I'm a little amused but more frustrated by all the pundits wondering what in the world Obama is doing swapping the five most dangerous terrorists in the world for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan. Obviously, if nothing else, Obama has broken the law in this prisoner swap, but the bigger picture is the danger negotiating and giving in to terrorists puts American citizens abroad in. Either Obama is totally inept, not only in foreign policy, but in economics and constitutional law as well, or he is an enemy who has infiltrated the highest level of American government with the intent of bringing America down. The cries of treason and impeachment are starting to get louder as the lawless president continues to run the show like a dictator. It's about time.
Obama supposedly taught constitutional law, so he knows exactly how he is trashing it. Ironically, the very ways he accused President Bush of violating the Constitution, spying on Americans for example, are the ways he is actually violating it, and to a much greater degree than President Bush was ever accused of. His policies on the environment, energy production, climate change, illegal immigration and Obamacare are so damaging to the overall economy that he has to be either an absolute idiot (along with all the Democrats and media that support him), or this is part of a well thought out plan to bring about chaos and a constitutional crisis in which he will attempt to turn America into a complete communist state. A brief look at history will reveal that this is the same way Lenin and Hitler consolidated power.
Anyone paying attention should have seen it the moment Obama announced his campaign for the presidency. He said he was going to fundamentally change America. Early on he called for a national police force which everyone scoffed at, but over the last five years several federal departments have been buying up ammunition by the millions of rounds. Departments like State and the Post Office, which have no need for a hundred rounds, much less millions, are spending untold tax dollars on bullets. For what purpose? When someone finally asked what was going on the answer was that it had been a clerical error. But the error hasn't been corrected and now more bureaucratic agencies are buying rounds than before.
It is becoming increasingly clear that every word out of Obama's mouth is a lie. So many lies, in fact, that even the conservative media can't keep up with them. Two weeks ago when Obama gave his short speech about the Veteran's Administration scandal, he made the comment that he was not one to blame others so he took the responsibility for it. Did you catch it? This is the man who blames President Bush for everything, and anything he can't pin on Bush he declares he only learned about it on TV. It's always somebody else's fault. How did Rush and Sean and Greta and O'Reilly and everybody else miss that one?
The problem is Obama has ruled (not governed) and lived extravagantly like a petty third world dictator for almost five years without opposition. The mainstream media never vetted him, conservative media, while they complained about it, refused to follow the birth certificate trail, the conscienceless Democrat Party has fallen all over itself to be the first to bow at Obama's feet regardless of his lawlessness, and until the Obamacare roll out, the Republican Party hardly offered any opposition. Obama has gotten virtually a free pass on everything.
But this is what is happening. Thinking that by now he can get away with whatever he wants, Obama has overreached too far, too fast. Had he squelched his greed until after the November elections he might have gotten away with it, but with scandal after scandal breaking almost daily, and with the lies becoming so incredulous that reporters are openly laughing at administration spokespeople, even some of his most ardent supporters, like Chris "tingly-leg" Matthews, are starting to question his credibility. Well duh!!!
The VA scandal is the one that according to Charles Krauthammer, Brit Hume and others is going to unravel Obama's presidency. So to get attention off of it, Obama releases five terrorist commanders for a "prisoner of war" thinking it would make him look more like a hero to the country for not leaving our boy behind. The problem is it backfired. The country doesn't want a traitor back, especially one who hasn't even called his mother yet since he was repatriated. Furthermore, thinking people don't buy the "leave nobody behind" policy when he abandoned Ambassador Stevens and three others in Libya. And while "I don't blame anybody else" Obama at first took credit for the exchange and defiantly defended it, now he is throwing the blame for the terrorist debacle on Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, but Hagel isn't taking the fall for it. According to him it was Obama's decision.
And now, just when it looks like things couldn't get any worse for Obama, the Benghazi hearings are about to get under way. This is becoming a very bad year for Obama, but it might be the undoing of Hillary Clinton as well. We can only hope that it will be, but what is becoming increasingly frustrating about the whole thing are all the pundits wondering why and unable to figure out what's going on in Obama's head.
It's not hard to understand. Obama is a Muslim. He's anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-white. His concern is leveling the playing field so Islam can take over America. He's trying to do it by destroying not only the military and the economy, and by engendering racial strife, but by corrupting the morality of the nation. The irony of it is, if Sharia Law is ever implemented, all the gays are going to get their throats slit, feminist activists will be enslaved, and Obama will be nothing in a Muslim caliphate because of his support for gays and women's rights. He's brilliant in that he's placed the most liberal anti-American people around him who will support his agenda seemingly to the death, and with the help of sold out Democrats and the lock-step, non-discerning media he's gotten away with it so far.
