Trade bill last week, not only were not on any website to be reviewed, they weren't even read by Congress before they were voted on. And transparency? The windows on this administration are so tinted that everything is hidden.

BHO says he doesn't want to own or run the country's businesses, but he's almost got every major corporation under his thumb now. The government owns AIG and General Motors, controls Wall Street, and is forcing itself on states by forcing them to accept stimulus money. They practically own the housing market, and this cap and trade bill will for sure solidify that control. There is a provision in this bill for a "Green Police." Before you will be able to sell your home you will be forced to pass an environmental inspection by this green police force. If you don't pass you will be forced to spend thousands of dollars upgrading your windows, furnace, aircon, toilets and everything else to meet government standards. And no doubt you'll be charged for the inspection as well!

This completely exposes the marxist ideology of this administration. One of the things that has set America apart from the rest of the world is the ability of private citizens to own property. Your home is your castle. Of course the government has been encroaching on property rights for years through taxes, but this will give the government control of your land and your ability to sell it. More than anything else so far, I think this will mark the beginning of the end of liberty in America if cap and trade is allowed to pass the Senate and be signed into law.

What is so sad is how many people are so blind they can't see it. It is the result of what Clinton called the "dumbing down of America." Clinton, of course, blamed it on the conservatives for opposing whatever educational initiatives he wanted to pass, but conservatives aren't responsible for this. The dumbing down of America started when we removed God and the Bible from the classroom.

Clueless people use the "separation of church and state" argument to "prove" that the Constitution does not allow God or the Bible in the public arena. They deny the truth of our Christian founding and accuse conservatives of trying to overturn the Constitution by demanding true history be taught. My question to them is always this; If Christianity, God and the Bible were never a part of our history to begin with, why was it necessary for the Supreme Court to remove them from the public schools?

Not one liberal I've ever asked that question to has had an answer. But the answer is simple. The Supreme Court had to forcibly remove God and the Bible from public schools because God and the Bible had been an intricate part of our public education since the first colonists settled in this country.

I'm old enough (you know age is creeping up on you when you start saying that) to have been in school before those decisions were made. We used to sing My Country Tis of Thee and America the Beautiful in school, and one of the favorites in my class was God Bless America. In the fourth grade our class performed a live nativity scene for Christmas. Kids were chosen for all the biblical characters, and we all got costumes to play the parts. My best friend, Steve Cowan, and I were cows in the manger scene! I had no idea what church most of my other classmates attended, or if they even attended at all, but nobody complained, and we were all proud to be a part of the scene. My high school, South High in Denver, had an outstanding choir director, and the choir was so good that they performed all over the city. Their closing song was always, Let Us Break Bread Together. I wanted to join that choir when I got to high school, but by that time they were no longer able to sing that song.

Another thing that has been lost with God and the Bible is patriotism. In my early elementary years we said the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of every day, and we proudly stood and saluted to say it. By the time I reached the fifth grade we weren't saying it anymore. We used to stand at attention at the flagpole when the flag was raised every morning before school, but by the time I was in high school, another kid and I stopped while the flag was being lowered one afternoon after school, but nobody else did, and several kids laughed at us. The same thing happened when I was at Bob Jones which shows how much patriotism and respect for the flag has been lost even among conservative Christian people.

You may have seen the Red Skelton Pledge of Allegiance, where he quoted the original pledge and described its meaning as taught by a teacher he had as a child. Then he referred to the congressional decision in the 50's that added the words, "under God." He closed by saying, Wouldn't it be sad if somebody decided that was a prayer and banned the pledge from our schools too? Sadly, that's where we are today.

I was reading in Proverbs 4 this morning. Verse 19 says: "The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble." If that doesn't describe our leadership in America nothing does. In contrast verse 18 says: "But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."

You and I are the answer to America's problems. Christ is the true light that lights every man that comes into the world (John 1:9), but we are the candles that carry on that light (Matthew 5:14-16). About fifteen years ago I heard Charles Colson say that the problem with the conservative resurgence in the 80's was that we won the political battles but failed to win the hearts. He was right. Conservative, moral, biblical principles only work in the long run with true Christians, those who have accepted Christ as Savior. We may convince people of the need for fiscal responsibility, for respecting the sanctity of life, for Christian based public education and the true meaning of separation of church and state, and for historical truthfulness, but if we don't win them to Christ we get Governor Sanfords and all the other moral scandals that have rocked the Republican Party in recent years. We need to get back to our roots as a Christian nation.

My favorite patriotic song is America. Hymnbooks often say the music is an old traditional American folk tune, but actually, it comes from England. The tune is the National Anthem of Great Britain, but I like our version of it better. In England the song extols the monarchy. In America it places our foundation and our freedom on God. It compares love of country with the thrill of being in heaven. It encourages us to sing of our liberty throughout the land. Finally it acknowledges God as the Author of Liberty and praises Him as our Great God and King. The lyrics were written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831, while a student at Andover Theological Seminary. It was first performed on July 4, 1831.

Today as we celebrate our great country, our great history, and our great place in the world, let us remember that America's greatness comes from God. Not the false gods of Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, animism, Mormonism, or any other ism or cult. Our greatness comes from the Christian God, Jesus Christ, the one and only true God, and we do well not to forget the truth of who we are and how we got here.

My Country tis of Thee, Sweet land of liberty, of Thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain side, Let freedom ring.

My native country, thee, Land of the noble free, Thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills, Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze, And ring from all the trees sweet freedom's song.
Let mortal tongues awake, Let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.

Our father's God, to Thee, Author of Liberty, to Thee we sing,
Long may our land be bright, With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King.

Happy Fourth of July,

Lance Patterson

A New Cold War
July 6, 2009

I haven't listened to any radio talk shows yet today so I'm going to make a point and see what you think or if anybody agrees with me.

I've been listening to the speeches Medvedev and BHO have been making after signing another "historic" agreement. What they've agreed to do is to work out a new nuclear arms treaty for our mutual protection, and to have better relations in the future.

This kow-towing Jimmy Carteresque president is back to bowing down to Russia and signing away our security with nuclear arms reductions, and sitting by while Putin lectures him on Russian-American relations. Then when questioned by Fox News' Major Garret, the first interview he's given to a Fox News reporter, he explained his statement about the Cold War being won by many nations by saying the Poles under Lech Walesa and the Czechs under Vaclav Havel had a part to do in it as well.

The truth is those protest movements only succeeded because Ronald Reagan challenged the USSR and gave the protesters moral support. Without it they would never have succeeded, and those movements would have come to nothing. Yes they were small cogs that helped to bring down the Warsaw Pact, and the Berlin Wall was a part of that, but they only succeeded because the Soviets pulled their troops out of Eastern Europe, and that was the result of no one else's efforts but the USA.

Obama doesn't understand history or foreign relations and he's making us extremely vulnerable. My guess is they've just restarted the Cold War

Lance Patterson

July 4th Followup
October 31, 2009

Hamjambo,

A couple days ago I read an article in The National Review that pretty well corroborates what I wrote on July 4th this year. My contention is that the Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that removed the Bible and prayer, and banned God from the public school systems is the point at which our country left our Judeo-Christian roots behind to become a paganized, secular nation.