At the same time he's a stooge. His strings are being pulled by communist ideologues who want to destroy a free America and will throw him to the dogs as soon as they're done with him. Obama is a traitor at least, but more likely he's a criminal illegal alien plant who should be arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay in place of the terrorists he let out.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Monday, May 26, 2014
Two Memorial Day Birthdays
Today is Memorial Day, the day we honor our heroes, the ones who have given "the last full measure of devotion." It is a day we take off to relax with family and friends and celebrate the good things those heroes have preserved for us. In all our barbecues, ball games, and fun, let's not forget that it is all possible because somebody spilled his blood to ensure our freedom to take the day off.
Today is also the birthday of two great Americans. One everybody knows, even world wide. He was Mr. America. Born in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, he rose from obscurity to be one of Hollywood's greatest stars, but more importantly, the greatest cheerleader of true American values in the last hundred years. Even though he passed away thirty-five years ago, his popularity and influence has not subsided. When other superstars pass from the scene they are relatively forgotten in a short time. The legacy of John "Duke" Wayne, however, has never declined, and today he is as popular as he ever was. Good, honest patriotism, shoot straight, tell it like it is, stand up for the little guy. John Wayne - American.
The other is also well known on a world wide scale, although not by as many perhaps as Duke Wayne. He is also a patriot, having served in Patton's Third Army in World War 2, landing at Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion. Also born in Iowa, in the little town of Ringsted in 1925, he grew up through the depression in the most difficult of times and situations. He often had to be out in the fields working the farm when he should have been in school, because his father was sick with a bad heart, asthma and rheumatism. And somehow the family survived. After the War he enrolled in Bible college, served under Harvey Springer at the First Baptist Church of Englewood, Colorado, and then founded the East Side Baptist Church in 1956. In 1972 he became the Missions Director of the Baptist Bible Fellowship, International and began a ministry of overseeing and encouraging missionaries, raising funds for their work, and preaching at mission conferences in all fifty States and in dozens of countries around the world.
His legacy is not on celluloid; it is in souls. Tens of thousands have been won to Christ because of the burden and passion of my uncle, Dr. Carl Boonstra. He turns 89 today, and even thought his eyesight is going bad and he can hardly drive anymore, he still preaches dozens of times every year. He is my spiritual father, mentor, and hero and I love him with all my heart.
Happy Birthday Uncle.
Today is also the birthday of two great Americans. One everybody knows, even world wide. He was Mr. America. Born in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, he rose from obscurity to be one of Hollywood's greatest stars, but more importantly, the greatest cheerleader of true American values in the last hundred years. Even though he passed away thirty-five years ago, his popularity and influence has not subsided. When other superstars pass from the scene they are relatively forgotten in a short time. The legacy of John "Duke" Wayne, however, has never declined, and today he is as popular as he ever was. Good, honest patriotism, shoot straight, tell it like it is, stand up for the little guy. John Wayne - American.
The other is also well known on a world wide scale, although not by as many perhaps as Duke Wayne. He is also a patriot, having served in Patton's Third Army in World War 2, landing at Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion. Also born in Iowa, in the little town of Ringsted in 1925, he grew up through the depression in the most difficult of times and situations. He often had to be out in the fields working the farm when he should have been in school, because his father was sick with a bad heart, asthma and rheumatism. And somehow the family survived. After the War he enrolled in Bible college, served under Harvey Springer at the First Baptist Church of Englewood, Colorado, and then founded the East Side Baptist Church in 1956. In 1972 he became the Missions Director of the Baptist Bible Fellowship, International and began a ministry of overseeing and encouraging missionaries, raising funds for their work, and preaching at mission conferences in all fifty States and in dozens of countries around the world.
His legacy is not on celluloid; it is in souls. Tens of thousands have been won to Christ because of the burden and passion of my uncle, Dr. Carl Boonstra. He turns 89 today, and even thought his eyesight is going bad and he can hardly drive anymore, he still preaches dozens of times every year. He is my spiritual father, mentor, and hero and I love him with all my heart.
Happy Birthday Uncle.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Tea Party Agenda
In 2009 my wife and I attended a Tea Party event in Springfield, Missouri. We liked and supported the Tea Party's efforts and as you remember, the 2010 midterm elections were a conservative landslide. The Tea Party fired up a successful grassroots movement that caught the attention of America and drove a conservative agenda that took control of the House of Representatives, but even with their successes, they put their support behind some candidates that were less than optimum, and lost races that may have been won with other candidates.
Three candidates, two women and one man as I remember, vied for the nod to run against Harry Reid. The Tea Party came out heavy in support of Sharon Angle, over the man (whose name I don't remember) who was a much better qualified candidate. Angle was a good woman, but she was outclassed by Reid in debate and the opportunity to win the seat was thrown away. The same thing happened with a Senate seat in New Jersey.
I support the Tea Party and its positions on limited government, closing the IRS and secure borders. I think, however, that the most important thing for conservatives in the coming 2014 elections is to gain control of the Senate and to increase the Republican majority in the House. To that end Tea Party conservatives and establishment Republicans need to begin to work together to ensure a united front and victories in the coming elections.
The Tea Party Agenda includes removing those they consider to be RINO Republicans, and they are supporting candidates across the country against the minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, against the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and others such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. In time perhaps these men should be replaced with more conservative candidates, but for the coming elections it is more important that Democrat candidates be defeated first. Once the Republicans have control of Congress then they can work at making the party more conservative.
The Tea Party has had victories in Nebraska and West Virginia and they are supporting conservative candidates around the country, but supporting candidates against entrenched incumbents who are not likely to lose is a waste of money that would be better spent in the general election against the Democrats. In North Carolina the Tea Party gave its support to two candidates who split the vote against the establishment choice. Their support was wasted. With that in mind, however, the same applies to the establishment Republicans. The Tea Party engineered the House majority in 2010 and they are gaining momentum for the coming elections. The establishment cannot just ignore them. There needs to be a consensus and a working together to ensure victory this November.
Ann Coulter recently wrote a column about stupid Republicans who throw away elections by fighting each other rather than concentrating on their Democrat opponents. She showed how at least five Senate seats could have been won in 2012 by Republicans if they had stopped attacking themselves and united for the better good.
In the coming elections she should take her own advice. There is not a better example of Republican cannibalism than that of Todd Aiken in Missouri in 2012. Aiken, a strong conservative, was leading in the polls against ultra liberal Claire McCaskill. Then he made an off-the-cuff comment about rape that was nothing short of ignorant. He immediately apologized and tried to explain himself, but the damage was done. His destruction, however, was done by Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the establishment Republicans who excoriated Aiken, were relentless in their criticism of him, and made every effort they could to make sure he did not win the Senate seat in Missouri. The Republican Party as well as the Tea Party abandoned Aiken and the seat went to McCaskill. The Republicans did all the campaigning for the Democrats and gave the seat to McCaskill. And Ann Coulter still calls Aiken an idiot. You have to wonder who the real idiot is.
I'd like to ask Coulter and all the rest of them, how big of an idiot is Claire McCaskill, and how many stupid things has she said in being the most liberal Obama supporter in the Senate? So Aiken made one stupid comment. Has Ann, Rush or Sean never made a comment that they later regretted making? Wouldn't it have been much better to have Aiken with his one dumb comment than McCaskill and her 100% support of all of Obama's dumb comments?
Wake up Republicans. Wake up Tea Party. We may have some differences of opinions, but we're on the same side. The only way we're going to win in November is to stop fighting ourselves and concentrate on the Democrats who are rubber stamping Obama's train wreck to destruction.
Three candidates, two women and one man as I remember, vied for the nod to run against Harry Reid. The Tea Party came out heavy in support of Sharon Angle, over the man (whose name I don't remember) who was a much better qualified candidate. Angle was a good woman, but she was outclassed by Reid in debate and the opportunity to win the seat was thrown away. The same thing happened with a Senate seat in New Jersey.
I support the Tea Party and its positions on limited government, closing the IRS and secure borders. I think, however, that the most important thing for conservatives in the coming 2014 elections is to gain control of the Senate and to increase the Republican majority in the House. To that end Tea Party conservatives and establishment Republicans need to begin to work together to ensure a united front and victories in the coming elections.
The Tea Party Agenda includes removing those they consider to be RINO Republicans, and they are supporting candidates across the country against the minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, against the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and others such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. In time perhaps these men should be replaced with more conservative candidates, but for the coming elections it is more important that Democrat candidates be defeated first. Once the Republicans have control of Congress then they can work at making the party more conservative.
The Tea Party has had victories in Nebraska and West Virginia and they are supporting conservative candidates around the country, but supporting candidates against entrenched incumbents who are not likely to lose is a waste of money that would be better spent in the general election against the Democrats. In North Carolina the Tea Party gave its support to two candidates who split the vote against the establishment choice. Their support was wasted. With that in mind, however, the same applies to the establishment Republicans. The Tea Party engineered the House majority in 2010 and they are gaining momentum for the coming elections. The establishment cannot just ignore them. There needs to be a consensus and a working together to ensure victory this November.
Ann Coulter recently wrote a column about stupid Republicans who throw away elections by fighting each other rather than concentrating on their Democrat opponents. She showed how at least five Senate seats could have been won in 2012 by Republicans if they had stopped attacking themselves and united for the better good.
In the coming elections she should take her own advice. There is not a better example of Republican cannibalism than that of Todd Aiken in Missouri in 2012. Aiken, a strong conservative, was leading in the polls against ultra liberal Claire McCaskill. Then he made an off-the-cuff comment about rape that was nothing short of ignorant. He immediately apologized and tried to explain himself, but the damage was done. His destruction, however, was done by Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the establishment Republicans who excoriated Aiken, were relentless in their criticism of him, and made every effort they could to make sure he did not win the Senate seat in Missouri. The Republican Party as well as the Tea Party abandoned Aiken and the seat went to McCaskill. The Republicans did all the campaigning for the Democrats and gave the seat to McCaskill. And Ann Coulter still calls Aiken an idiot. You have to wonder who the real idiot is.