This article points out that in 1940 fewer than 4% of all US births were to unmarried women. That rate grew slightly over the next 20 years reaching 5.3% in 1960. Then came an explosion of illegitimate births, doubling in the 60's to 10.7% in 1970, 18.4% in 1980, 28% in 1990, 33.2% in 2002, and by 2007 nearly 40% (39.7%) of all births were to unwed mothers. Is there any correlation here?

A very telling statistic in the article is that among middle class whites the illegitimate birthrate in 2007 was close to 20%. Among Hispanics the out-of-wedlock births in 2007 was 51.3%, more than double what it was in 1980 (23.6%), but among blacks 71.6% of all births were to unwed mothers.

The article deferred to "experts" who attribute the cause to Great Society welfare programs that made unwed motherhood an economic feasibility, the cultural shift that triggered the sexual revolution, the loss of manufacturing jobs in urban areas, and an attitude shift that made non-marital childbearing more socially acceptable. All of these may have a part in the moral decay of Americans, but they are coincidental to the actual cause which the conservative writers of The National Review failed to pick up on. The day the government kicked God out of our public life marks the beginning of all of America's real problems. The meteoric increase in immorality, big government, the rise of the abortion industry, the feminist movement, the challenge to first amendment rights, particularly to religious liberty, and to second amendment rights along with a sharp rise in crime all began with those decisions.

The answer, of course, is not more social programs, neither is it found in Obamacare, or Obamachange. He is not the messiah as Louis Farrakan and others have declared. The answer is Jesus Christ and putting God back into our public discourse. The question, however, is whether there is still time for that to happen, or are we headed to the "ash heap of nations?"

I like to think there is still time and as long as the Lord tarries, we need to do all we can to influence our government to get back to its roots.

Lance Patterson

Ft. Hood Shooting
November 6, 2009

I was up late last night when I checked CNN and saw the breaking news about the shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas. At the moment seven were dead and 15 wounded. Wolf Blitzer was saying that it was important that we don't speculate about the cause. Then the president got on and made a comment and he said it was important not to speculate. What is it with liberals and catch words or phrases? As soon as one says something it becomes a mantra they all repeat, and they'll say it over and over for days or months on end.

Well, I felt like speculating. My first thought was that a Muslim did the shooting. It wasn't too hard to figure it out. Guess what? A Muslim did the shooting. But let's make sure we don't speculate about it. Today, or last night Stateside, Blitzer filled in for Larry King and did the program on the shooting. He had a psychologist and some others and they discussed what? They "speculated" on what might have driven this Muslim to do this. Of course, their answers included things like pressure from his piers because he is a Muslim drove him over the edge.

Not one of them speculated that it may have been because he is a devout Muslim whose loyalty is to Islam and not the Constitution of the United States and this was his way of striking a blow for allah against the great satan, the US. But that is the reason. The fact that the man shouted allah akbar before he started shooting proves it.

We just saw an interview with some Muslim spokesman in Washington on Al Jazeera TV. He complained that you never see religion brought into any other acts of violence. Nobody mentions synagogues and churches, but they always mention mosques and equate it with devout Muslims. Muslims are peaceful people and religion should be left out of this he said.

First of all, you don't see synagogues and churches brought into this because Jews and Christians don't do these kind of things. Secondly, many liberal congressmen and liberal media have made comparisons of Christians to Nazis and tried to make the churches look like terrorist organizations while ignoring that third, Islam world wide has declared the US the great satan and many Muslim nations are involved in terrorism. Figure it out. Who commits all these acts of terrorism? When was the last terrorist act you can remember that didn't involve a Muslim?

Follow that up with the news today that Iran has possibly detonated a small grade nuclear weapon. Yeah, it looks to me like this new policy of dialogue and making friends with those who hate us is really working.

We're not going to win this war on terror if we don't identify the enemy, and our leadership doesn't appear to have the slightest clue.

Lance Patterson

Health Care Bill
November 7, 2009

If you haven't heard, Pelosi scheduled the vote on the Socialist take over of America Health Care Bill, H.R. 3962, for tonight. There is so much grass roots pressure on Congress right now against this bill that she didn't have enough Democrat votes to pass it Thursday when it was first suspected it would be voted on. So she delayed the vote until late tonight when everybody has gone home and there is less pressure on the congressmen. If you have a chance, call your congressmen and tell them you are against this bill.

As more and more of this bill is revealed it becomes even more appalling than we even imagined. While Straddle the Fence Obama has publicly stated that his health care plan will not cover abortion or illegal aliens, this bill not only gives full coverage to abortion it places an abortion tax on everybody covered by it to pay for the abortion. It also specifically refuses to use E-verify to prove all those applying for benefits are citizens and not illegal aliens. Regardless of the president's promises (which we already know mean nothing) he will undoubtedly sign this bill if it passes the House and Senate.

For the sake of our country, for the sake of human life, for the sake of our Christian heritage and for the honor of God, this bill needs to be defeated. Make no mistake, the president, Pelosi, Reid, and all those trying to ram this thing down our throats don't care a lick about health care. They're making themselves exempt from it. They don't care about our history, our God, our values. This is a power grab designed to entrench them forever in dictatorial roles while they dismantle the Constitution and our freedom.

Keep the pressure on. Tell them to vote NO on the bill. Keep praying that God will knock some sense into enough of them to vote it down.

Lance Patterson

Home
November 7, 2009

Hamjambo,

Through our years as missionaries many people have asked us about our "home" in Kenya. When were on furlough people often say things like, "I bet you can't wait to get home to your work and the people you love," and "You must be anxious to get home," and other variants to the same idea. Just this last week a new missionary family here asked us if we consider this our home.

I was blessed growing up to have parents that loved to travel. My dad served in the Coast Guard and when his tour of duty in Portland, Maine was almost over my mom, expecting me already at the time, drove the car all the way home to Denver and waited for him there. I was already used to traveling before I was born. One of my earliest memories is a 1959 trip we took to San Diego for Dad to complete his reserve duty with the Coast Guard.

Dad used to love to camp out and fish and we went up to the mountains every summer. One time a bear wandered into our camp while dad was fishing and mom hid us in the car. In 1964 Mom took us to Great Falls, Montana with our friends, the Eppersons, to visit our friends, the Goods. We stopped at Custer Battlefield on the way and then got stranded when the Epperson's car got sideswiped and my grandparents drove all the way up to rescue us. We went home through Yellowstone National Park.

We went all the way to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 65 and to Baltimore in 66 where I got to see my first major league baseball game in DC. The Senators beat the Cleveland Indians 4-3 and Frank Howard hit a homerun. On the way home we saw Cincinnati defeat the Dodgers 3-1 in old Crosley Field. In 68 we went to Mesa Verde with Mom, and Dad flew us to Minnesota in his Cessna 172 where we got to see the Yankees play the Twins and I saw Mickey Mantle in person. In 71 Mom took us all the way to Maine and we stopped at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, and in 72 we spent three weeks on a pontoon boat at Lake Powell, Utah with Dad.

The point of all this rambling is that I developed a wanderlust that has never left me. I love to travel. It was my great privilege as a youth to see America coast to coast, and as an adult to cross two oceans and see the world. Every place has its own appeal: Japan is clean and quiet and the people are polite, and right in the middle of everything is this giant Mt. Fuji. Korea was less appealing. In the 80's it was an up and coming place with products that were mindful of Japanese products of the 60's. But it was a great place to shop and today their products match Japan's. Malaysia is a beautiful jungle covered peninsula with the same friendly, hospitable people you find in the Philippines. Kuantan, Malaysia in the early 90's reminded me of the mythical town of Mayberry, RFD, where Andy Taylor and Barney Fife kept their world safe. It was also very clean. Thailand, on the other hand, while an interesting place to visit, has to be the most morally depraved place in all the world.