I'd like to ask Coulter and all the rest of them, how big of an idiot is Claire McCaskill, and how many stupid things has she said in being the most liberal Obama supporter in the Senate? So Aiken made one stupid comment. Has Ann, Rush or Sean never made a comment that they later regretted making? Wouldn't it have been much better to have Aiken with his one dumb comment than McCaskill and her 100% support of all of Obama's dumb comments?
Wake up Republicans. Wake up Tea Party. We may have some differences of opinions, but we're on the same side. The only way we're going to win in November is to stop fighting ourselves and concentrate on the Democrats who are rubber stamping Obama's train wreck to destruction.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Brother Joe
Last Saturday, April 20, we said goodbye to Jose "Brother Joe" Ornias. He had been in poor health for awhile, and sometime early Tuesday morning in his sleep he passed through the portals of heaven. His earthly travail ended at age 65.
I had kind of a love-hate relationship with Bro. Joe. A lot of people did. He had a way of irritating even his friends, but he was full of charisma, a very compelling person. It was almost impossible not to like him, and then like him again after the next irritation.
I first met Bro. Joe almost 29 years ago. The day was hot and muggy when I stepped off the Flying Tigers 747 at Clark Air Base in Angeles City. A van from my new squadron was waiting to pick me and about six enlisted sailors up and take us to Subic Bay. We drove out of the city, across a wide flood plain, over some low jungle covered hills and then down a long straight section of road under an archway of tall trees. At the end of the stretch we crossed a bridge and I noticed to my left down the hill a house by the creek. Quaint, I thought and took note of it.
Three days later I went out to town looking for a particular church I had been told about, Bible Baptist. The roads were so full of potholes in those days and some of them could almost swallow a small car and as one of my squadron mates drove me out we passed right by the church and didn't see it for all the signs and marquees and holes. At the corner of tenth street, however, I saw a sign that said, Fundamental Baptist Church, Services in English. I said, that must be it, and I went in. It wasn't the church I was looking for, but it was a church that would be a part of my life until this day.
One of the first people I met at the church was Bro. Joe. Medium height, round belly, and a toothy grin from ear to ear. He talked loud and enthusiastically and told me all about the church. He wanted to show me his "farm." I didn't know what to think, he was kind of overbearing. Two weeks later I was back to the church and he set it up for me to sing a song while he played. (That was the day I met Lhey, my future wife, and she thought I was stuck up and said to herself, Lord, that man will never be my friend!) I still remember I sang "It Will Be Worth It All."
After church Bro. Joe took me in his old blue Tamaraw, kind of like a jeepney only smaller, over the highway known as the "zig-zag," because it went around several hairpin turns going over the hills, out to the farm. It was the house on the side of the road that I had noticed coming in. He showed me pictures of his adopted children, Arthur and Jackie. Later we went into town and picked up so many kids in the Tamaraw that they were hanging on the sides and brought them to church for a Bible club meeting. After church he took me and Lucy Delgado, one of the church workers, around the bay to the White Rock Beach hotel and resort. He said it was the best restaurant in town. I thought, how cool, he's buying me dinner. Then the check came. He turned and looked in the opposite direction and the waiter dropped it in front of me. That became routine with Bro. Joe. He was always scheming or scamming trying to raise money, and always looking for a way to get a free meal.
He seemed to know everybody. Every policeman on every corner was his friend. He told me he knew Mayor Gordon, but I didn't believe him. I learned today that he actually did know the mayor. He knew everything about the town, and he took me everywhere to see it all. One day we went to the police station and he introduced me to the police captain, Noli Tejada. He really did know a lot of policemen.
One time we climbed the mountain behind his home. He had a garden up there and a cashew tree. The cashews had been picked but there was one left and he gave it to me. I'll bet you didn't know the fruit above the nut is really quite good. You could see over the green forested hills forever, all the way to Subic Bay five miles away. In 2011 we climbed up there again. He said he wanted to build a youth camp. At the time he was using a cane, and the climb was harder because of a new highway that cut across the side of the mountain. To cross we had to go through a culvert that was about five feet high under the road and climb out on a ladder. He made it all the way up there, cane and all, and shared his vision to reach more young people.
Besides the church, Bro. Joe's passion was Bible Basketball. Every year he organized a league, and this time as they were getting ready to start he told me that I was the chaplain. He didn't ask, he just appointed me. Ten or twelve of the young college students at the church had gotten kids together from their neighborhoods and formed teams and they had a round robin tourney, but before they played every night they had to attend the Bible study. Through that I got to lead three young boys to the Lord. My first "mission" experience. The winning team was sent by the church to the Word of Life camp in Laguna.