I loved living in the Philippines near the ocean. Filipinos, while some of the most easily offended people in the world, are also the most neighborly and fun to be around. In the 80's during the struggle with the communist guerillas Olongapo was at times a dangerous place, but when we lived there in 05-06 we had no fear of being targeted or robbed, and we were comfortable letting Jonathan out with the church youth as late as midnight at times for their different activities. We never felt any fear walking around town even late at night.

In contrast to that, until the last two or three years we never felt comfortable being out after dark in Kenya. The roads are too dark, the drivers too crazy, sections of road were controlled by Mungiki thugs, and in other places thieves would set up traps to rob people, and for awhile in 06 we had gangs hijacking cars on our own street.

Africa does have its appeal, however. Where else can you go to see so much game in the wild? And not just a few antelope or a herd of buffalo, but big game, lions, elephants, hippos and crocs. Sitting in our car one day we ate lunch at a water hole with three white rhinos that were only 22 feet away. (I measured the distance after they left.)

All considered, however, the places I love best are the canyon lands in Utah. I love to trek around the water and wind carved rocks looking for some new vista to explore around the next formation. My favorite place in the whole world is the red dirt and the massive buttes of Monument Valley.

But where is home? A lot of missionaries who have spent many years or even most of their lives on a certain mission field have come to think of that as home. I'm sorry if this disappoints some, but Kenya is where God has called us and we are glad to work here, and we love the people, but it has not become home to me. I loved living in the Philippines and I would even be comfortable retiring there someday, but it is not home either. We have a house in Springfield, Missouri, but that was a purchase of convenience since our mission office is there and it was a little more centrally located for our furloughs from Kenya, but that is not home.

Someday we're going to have an eternal place in the heavnlies where it has not yet been revealed to us what the Lord is preparing for our enjoyment, but until then, the place that is home to me is the place where I was born described in the following song:

Hope you enjoy it.

Lance Patterson

Well, I've tried several times to send this with an audio attachment of the song but it won't go, so here's the words of the first verse. It will give you an idea of where I'm talking about. If I can figure out what to do with the audio I'll send it later.

I want to smell the western air,
From the back of a chestnut mare,
The prairie blooming everywhere,
Back in Colorado.

National Anthems
November 7, 2009

I've been thinking a lot lately about National Anthems. I believe we are right now in the crisis moment of our existence as a free people. The unbelievable spending of this government over the last year is only the beginning. The open denial of our Christian heritage by our admittedly Muslim loving president (he said he favors Islam over Christianity in one of his books) is a threat to our very way of life. If this health care passes our status as a free nation will be in jeopardy, and our future as a socialist state a dangerous reality. What is worse is that there is another global warming conference coming up in Copenhagen in December. It's another Kyoto Treaty in the making, only this is a million times worse. This treaty, which our president is ready to sign, creates a government (yes, it uses the word government) to oversee the compliance of all signing nations. In other words, if we sign, we give up our national sovereignty.

I've been wondering if that happens if we'll still be able to sing our National Anthem. What's interesting is how many people wouldn't even care. I've heard plenty of people complain over the years about how our anthem is about war and fighting and it shouldn't be our anthem. People that think that way have never taken the time to learn what our anthem is about, what it stands for, or how it compares with anthems around the world. Our anthem is unique among the world's anthems in both its focus and its conclusion.

The French national anthem, The Marsellaise, is one of the most rousing anthems with a very quick paced, march-like melody full of excitement. It was adopted in 1795 during the French Revolution and was a call of all patriots of France to throw off the tyranny of ferocious soldiers that were about to slit the throats of their sons and wives. The refrain is a call to arms for citizens to form battalions and march on to shed the blood of their enemies.

The German anthem is actually the Austrian Hymn, written by Franz Joseph Haydn in the 18th century. A poem was written a hundred years later and the tune and words were adopted in 1922. "Deutchland, Deutchland uber alles," it said. "Germany, Germany over all." It was a very inflammatory song and fit Hitler's philosophy of an Aryan master race to a T. After WW2 the first two verses were deleted and now the Germans sing the third verse which speaks of unity, justice and freedom, and a pledge of fortune for the Fatherland to flourish.

The Austrian Hymn had also been the tune for the Austrian anthem, but in 1946 they Austrians chose a quieter love of country song that avoided any mention of politics or patriotism.

The Dutch anthem, "Het Wilhelmus," is the oldest national anthem in the world. It was written in 1568 and depicts deposed Prince William addressing the oppressed people of the Netherlands to rise up against Spanish rule. It stemmed from the period of Dutch heroism and the struggle of the Dutch people to be free. The music is very majestic and hymn-like, but goes on for 15 stanzas in which Wilhelm tells his story and appeals to God for help, and declares loyalty to the fatherland.

Each of the countries of the United Kingdom have their own anthem, but the British anthem is God Save the Queen (or King). The words come from Henry VIII's time but the melody was first performed in 1607. It was not officially recognized as the national anthem until 1745. Who wrote it is a mystery. Several names are mentioned, but it is also claimed to be a French folk song. It was known in several countries around Europe and is also the tune of the anthem of Liechtenstein. The words are not about the country but about the Queen and loyalty to the monarch. "God save our gracious Queen, Long live our noble Queen, God save the Queen. Send her victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God save the Queen.

"Lupang Hiniram," the Philippine anthem, means "Chosen Land." It has a very lively tune, somewhat like the French anthem. It was composed in 1898 during the Philippine revolution against Spain. The first line, "Bayong magiliw," means "beloved country." Then the song calls the Philippines the Pearl of the Orient, and declares that the people will never surrender their chosen land. It tells of of seas and mountains, air and blue skies, and ends with a dedication of willingness to die for the land.

In Japan the anthem is called "Kimigayo." It means "May You Reign Forever." The words of the song which are rarely sung speak of Japan reigning for 10,000 years and closes saying may Japan reign and flourish. The words were written over a thousand years ago, but the music was composed in the 1800's. It is written in a somber minor key, but the harmony is very stately. Musically it is very beautiful and thoughtful. It seemed to me the perfect music to cause one to reminisce about a tragic past such as being the only nation ever to have suffered a nuclear attack, although the anthem is older than WW2, and I'm in no way apologizing for the events that happened in 1945.

The Kenyan anthem is called "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu." It is translated, "O God of all creation," but I think literally it says, "O God our strength." It speaks of unity and peace and being blessed within their borders. The tune is not musically beautiful and tends to ramble about until it comes to a sudden end.

"O Canada," the Canadian anthem has a very nice, hymn-odic melody and speaks about the land and the people on guard for Canada. The anthem of Israel is all about the city of Zion. Serbia's anthem is actually a prayer called "God of Justice." It is an appeal for God's deliverance for an oppressed people. The Swiss anthem is a Psalm that speaks of God dwelling in their land. The anthem of the no longer existing USSR was a very bold, dramatic, and lengthy melody all about how the Soviet Union was going to conquer the world.

There is a common thread in most of the world's anthems. They are all about the country, the motherland, the fatherland, loyalty to the land. Everything is the land. The UK is different in that it is all loyalty to the monarchy. Many of them are appeals from enslaved people looking for hope and freedom, and others are very bloody indeed writing about conquering people or shedding blood, some as the French anthem, in fairly graphic details.

How does The Star Spangled Banner differ from all of these? To really understand it you need to know the context in which it was written, which is why I think some people don't appreciate it. In 1814 the United States was a free nation, but we had gone to war with England because of British interference with our ships on the high seas. The English invaded the United States, capturing Washington, DC, and were attempting to make a drive into the heartland, but they had to get by Baltimore first, and at the gates of Baltimore was Fort McHenry. A lawyer, Francis Scott Key, was on board one of the British men-of-war trying to secure the release of an American prisoner and was detained when the bombardment of Ft. McHenry started.

Throughout the night as the guns roared and rockets flashed through the sky, the outcome was in doubt. In the morning the guns fell silent and as the mist cleared off the waters and the fog lifted the Stars and Stripes of the US flag still waved in the breeze. The fort stood and the British began their retreat. Key, witnessing that most dramatic moment, began to write, "Oh, say can you see?"

The US anthem is unique in that it begins with a question about the outcome of a battle that may have decided US independence. It speaks of the proud defense of the fort by our troops who were greatly outnumbered and outgunned, of watching through the night to see if the flag still stood, and then at the dawn's early light learning the great truth that we had prevailed.

The first verse finishes asking another question. Does that flag still wave? It is a question that is as relevant today as it was in 1814. Are we still a free land? Do brave men still defend our shores? It is a challenge to us as Americans to follow the grand tradition of our forefathers who would not bow to tyranny but fought valiantly for our freedom.

The second verse is likewise a challenge to free men to ever stand between their homes and the threat of tyranny. Then it acknowledges that our land was "heaven-rescued." The blessings of victory and peace come from above. Our anthem places our freedom, our very existence on the providence of Almighty God, and "praise(s) the power that hath made and preserved us a nation."

"Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just." That line gives all the justification we needed for invading Iraq and Afghanistan. They were just causes necessary for the defense of our own homes. The verse finishes with the declaration that as long as our motto is, "In God is our trust," our flag will wave in triumph over the land.

Our anthem is not about the land, neither is it about a leader. It stands unique because it is about our flag, a banner that stands for freedom and a beacon of hope to oppressed people around the world.

This is not something to be ashamed of as the hand-wringing liberals think. Rather, this is something of which to be chest-thumping proud. We live in the greatest nation on earth, not because of the land, not because of the government, but because our God reigns, and He has raised up men and women who built this country by the sweat of their brow, the cost of their blood, and the bend of their knee praising the Power that made us great.

I'm telling you I am proud to be an American and I will never give up the fight for American sovereignty, no matter what false messiah usurps the reins of government and tries to overthrow the Constitution, and I will proudly stand up and salute and sing our National Anthem every time and every place it is played.

The music to the Star Spangled Banner is a great tune, but sometimes it gets butchered by country and pop performers who think they've got to do all kinds of embellishments to make it better. It's better when they don't do anything but sing it straight. I couldn't care less how great the vocalist is who sings it either. If it's sung too slow it dies. Too much variation distracts attention from the song. It is better sung quick and to the point. One of the best performances I ever heard on TV was a plumber from Detroit back in the 70's who they used to get on Monday night baseball occasionally. No name recognition, no frills, just sing and he was great. My favorite version of all time, however, is the link I've added below by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I hope you'll take a moment to look it up and listen to it, and get your patriotism stirred.

We need to take back our country before the godless liberals ruin it forever.

God Bless America,
Lance Patterson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP1CQEboIo&feature=fvw

Happy Birthday
November 10, 2009

To the greatest fighting force the world has ever known:
SEMPER FI

HAPPY
BIRTHDAY
MARINES

July 4th Follow-Follow UP
November 21, 2009

In another follow up to my July 4th follow up, this week Pat Buchanan documented in an article entitled "Dumbo University," that SAT scores in America peaked in 1964 and have been on a steady decline ever since. In some cities (Washington, D.C. for example) drop out rates for blacks and latinos are over 50%, and the average graduate reads at an eighth or ninth grade level. This is the grand march of our public education system since it kicked God out of the schools.

Lance Patterson

Amazing Grace
November 23, 2009

A little while ago someone sent my a Youtube video of Il Divo singing Amazing Grace. It sent shivers up my spine and brought tears to my eyes.

Il Divo is a Simon Cowell (of American Idol fame) creation. In 2004 he held auditions for a new kind of singing group and came up with four tenors from four different countries, three opera singers and one pop singer, and the group came together. They have toured the world three times already selling over 22 million albums. I heard about this group but wasn't much interested in another round of tenors showing off their gigantic voices trying to outdo each other like Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras. Then my aunt sent us this link and I listened. These guys are different.

This recording takes place in the Roman Coliseum, and I wondered as I was listening to it if anyone understands the significance of the setting and the song they are singing. Almost 2000 years ago, and for about 250 years following, wicked, debauched, Christian hating, Satan serving Roman emperors used Christians as human torches to light the arena while others were torn apart by hungry lions. Hundreds of thousands of Christians were tortured and slain for no other reason than the evil pleasure of the Caesars and the perverted entertainment of the Romans. Twenty centuries later the Coliseum stands in ruins, an ancient relic, a reminder of an empire forgotten in the dustbin of history, but Christianity lives on, and the great message of God's Amazing Grace is loudly proclaimed from the same arena where the blood of martyrs was once spilled.

In His time God will make everything right.

Lance Patterson

Orators
December 3, 2009

Over the last two years we heard so much about what a great speaker and orator BHO is, not only from the liberal media, but even by Fox news analysts, that it almost made me ill. He's a lousy speaker and this speech on Afghanistan made at West Point proves the point. We didn't see it, but what I've been reading is that he stuttered a lot, apparently pausing to wait for applause that didn't happen. He couldn't have picked a worse place to give the speech.

Liberals just don't get it. They hate the military, but they expect the military to respect them. After vacillating for ten months on a decision he finally comes up with 30,000 more troops because he, since he is the Commander in Chief, has determined it's in our national interests. It's about time, the rest of us figured that out a long time ago. It is weak leadership that feels it has to remind us who he is, CinC, but to say it to cadets where he is very unpopular only dug his hole deeper.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, BHO is not an orator by any means. His speech is never smooth. He has a staccato delivery and every sentence ends with a sudden, irritating drop in his tone. Then he stands with his chin held high with a snooty look of arrogance, and as has been so often pointed out, he can't even speak without a TelePrompTer. He may speak loud, but his manner is more akin to Hitler saying it loud enough and often enough until people start believing the lie. It's as if he's trying to persuade himself of what he's saying. There is no conviction in his voice. He's a horrible speaker, an absolute embarrassment.

In our new car we have a dvd screen right in the dash, and lately I've been listening to a couple of disks on a real orator, one Ronald Reagan. If you really want to feel good about America and what we stand for, listen to some of his old speeches. There was an orator, a man of conviction, a man who didn't have to raise his voice, and who never had an air of arrogance about him. He appealed to what was good in Americans, what was great about our country, and optimistically spoke of the future. He was America's number one cheerleader and never apologized for America about anything.