About that time Bro. Joe decided I was right for his niece, and he brought her up from wherever to try and set me up with her. I wasn't interested. He had other connections that got him on the base, and he kept bringing her by my room. I told her I wasn't interested but I couldn't make her understand or him until at Christmas when she gave me a gift and I gave it back. She was hurt, and he was angry, and he started spreading rumors about me, and I was furious. It got so bad I almost quit the church, but one night I had it out with him. If we'd been in the States I'd have knocked him on his can, but US-Filipino relations were tense in those days and an American could get arrested for almost looking at somebody wrong, and I didn't trust Bro. Joe. Anybody who thinks I'm short tempered should have seen me restrain myself that night. But after we yelled and shouted, we prayed and settled our differences. We continued to hang out together and I continued to buy dinner.
In the Spring of 1986 our church young people had gone to youth camp in Masinloc, about two hours up the coast. Paul Fernandez, another sailor attending the church, and I had supported some of the young people, so on Friday we took off work early and Paul drove us up along with Bro. Joe and two others, Jimmy Agabon and Sam Abad. We spent the night at the camp, then drove up to the Coto Mines, where another of our church Bible college students, Boyet, was doing his summer internship at the church in the mining camp. On the way a big mining truck cut us off at a curve and ran us off the road. They stopped and helped us get the car on the road, but the steering was messed up and we couldn't turn full to the right. At some of the curves we had to stop and back up to make little turns to get around. At the mines they had a mechanic who fixed the car enough so we could get home. That night we all slept at the pastor's house on straw mats on a hard wood floor. Only slightly better than the straw mats on the concrete floor we'd slept on the night before. Bro. Joe, on his back, snored so loud I'd never heard anything like it, and I finally went out and laid down in the car.
Bro. Joe had family in Seattle and he lived there for a number of years and wasn't here when Mt. Pinatubo erupted. The roof on his house collapsed but he came back and fixed it up. There were too many people depending on him to leave it. He finally moved back here permanently some years ago, but we'd only see him occasionally whenever we passed through the Philippines on our way to Kenya or back. In 2005-06 we took a hiatus from Kenya and I pastored this church trying to help them find a new pastor. When we arrived back here again last August they were without a pastor again, and Bro. Joe began campaigning for them to call me. At first I said no, because we had other plans, and they were candidating people. But they didn't get anyone, so I said I would help on an interim basis if they wanted and in January the church called me.
Bro. Joe's health had been fading. His kidneys had shut down last fall and he was swollen twice his normal size. We visited him in the hospital. After they drained the fluids he was back home, but getting weaker. In January he was in the hospital again and really looking bad. We thought he might die then. One night we got some church members and we went to the hospital and anointed him with oil and prayed for him. He started to improve. They drained the fluids, his kidneys started working, and he went home again. He was in a wheel chair, but on our church anniversary he determined he would be there and he came. We carried him in and he sat right up front. We paid him a visit a couple weeks later and he was still unable to walk, but then at his birthday in February he invited us out. We were happily shocked to see him walking around and looking very good.
Our schedule has been so full the last two months and with my masters studies I've hardly had spare time, so we hadn't been back out to the farm. Just last week Lhey and I were talking that after Easter when things slow down we had to go visit him. And then we got the text message Tuesday. The vigil started that night. About forty people from our church went out. Al Bondad, who was a groomsman in our wedding, is a pastor and he spoke. Wednesday we couldn't go because of church services, but our "daughter" church that we started in 1991 in that area, held the service. Thursday and Friday we held the service at the farm. I had another pastor friend of Bro. Joe's, James Reyes, preach Thursday, and I did Friday. There were over 100 people at the house. At 7:30 Saturday morning we had a service at the church. They brought the body in. Over 80 people came and the former pastor, Jihan Senina preached. As we closed the service I led the congregation in the Doug Oldham song, To God be the Glory, and the church sang like there was no tomorrow. It was a rousing end to our celebration of his life before going out to the cemetery.
Bro. Joe was an enigma. He could be a scoundrel and somehow a humble servant of God at the same time. He always had a plan. He was always scheming some way to raise money, and he knew he could get it from Americans. I don't know where he had his connections, but every time the fleet was in he was finding sailors somewhere and bringing them to church and trying to talk them into supporting the work. I never trusted Bro. Joe when it came to money, but deep inside he had a big heart.
I think a lot of people don't know it anymore, but Bro. Joe was quite talented musically. He could play the piano well and sing. He used to play and sing solo specials at church. His favorite was the one we sang Saturday morning. "How can I say thanks, for the things you have done for me?" He would do a big arpeggio on the piano, and he was so expressive when he sang.
In 1975 Dr. Manuel Badar, who was president of the Baptist Bible Seminary and Institute in Manila and really a great man of God, preached a service at Bible Baptist Church in Olongapo. Lhey went forward in the invitation and it was Bro. Joe that prayed with her while she accepted the Lord. Later that year Bro. Joe, along with Lhey's Aunt Wilma, and another friend, Doctora Cacho, left Bible Baptist to start a new work. They struggled for a number of years, meeting in different locations, until Sam Butcher, the creator of the Precious Moments figurines and cards, donated money to buy property and build a building. Sam Butcher had a doll factory in Iloilo here in the Philippines, and I'm certain Bro. Joe got hold of him some how and charmed him into making a donation. It was a worthy gift as the church continues to this day. It speaks of Bro. Joe's vision, however. He was always thinking of how to reach and help people (after he padded his pocket).