In one of the speeches I was listening to today, he told of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who was the US ambassador to the UN under Reagan. She told the UN assembly that the US wasn't going to be kicked around anymore. One diplomat asked her if that meant if somebody kicks us we're going to kick back. She said, not necessarily, but we're not going to apologize for being kicked.

There's the difference between a great president and a great pretender in the presidency.

Lance Patterson

More Orations

Yesterday I made a comparison of BHO's and Ronald Reagan's speaking styles. Today I wound up being in the car for nearly four hours trying to get around town and I listened to several more of Reagan's speeches, and I'd like to share a few more observations.

There were three qualities that impressed me; his humor, his graciousness, and his compassion. These have as much to do with his character and personality as with his style and ability to speak, but I think they give real insight into the man, as well as a stark contrast to what we see in liberals. For that matter, to what we see in conservatives as well. The only conservative in recent years to come anywhere close to sounding like Reagan is Sarah Palin. But, consider.

Reagan's humor came from his heart, it was natural, always funny, and never insulting. His jokes were successful because he could laugh at himself as well as at others, and indeed often made jokes about his age. Contrast that with Leon Panetta at some press dinner in the 90's where he mocked Barbara "Wa-wa" (Walters)'s speech impediment. It fell flat because it was insulting and insensitive. Liberal humor is usually contrived, out of sync, inappropriate and uncomfortable. When was the last time you heard BHO say something funny or even the slight bit humorous? Or Bill Clinton for that matter?

At a White House Press Corps dinner in 1986, Reagan took commentaries written about him by the liberal and most often critical press, and made jokes out of them that brought the house down. Remember how he was criticized for not being woken up until 7 am when US fighters had shot down Libyan planes over the Gulf of Sidra? He was condemned for being asleep on the job and a host of other things. So he thanked the press corps for all the hard work and late nights they put in, and said of himself that he also put in long hours burning the mid-day oil.

When the evening was done he got serious and showed a graciousness almost unheard of in politics, thanking the mostly unfriendly press corps for their unbiased efforts to get to the truth. The truth, of course, being that the press was almost always biased against him. Contrast that with Bill Clinton. When his press got bad he fired off cruise missiles at a milk factory in the Sudan. Or contrast it with BHO who publicly attacks Fox News and conservative talk radio in an effort to stifle free speech.

What was most impressive, however, was the compassion that was not only in his voice, but in his eyes. On the night of the Challenger disaster in 1986 he had been scheduled to give a State of the Union address. He canceled it in order to make a few comments about the accident and praise the astronauts that had given their lives. His voice trembled and there were tears in his eyes as he spoke. There was so much care and concern in Reagan's demeanor that nearly 24 years later listening to that speech it still brought tears to my eyes.

Contrast that with the current president whose compassion was so lacking that he could stand up and tell a joke before making a statement about the Ft. Hood tragedy. Then his cold hearted comments were more concerned with not accusing the Muslim murderer of being a terrorist, and very little concerned with any comfort for the families of the fallen. BHO needs to issue another apology, this time for himself.

I think future historians are going to look at the 1980's under Reagan's leadership as the Golden Age of America. How sad that in only 20 years this great nation could be at the brink of economic and constitutional collapse. I hope those historians will not be saying that it was our last hurrah.

Lance Patterson

Out of Touch Government
December 19, 2009

So, you want to know how really out of touch the government is? In the 1.1 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill passed last week, there was 2.7 million designated for surgery in space. That's right, surgery in space! When was the last time you ever heard of surgery being performed in outer space? These people are either absolute idiots, or they're banking that the rest of America are absolute idiots so they can get away with insane pork barrel projects designed only to buy votes and support their socialist agenda.

The Senate majority leader, Reid, has apparently called for a cloture vote to end discussion on the obama care health bill and jam it down our throats before Christmas. The last I saw the vote is scheduled for next Wednesday. But wait, seven Democrat senators are vacillating, and the Senate is being bombarded with the same calls, e-mails and faxes that the House was a couple months ago, the far majority against the whole bill.

What's more interesting is that some flaming left wing liberals such as Howard Dean, the former Democratic Party leader of "yeaaaah!" fame, are saying, "Kill the bill." It appears after all that obama, reid, and pelosi's support is quickly fading, and BHO's "unity" party is unravelling.

So keep the pressure on. Call your senators and tell them we are a free people and we prefer to stay free, vote NO on the socialist, tax-raising, citizen enslaving health care bill. The bill has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with power. We want our Constitution, not communism.

Lance Patterson

Global Warming
December 19, 2009

By the way, did you see what's happening in Copenhagen? The delegates to the Climate Change (global warming) conference are having to make their way through a blizzard and drifts of snow to get to the meetings. God really does have a sense of humor.

Lance Patterson

Out of Touch Leftist Media
January 2, 2010

The leftist media just doesn't get it.

CNN overseas has this anchor named Jim Clancy. This is the same knothead that back in 2003 when we invaded Iraq kept wondering what was taking our military so long to get to Bagdad. Let's see, how long did it take them to go 500 miles in the face of an entrenched enemy? Five days? I don't remember anymore, but it wasn't very long. Then a couple of years ago when the Marines were going house to house in Falujah to remove the terrorists who had been beheading people, he commented after about four days about how long it was taking, and declared that it must be encouraging to the terrorists to be able to hold off the Marines for so long. So long? The Marines were going house to house, busting through locked doors with armed terrorists on the other side hiding in every room. They cleared out the terrorists and peace returned to the city, and all Clancy could do was run down the Marines because it wasn't done in four days?

His leftist, anti-military, enemy cheerleading comments are so inane you have to wonder how he even keeps his job. Oh yeah, I forgot, he's part of the sold-out-to-BHO-communist news media.

This morning he was reporting on the attempted bombing of the Northwest flight into Detroit last week. CNN had a reporter in Yemen who was "investigating" the connections Abdulmutallab had with Al-qaeda. Clancy concluded the segment by saying that just because he had been in Yemen and had been influenced by Muslims doesn't necessarily mean he had contact with Al-qaeda. I almost fell out of my chair.

The guy's own father warns the US embassy in Nigeria that his son is a terrorist, the guy goes to Yemen, which is becoming the new training ground for Al-qaeda, he learns how to make a chemical bomb and tries to set it off on a plane, a suicide bomber plan popularly used by Al-qaeda, and Al-qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack a few days ago. But that doesn't mean this boy is somehow connected to Al-qaeda!!!!!

Today BHO publicly announced what everybody else already knows; that Abdulmutallab is connected to Al-qaeda. I wonder if Jim Clancy or his news team will be able to sleep tonight. Their god just dissed them.

Lance Patterson

Global Warmooling?
January 10, 2010

In the 1970's, environmentalists, seeking notoriety and influence, started warning of a new ice age that would descend upon the world by the year 2000 because of a couple of years of exceptionally cold weather. A couple more years passed and when the temperatures rose and the scare passed the environmentalists needed a new cause. No problem, if the temperatures are rising it must be global warming. Seeking new relevancy they finally convinced enough people that carbon dioxide in the air was going to bring a heat wave and kill us all and on December 11, 1997 the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. 184 nations signed on. In the name of saving the world the Kyoto Protocol basically would have made Americans stop driving cars and pay the rest of the world for our crimes against the climate. The US Senate wisely rejected the offer.

While the activists were still around we didn't hear too much more about it until Al Gore lost the 2000 election. He also needed new relevance and found it in championing the fight against global warming. He made an inconvenient movie that was low on facts and reasoning, and in 2006 predicted that the world would end in ten years unless the US signed Kyoto.

Around the world, otherwise rational, thinking people began running around like Chicken Littles screaming the sky is falling. No matter that the real evidence showed that the warming trend, if there ever was one, peaked in 1998 and has been steadily falling ever since, we had to have a new conference in Copenhagen to save the world.

The Copenhagen conference convened amid controversy last December 8, with 193 nations attending. Just days before the opening e-mails exposed climate change scientists at a University in England actually conspiring to deceive the world on the true facts of global warming. It was denied and much effort was made to try and show it was all misinterpreted by people who didn't have all the evidence. But further real evidence proved that these same scientists were selectively using weather monitors only in warmer areas of Russia while ignoring monitors in colder areas in order to manipulate their facts.

Then, as delegates began arriving, a blizzard hit Denmark bringing with it high snow drifts and the coldest weather Copenhagen had seen in many years. President Obama, always ready to do anything to ruin America, promised third world nations 100 billion dollars in aid if they would sign on, no matter that he didn't have the money and nobody else was willing to contribute. China was willing to sign on to that deal, but since they are becoming the world's greatest polluter, they wanted a hundred billion for themselves, particularly since they own over a trillion dollars of the US debt. All the while Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, objected that global warming is a fraud and on December 19, the conference ended without accomplishing anything.

BHO came home in a blizzard and for the last three weeks the United States has been in its coldest winter in decades. Last week a blizzard dumped more snow on England than they have had in seventy years. Europe is an ice box, and we are having cold rains here in Kenya in what is normally the dry season.

Best of all, we haven't heard a peep out of Al Gore since the conference ended. Yes, there is justice in the world. Makes me think there may be hope for another big change in the next November elections.

Lance Patterson

Our National Pastime
February 17, 2010

Writing is the kind of thing I like to do to late at night when my mind is active and I can't sleep. It not only helps to pass the time, but it helps me to relax, and sometimes I come up with something worthwhile. Last night was one of those late nights when a thought came to my mind and I couldn't get rid of it. The following is the result. It's a little lengthy, and it's a mixture of sports and patriotism. So if you like sports, read on and see if you think I've made my point. If it's too long or uninteresting, don't worry about it, I won't mind, but here is my take on Our National Pastime.

If there is one word that could describe American leisure life in the 20th century it might be the word, "sports." In the last century as Americans grew in wealth and luxury athletic events became more than just exercise, for many they became professions, and for many others watching them it became an occupation in itself. Stadiums, arenas, even games that in the 19th century were unheard of became household names in the 20th.

The 20th century saw an explosion of athletic events around the world including the renewal of the ancient Olympic games. Tennis and golf tournaments are held in almost every major country. Soccer, what the rest of the world calls football, following the Olympic model, holds a World Cup championship every four years with scores of countries competing. Cricket and rugby, British inventions, are played mainly in the Commonwealth of Nations, the remnants of the old British Empire, and Formula One racing, once limited to Europe is now world wide from Brazil to Japan. While individuals and some American teams have and do participate in these events, and while many Americans watch them, none of them holds the same appeal or loyalty to Americans as our own sporting events. Americans invented baseball, basketball, and football, and perhaps because of our independent spirit, we are focused more on our home grown sports to sate our athletic hunger than on world wide competitions.

In the 1840's a game played by hitting a ball with a stick and running to four positions around a square began to gain popularity in the States. By 1846 an early enthusiast, Alexander J. Cartwright, had written the first rule book which included three strikes, three outs and nine innings, laid out the dimensions of the diamond, organized the New York Knickerbocker ball club and played in the first official game ever. Legend has it that Abner Doubleday, a major general in the Union army during the Civil War who would play an important role on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, gave the game its name, "baseball." (It's only a legend. Cartwright actually named the game.)

Baseball became so popular that in 1869 the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first professionally paid team. The Red Stockings barnstormed around the country taking on all comers until 1875 when the first professional baseball league, the American Association, was organized. In 1880 the Association gave way to the National League, and while Indian wars were still being fought on the western frontier, in the Northeast in eight cities from Chicago to Boston, people spent their leisurely summer afternoons watching their favorite teams play.

In 1900 an upstart new league, the American, was founded amid much criticism from National League owners and purists. But the American League stuck and by 1903 had challenged the Nationals to a playoff to determine a national champion. The World Series was born and baseball had become America's National Pastime.

Baseball has had its share of colorful figures. In the 1880's a brash, often drunk, bandy-legged speedster named Billy Sunday, playing for the Chicago White Sox, became the first man to run the bases in under fourteen seconds. One night after a drinking spree he stumbled into the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, gave his life to Christ, and gave up baseball to become the most celebrated evangelist in the United States for the next forty years.

There was Big Ed Delahunty, who in the 1890's became the first player to hit four homeruns in a single game. All four were inside the park homers. One night he got drunk, walked off a bridge, fell into a river and drowned. There was Rube Waddell, a southpaw who set the standard for flakiness by running out of the ball park in the middle of an inning he was pitching to watch a fire truck go by. There was Jimmy Foxx, known as "the beast" because he hit the ball so hard, Ted Williams, the "Splendid Splinter," Mickey Mantle, the "Sweet Switcheroo," and "Mr. October," Reggie Jackson, one of the greatest clutch hitters of all time. And how about the greatest misnomer of all, Frank "Home Run" Baker, who hit twelve in 1913.

Babe Ruth was perhaps the most well known and the greatest ballplayer of all time. He single handedly transformed baseball from "dead-ball" era strategies of singles, sacrifice bunts and stolen bases into heroic home run derbies with monster shots that he routinely hit over the bleachers and clear out of stadiums.

Perhaps the draw of baseball is that the game embodies all that is good about America. It has intense team rivalries, but the focus is on the head-to-head battles between two warriors, the pitcher and the batter. It's a picture of the pioneer spirit that went into the wilderness unafraid to carve out a nation. Playing the Star Spangled Banner before the game became one of baseball's first traditions. The game was Americana itself; hotdogs, apple pie, mom and patriotism. Scores of great players, including "Joltin'" Joe DiMaggio, gave up years of prime playing time to fight for freedom in World War II. Others served in Korea and Vietnam.

Baseball's defining patriotic moment came in the summer of 1976 at Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers were playing the Chicago Cubs. In the middle of the game with the Dodgers at bat, two Iranian Muslim "students" climbed over the outfield fence and ran into left-centerfield. They pulled out an American flag, doused it with lighter fluid, and tried to light it on fire. When he realized what was happening, Cubs centerfielder, Rick Monday, came racing in from his position, scooped up the flag, and rescued it from burning. As he ran toward the third base dugout, Dodger third base coach, Tommy Lasorda, charged like a raging bull to the outfield giving the two Iranians a cussing like they had never heard before and held them until security arrived to escort them out of the stadium. The crowd cheered like mad for what seemed forever, and Rick Monday became so popular that at the end of the season the Dodgers traded for him.

By the late 60's, however, baseball was losing its appeal for many. Pitching dominated the game. In 1968 Carl Yastrzemski led the American League in hitting with a .301 average, the lowest batting champion average in history. He was the only player to hit .300 that year. Watching baseball on TV became boring.