Bro. Joe used the Bible Basketball ministry to reach the youth in the town, and he reached hundreds of them. One of them was Noli Tejada, who went on to become the police captain. Another was Ramon Reyes. You might remember when we were here in 2011 that I preached a funeral service for Ramon. He had been killed in a car accident. Ramon had been a gang leader. He was a rough and tough street fighting kid. Bro. Joe worked with him for three years before he got saved. Ramon brought his whole family to the Lord, went to Bible college, worked at the Word of Life camp, and pastored a church. And he was only one. Another that I know is Godfrey Santonil, who pastors a very large church today south of Manila. Bro. Joe's son, Arthur, had been a ten year old drug dealer when Bro. Joe brought him in. Arthur said at the funeral that he counted at least 60 young men that Bro. Joe had reached that had gone into some kind of Gospel ministry, some temporarily and some permanent.
Bro. Joe was never married, and I don't think any of his kids were legally adopted. He picked them up off the street, others had widowed mothers or very poor families. I think there are five that he considered his, and who all called him Papa, but there were many others he helped along the way.
Bro. Joe was always laughing and smiling. He saw humor in everything. One time I was flying out to Okinawa the next day and I was trying to learn Tagalog. So before I left church I said, "Ako ay babalik." I shall return. Bro. Joe started yelling, "Oh! MacArthur!" Then he had everybody laughing. How fitting it was when Jackie went into his room Tuesday morning and found him he had a smile on his face. No doubt when the angel came and said it's time, his lips turned up into a smile as he got up to cross the river.
All week long I've had a tune running through my head with a slight variation of the words. Anybody remember Hank Williams and Jambalaya?
Goodbye Joe, he gotta go, me-o-my-o. He gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou.
It seems appropriate. I can just see Bro. Joe standing in a flat-bottom scow with that great big smile on his face, waving as he poles his way into the mist across the swamp and on into glory.
Well, I've practically written his biography now, and if you've read this far, thanks for letting me take your time to reminisce about a very unusual character who has been a part of my life. I think someday up in heaven he and I are going to climb a mountain somewhere together and look out over the jungle-covered hills out to the ocean and eat cashews.
I had kind of a love-hate relationship with Bro. Joe. A lot of people did. He had a way of irritating even his friends, but he was full of charisma, a very compelling person. It was almost impossible not to like him, and then like him again after the next irritation.
I first met Bro. Joe almost 29 years ago. The day was hot and muggy when I stepped off the Flying Tigers 747 at Clark Air Base in Angeles City. A van from my new squadron was waiting to pick me and about six enlisted sailors up and take us to Subic Bay. We drove out of the city, across a wide flood plain, over some low jungle covered hills and then down a long straight section of road under an archway of tall trees. At the end of the stretch we crossed a bridge and I noticed to my left down the hill a house by the creek. Quaint, I thought and took note of it.
Three days later I went out to town looking for a particular church I had been told about, Bible Baptist. The roads were so full of potholes in those days and some of them could almost swallow a small car and as one of my squadron mates drove me out we passed right by the church and didn't see it for all the signs and marquees and holes. At the corner of tenth street, however, I saw a sign that said, Fundamental Baptist Church, Services in English. I said, that must be it, and I went in. It wasn't the church I was looking for, but it was a church that would be a part of my life until this day.
One of the first people I met at the church was Bro. Joe. Medium height, round belly, and a toothy grin from ear to ear. He talked loud and enthusiastically and told me all about the church. He wanted to show me his "farm." I didn't know what to think, he was kind of overbearing. Two weeks later I was back to the church and he set it up for me to sing a song while he played. (That was the day I met Lhey, my future wife, and she thought I was stuck up and said to herself, Lord, that man will never be my friend!) I still remember I sang "It Will Be Worth It All."
After church Bro. Joe took me in his old blue Tamaraw, kind of like a jeepney only smaller, over the highway known as the "zig-zag," because it went around several hairpin turns going over the hills, out to the farm. It was the house on the side of the road that I had noticed coming in. He showed me pictures of his adopted children, Arthur and Jackie. Later we went into town and picked up so many kids in the Tamaraw that they were hanging on the sides and brought them to church for a Bible club meeting. After church he took me and Lucy Delgado, one of the church workers, around the bay to the White Rock Beach hotel and resort. He said it was the best restaurant in town. I thought, how cool, he's buying me dinner. Then the check came. He turned and looked in the opposite direction and the waiter dropped it in front of me. That became routine with Bro. Joe. He was always scheming or scamming trying to raise money, and always looking for a way to get a free meal.
He seemed to know everybody. Every policeman on every corner was his friend. He told me he knew Mayor Gordon, but I didn't believe him. I learned today that he actually did know the mayor. He knew everything about the town, and he took me everywhere to see it all. One day we went to the police station and he introduced me to the police captain, Noli Tejada. He really did know a lot of policemen.