In the 70's the players challenged baseball's reserve clause in court and won. The race to get the biggest contract was on and mediocre, prima donna players who couldn't hit their way out of a paper bag or win ten games pitching became overnight millionaires. Ticket prices climbed so high that many of baseball's faithful could no longer afford to attend games. Then in the 90's and into the new century players using banned anabolic steroids shattered many homerun records, but their accomplishments were tainted by controversy. Baseball continues to be a great game, but it has faded as our national pastime.

Sometime in the 70's football became America's most popular sport. The National Football League was founded in the 1920's and the game originally was all about running. The forward pass was slow to develop. In those early days the plan was just straight forward, head knocking, beat your opponent by sheer strength. Running backs like Bronco Nagurski and "the Galloping Ghost," Red Grange, were so strong that they often ran right over defensive linemen. (In their defense, linemen weren't nearly as big in those days as they are now.)

Football had its fan base, but as a spectator sport it was boring. Then came Sid Luckman, Y.A. Tittle and Johnny Unitas and they turned the forward pass into a major offensive weapon. Still the NFL philosophy was usually run, run, pass and often not very exciting. The NFL had no dominating dynasties like the New York Yankees. Yet there was one club, a most unlikely club from the far northern frozen wastes of Wisconsin named for a packing plant. The Green Bay Packers, a team from a place so small that everybody in town owned a share of the team, from 1960-1967 won five championships in seven years including three-in-a-row (a feat unmatched in NFL history) and the first two Super Bowls. Led by a scrappy little coach with the unlikely name of Vince Lombardi and a quarterback with a tag to match any Hollywood celebrity, Bart Starr, the Packers proved that you didn't have to be the best to win, only the most determined. To Lombardi, winning was the "only thing."

Then in 1960 the American Football League was founded with an offensive philosophy high on the "long bomb." The aerial assaults of AFL games provided much more excitement than the slug-it-out running games of the NFL. The AFL's first superstar was San Diego Charger wide receiver, Lance Alworth. The upstart league proved its worth and by 1966 had challenged the NFL to what would become known as the first Super Bowl. In 1970 the two leagues merged and football began to overtake baseball as America's favorite game.

Football, however, was not without its own controversies over steroids and salaries. Linemen in the 60's usually weighed in at around 250 pounds. Today you rarely find one under 300. Games today are much more intellectual than in the past with all the different offensive and defensive setups, yet the brutality in the trenches is mindful of Roman gladiators, and the violence of open field tackles almost appeals to our baser nature. But while football and baseball are still great sports and very popular, neither one of them really boasts any longer of being our national pastime. That mantle is falling to a newer sport.

With the coming of the automobile came the desire for speed and the hard, flat sands of Daytona Beach in Florida became the first site for the quest to set land speed records in 1903. Only eight years later the first Indianapolis 500 was run at the Brickyard in 1911. The average speed of the winning driver, Ray Harroun, was 78 miles per hour. The race took over six hours to complete. Foreign drivers flocked to Indy Car racing and as often as not have won the 500, which many consider to be the most prestigious race in America. But Indy car racing has not gained the following that another type of racing has.

During prohibition, stills hidden deep in the woods all over the South distilled illegal rot gut, and with the police and revenue agents combing the woods trying to put moonshiners out of business, the still operators needed fast cars to make deliveries to speakeasies, and thus the supped-up stock block race car was invented. Moonshining was so popular in the deep south that even after prohibition was over the practice continued until 1949. Then Bill France had an idea to legitimize the whiskey runners. His idea was called NASCAR. The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

NASCAR was immediately popular in the South, but it had little following elsewhere. It had its share of rednecks and colorful figures including family dynasties and some big time rivalries. The "First Family" of NASCAR was the Pettys. Patriarch, Lee Petty, won the first Daytona 500 in 1959 by a hairbreadth photo finish. His son, "King" Richard Petty, dominated the 60's and 70's like no one before or since and won 200 races. His closest competitor was David Pearson with 105 victories. Petty had a regular feud going on with the Allison brothers, Bobby and Donnie. Bobby finally won 84 races, but he and Petty could probably have won more if they hadn't been so busy wrecking each other while fighting for the lead in several races.

In the 1980's cable television brought an entire new audience to NASCAR and its popularity began to spread. By the end of the decade the most dominating driver was Dale Earnhardt. Known as "the Intimidator," he drove his black number three Chevy to 76 victories and became the most popular driver on the circuit. When he was killed in a last lap accident at the 2001 Daytona 500, his mantle of popularity was passed on to his son, Dale, Jr.

In the 90's NASCAR's popularity exploded all over the country. Whereas recent as the 80's teams struggled to find sponsorship to finance their operations, in the 90's nearly every major business in America was trying to get on board. Race tracks were built across the country and NASCAR became a coast-to-coast sport. When my step-cousin, Derrike Cope, won the 1990 Daytona 500, his winning cut of the purse was $188,000. When Jamie MacMurray won the same race last Sunday, he took home over 1.6 million dollars. The lowest payout to the last place driver was more than Derrike received for winning twenty years ago.

One thing that has drawn fans in recent years is the equality of the teams. In the 60's and 70's races would often finish with only three or four cars on the lead lap. In one of the most celebrated races of all time, Ned Jarrett lapped the entire field fourteen times, an all time record.

In Sunday's race there were 26 cars that finished on the lead lap, at least ten of which were in a position to possibly win when the white flag waved for the last lap. In one of the most exciting charges ever, and very reminiscent of his father's driving ability, Dale, Jr, in tenth place at the white flag, weaved his way through the pack and shot between the last two cars with only inches to spare on either side to latch on to the tail of the leader. "Junior" as he is affectionately called, had been in 16th place with two laps to go, but when Darrel Waltrip, a three time NASCAR champion with 84 career victories of his own and now a TV race announcer, saw him barreling through the field at the white flag he said, "Where did 'Junebug" come from?" Then he shouted, "Go, Junior, Go!"

Announcers are normally obliged to remain objective and not root for any particular player or driver, but the excitement of Waltrip's sudden outburst only intensified the drama playing out on the track. Junior zoomed ahead of the pack and caught MacMurray going into the third turn, but unable to get around him, rode his bumper to what may have been the most exciting second place finish in racing history.

Over 250,000 people were in the stands at Daytona Speedway and multiple millions more watched it on TV. With most of its tracks across the Bible belt NASCAR racing is basically a conservative movement. Many of the drivers "thank the Good Lord," when they win. The people are mainly pro-life, pro-family, pro-hunting, pro-guns, pro-military and pro-America. Every race begins with the National Anthem, a military fly-over, and a prayer, most often by Baptist preachers who aren't worried about political correctness, and who pray in Jesus' name.

Of course, nothing is perfect, but today NASCAR, more than any other sporting organization, embodies all that is good and right about America. And that is why today NASCAR is becoming the new American National Pastime.

Lance Patterson

Gore is Back
February 28, 2010

One of the funnier things going on lately is the Al Gore watch on Glenn Beck's website. Gore seemed to have fallen off the earth since the disastrous Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December. But he's back with an op-ed in the ultra liberal-heading-for-bankruptcy New York Times.

Newsmax reported on the article today with the headline "Al Gore Admits Errors in Climate Claims." Well, that's partially true. I read the Newsmax article and the arrogance of Al Gore is simply mind-numbing.