One time we climbed the mountain behind his home. He had a garden up there and a cashew tree. The cashews had been picked but there was one left and he gave it to me. I'll bet you didn't know the fruit above the nut is really quite good. You could see over the green forested hills forever, all the way to Subic Bay five miles away. In 2011 we climbed up there again. He said he wanted to build a youth camp. At the time he was using a cane, and the climb was harder because of a new highway that cut across the side of the mountain. To cross we had to go through a culvert that was about five feet high under the road and climb out on a ladder. He made it all the way up there, cane and all, and shared his vision to reach more young people.
Besides the church, Bro. Joe's passion was Bible Basketball. Every year he organized a league, and this time as they were getting ready to start he told me that I was the chaplain. He didn't ask, he just appointed me. Ten or twelve of the young college students at the church had gotten kids together from their neighborhoods and formed teams and they had a round robin tourney, but before they played every night they had to attend the Bible study. Through that I got to lead three young boys to the Lord. My first "mission" experience. The winning team was sent by the church to the Word of Life camp in Laguna.
About that time Bro. Joe decided I was right for his niece, and he brought her up from wherever to try and set me up with her. I wasn't interested. He had other connections that got him on the base, and he kept bringing her by my room. I told her I wasn't interested but I couldn't make her understand or him until at Christmas when she gave me a gift and I gave it back. She was hurt, and he was angry, and he started spreading rumors about me, and I was furious. It got so bad I almost quit the church, but one night I had it out with him. If we'd been in the States I'd have knocked him on his can, but US-Filipino relations were tense in those days and an American could get arrested for almost looking at somebody wrong, and I didn't trust Bro. Joe. Anybody who thinks I'm short tempered should have seen me restrain myself that night. But after we yelled and shouted, we prayed and settled our differences. We continued to hang out together and I continued to buy dinner.
In the Spring of 1986 our church young people had gone to youth camp in Masinloc, about two hours up the coast. Paul Fernandez, another sailor attending the church, and I had supported some of the young people, so on Friday we took off work early and Paul drove us up along with Bro. Joe and two others, Jimmy Agabon and Sam Abad. We spent the night at the camp, then drove up to the Coto Mines, where another of our church Bible college students, Boyet, was doing his summer internship at the church in the mining camp. On the way a big mining truck cut us off at a curve and ran us off the road. They stopped and helped us get the car on the road, but the steering was messed up and we couldn't turn full to the right. At some of the curves we had to stop and back up to make little turns to get around. At the mines they had a mechanic who fixed the car enough so we could get home. That night we all slept at the pastor's house on straw mats on a hard wood floor. Only slightly better than the straw mats on the concrete floor we'd slept on the night before. Bro. Joe, on his back, snored so loud I'd never heard anything like it, and I finally went out and laid down in the car.
Bro. Joe had family in Seattle and he lived there for a number of years and wasn't here when Mt. Pinatubo erupted. The roof on his house collapsed but he came back and fixed it up. There were too many people depending on him to leave it. He finally moved back here permanently some years ago, but we'd only see him occasionally whenever we passed through the Philippines on our way to Kenya or back. In 2005-06 we took a hiatus from Kenya and I pastored this church trying to help them find a new pastor. When we arrived back here again last August they were without a pastor again, and Bro. Joe began campaigning for them to call me. At first I said no, because we had other plans, and they were candidating people. But they didn't get anyone, so I said I would help on an interim basis if they wanted and in January the church called me.
Bro. Joe's health had been fading. His kidneys had shut down last fall and he was swollen twice his normal size. We visited him in the hospital. After they drained the fluids he was back home, but getting weaker. In January he was in the hospital again and really looking bad. We thought he might die then. One night we got some church members and we went to the hospital and anointed him with oil and prayed for him. He started to improve. They drained the fluids, his kidneys started working, and he went home again. He was in a wheel chair, but on our church anniversary he determined he would be there and he came. We carried him in and he sat right up front. We paid him a visit a couple weeks later and he was still unable to walk, but then at his birthday in February he invited us out. We were happily shocked to see him walking around and looking very good.
Our schedule has been so full the last two months and with my masters studies I've hardly had spare time, so we hadn't been back out to the farm. Just last week Lhey and I were talking that after Easter when things slow down we had to go visit him. And then we got the text message Tuesday. The vigil started that night. About forty people from our church went out. Al Bondad, who was a groomsman in our wedding, is a pastor and he spoke. Wednesday we couldn't go because of church services, but our "daughter" church that we started in 1991 in that area, held the service. Thursday and Friday we held the service at the farm. I had another pastor friend of Bro. Joe's, James Reyes, preach Thursday, and I did Friday. There were over 100 people at the house. At 7:30 Saturday morning we had a service at the church. They brought the body in. Over 80 people came and the former pastor, Jihan Senina preached. As we closed the service I led the congregation in the Doug Oldham song, To God be the Glory, and the church sang like there was no tomorrow. It was a rousing end to our celebration of his life before going out to the cemetery.