The article quoted Gore as saying, "It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas. . . ." He then proceeded to blame the overestimate on "partly inaccurate" information given by the government. He then claimed that "e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain" were responsible for scientists not "adequately follow(ing) the requirements of the British freedom of information law." What that has to do with anything I don't know, but Gore went on to say that the scientists were "besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics. . . ."

In other words, Gore is really not admitting anything wrong with his climate change theory. He blames the problem on "stolen" e-mails, but conveniently overlooks the fact that the said e-mails wound up in the hands of people they were unintended for because of the incompetence of those sending them. Chock one up for the "brilliance" of the East Anglia scientists. Gore also overlooked the fact that the "stolen" e-mails actually proved that the same scientists were intentionally lying to try and manipulate the results of the conference.

Gore, of course, tried to deflect the issue by referring to overestimates of the melting glaciers in the Himalayas. The major argument all along has been the melting polar ice-caps and the drowning polar bears (of which there are 20,000 more now than there were 30 years ago). He obviously hasn't given up on the arctic meltdown.

And it didn't stop there. Gore said it is "unrealistic to expect scientific research to be 100 percent error-free." I don't think so. If scientific research is done according to the scientific method it shouldn't be published or considered to be science until it is 100 percent error-free. But the best is yet to come.

Gore announced that January was the second hottest January in 130 years! What??????? All of you who have just lived through the coldest winter in just about anybody's memory, did you realize January was actually hot? I am astounded to learn that. Gore then continued with the already proven lie that the last decade has been the hottest ten years since records were first kept. That's quite a statement since these records have been kept for a couple hundred years.

First of all, temperatures have been in a steady decline every year since 1998. January wasn't even hot here in Kenya. Secondly, those kind of figures usually take several months to collate. How in the world did he manage to collect all the world-wide data and figure it out in one month's time?

The purpose of his piece was to urge the passage of the cap-and-trade bill being introduced in the Senate this week. It would really be cool (pun intended) if God would dump one more winter storm on DC just as they were trying to introduce this bill.

When he lost the 2000 presidential election due to his own incompetence, Gore had to find something to do to make himself relevant. So, he jumped on the global warming band wagon. Now that the coldest winter in decades has proven him to be a false prophet, he is throwing his weight behind this cap-and-trade bill to once again prove his relevance. What he needs is to be thrown into a looney-bin. That's the only place he could possibly be relevant.

Lance Patterson

God Bless America
March 8, 2010

Check this out. We need to modernize the words to say, "As the storm clouds gather all across D.C." The liberal atheists who like to tout FDR and deny our godly heritage need to remember that when FDR introduced her, he said, "This is Kate Smith. This is America." We could use a whole lot more of this sentiment in America today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnQDW-NMaRs

Lance Patterson

Healthcare
March 23, 2010

Guten Abend Meine Damen und Herrn,

I feel like giving a Nazi salute to the communist dictators that are socializing our government. Do you know how messed up this thing is? The IRS is going to enforce health care, and they've already announced they need 10 billion dollars to do it! Tell us again how much money this is going to save?

Not to worry, or as we say here, Hakuna matata. Twelve states have already filed suits to block the health care bill because the requirement that everyone has to have health insurance is unconstitutional. Four states have already passed laws blocking the bill, and tomorrow Virginia's governor will sign a similar bill into Virginia law, and other states such as Missouri are considering it.

CBS news is reporting that Pelosi's favorability rating is only 11%, and Reid's a dismal 8%. This the network of Dan Rather, one of the most in the pocket of liberals broadcasters there ever was. Along with that a CNN (Clinton News Network) poll shows BHO's disapproval rating over 50% for the first time. His approval rating dropped below 50% in January and has been around 46% since, but even a month ago those disapproving were only about 40%. Now that has jumped to 51%.

What needs to happen now is that people get on board the Tea Party Express that is leaving Searchlight, Nevada this weekend and keep the fires hot until November. Then vote these communists out of office. It can happen.

Lance Patterson

Whose Fault Is It?
March 29, 2010

David Barton is a Christian historian who has produced a series of dvd's documenting the Christian heritage of our Founding Fathers and our nation. His material is excellent and I recommend it to you. Another Christian heritage apologist is Gary DeMars. He has written several books and edited others showing our Christian history, and is well involved in the political discussion of our day and encouraging the resurgence of conservatism.

I've been on DeMars mailing list for quite awhile, but I finally had to unsubscribe. The discussion on his website lately has often focused on religious issues. Now, I'm obviously not against discussing religious issues, and I don't know what denomination he belongs to, but he is an adherent of Presbyterian Covenant Theology or some variant of it. He is either an a-mil or post-millennialist, and very clearly posted recently his belief that Christianity will take over the world and we Christians will invite Christ to come and reign. He is also very critical and dismissive of dispensationalism. Comments on his website chat room refer to the "discredited" belief of the dispensationalists.

A common argument against dispensationalism is that it was only invented 150 years ago, but that argument is just as well an indictment of Covenant Theology because it was only invented 500 years ago. In fact, the word "dispensation," is found four times in the New Testament in reference to a theological system of thought, and the idea of dispensations was taught long before a theologian named Darby became the "father of modern dispensationalism" in the 1860's.

The covenanters do not believe in a literal rapture or tribulation period, and teach that the book of Revelation was fulfilled in A.D. 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem. The problem with that is simply that the only way they can get around Daniel 9:24-27, I Thessalonians 4:13-18, and Revelation 4-19 is by saying those passages are just "speaking spiritually." The question then is how many other passages of Scripture are just speaking spiritually, and who is to decide which ones? Using this argument they fall dangerously close to cult theologies such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons, who interpret any passage that conflicts with their beliefs as being just "spiritual." Actually, the only possible way to make sense of the passages above is to accept them from a literal, or dispensational, point of view.

My primary intent here, however, is not to make this a religious discussion or debate, but I cannot get to the purpose of this posting without this little explanation. Several years ago I debated this issue of Covenant and Dispensational Theology with someone via e-mail. It was an exhilarating discussion which ended amiably before we got at each other's throats! Just kidding. I have many Presbyterian friends whom I disagree with wholeheartedly on theological issues, some who are on this mailing list, but we still continue to be friends. And why not? We all have the same basic conservative ideals and are in agreement over the political situation in our country today. And that brings me to my point.

Gary DeMars is on a crusade to destroy dispensationalism because, he says, the belief in the rapture has caused Christians to disengage from the political process and let the secular humanists take over our country while we look toward the Eastern Sky. He's gone so far as to produce a dvd blaming dispensationalists, which basically means Baptists, for the current political mess we're in.

He's overlooking some very key things. The Protestant denominations in the U.S. outnumber the Baptists by far, and they were all sitting around doing nothing while the secular humanists infiltrated our government as well. In fact, the revival of Christian interest and involvement in politics really begins with the Baptists. It was Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority that first energized Christians to get out and vote. It is true that D. James Kennedy, a Presbyterian, was at the forefront in the battle for the preservation of our Christian heritage, but his nation wide influence came later. It was the Moral Majority, founded by a Baptist, although it was all inclusive, that set the political pace for all the conservative movements that are about today.

We are at a critical point in our nations history where all conservatives need to stand together in order to throw the bums out of Washington. Trying to find blame for how we got here is inconsequential, and divisive. We need to find a solution. DeMars, no matter what his motivation, is doing the conservative movement a great disservice with this dvd. Besides, he's wrong.

Lance Patterson