Bro. Joe was an enigma. He could be a scoundrel and somehow a humble servant of God at the same time. He always had a plan. He was always scheming some way to raise money, and he knew he could get it from Americans. I don't know where he had his connections, but every time the fleet was in he was finding sailors somewhere and bringing them to church and trying to talk them into supporting the work. I never trusted Bro. Joe when it came to money, but deep inside he had a big heart.
I think a lot of people don't know it anymore, but Bro. Joe was quite talented musically. He could play the piano well and sing. He used to play and sing solo specials at church. His favorite was the one we sang Saturday morning. "How can I say thanks, for the things you have done for me?" He would do a big arpeggio on the piano, and he was so expressive when he sang.
In 1975 Dr. Manuel Badar, who was president of the Baptist Bible Seminary and Institute in Manila and really a great man of God, preached a service at Bible Baptist Church in Olongapo. Lhey went forward in the invitation and it was Bro. Joe that prayed with her while she accepted the Lord. Later that year Bro. Joe, along with Lhey's Aunt Wilma, and another friend, Doctora Cacho, left Bible Baptist to start a new work. They struggled for a number of years, meeting in different locations, until Sam Butcher, the creator of the Precious Moments figurines and cards, donated money to buy property and build a building. Sam Butcher had a doll factory in Iloilo here in the Philippines, and I'm certain Bro. Joe got hold of him some how and charmed him into making a donation. It was a worthy gift as the church continues to this day. It speaks of Bro. Joe's vision, however. He was always thinking of how to reach and help people (after he padded his pocket).
Bro. Joe used the Bible Basketball ministry to reach the youth in the town, and he reached hundreds of them. One of them was Noli Tejada, who went on to become the police captain. Another was Ramon Reyes. You might remember when we were here in 2011 that I preached a funeral service for Ramon. He had been killed in a car accident. Ramon had been a gang leader. He was a rough and tough street fighting kid. Bro. Joe worked with him for three years before he got saved. Ramon brought his whole family to the Lord, went to Bible college, worked at the Word of Life camp, and pastored a church. And he was only one. Another that I know is Godfrey Santonil, who pastors a very large church today south of Manila. Bro. Joe's son, Arthur, had been a ten year old drug dealer when Bro. Joe brought him in. Arthur said at the funeral that he counted at least 60 young men that Bro. Joe had reached that had gone into some kind of Gospel ministry, some temporarily and some permanent.
Bro. Joe was never married, and I don't think any of his kids were legally adopted. He picked them up off the street, others had widowed mothers or very poor families. I think there are five that he considered his, and who all called him Papa, but there were many others he helped along the way.
Bro. Joe was always laughing and smiling. He saw humor in everything. One time I was flying out to Okinawa the next day and I was trying to learn Tagalog. So before I left church I said, "Ako ay babalik." I shall return. Bro. Joe started yelling, "Oh! MacArthur!" Then he had everybody laughing. How fitting it was when Jackie went into his room Tuesday morning and found him he had a smile on his face. No doubt when the angel came and said it's time, his lips turned up into a smile as he got up to cross the river.
All week long I've had a tune running through my head with a slight variation of the words. Anybody remember Hank Williams and Jambalaya?
Goodbye Joe, he gotta go, me-o-my-o. He gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou.
It seems appropriate. I can just see Bro. Joe standing in a flat-bottom scow with that great big smile on his face, waving as he poles his way into the mist across the swamp and on into glory.
Well, I've practically written his biography now, and if you've read this far, thanks for letting me take your time to reminisce about a very unusual character who has been a part of my life. I think someday up in heaven he and I are going to climb a mountain somewhere together and look out over the jungle-covered hills out to the ocean and eat cashews.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Rawhide vs. the WHO
During his first term the WHO (White House Occupant) invoked the name of Ronald Reagan on several occasions, comparing himself with Reagan, and claiming Reagan agreed with the same kind of policies that the WHO was proposing. Then on December 20, 2011, he made what is probably the most arrogant, self-serving, boastful and childish comment that has ever come from a president when he implied that he is the fourth greatest president in American history behind JFK, FDR, and Abraham Lincoln. Well, he was right about one name being one of the greatest, but the WHO couldn't hold a candle to any of these three.
His comparisons with Reagan are really surprising since the left normally takes any opportunity it can to vilify him. Just tonight on CNN overseas a British reporter covering the crisis in Crimea referred once again to Gorbachev ending the Cold War. I thought, Oh no, here we go again. Actually though, he may be right. Gorbachev did end the Cold War by surrendering. He lost his grip on the Soviet Union and it fell apart right out from under him. He had no choice.
About ten days ago, Robert Sobel, a leftist pundit for the leftist Orlando Liberal Examiner, revised and reposted an article he had written in December 2011, just before Obama crowned himself with greatness. The column was as audacious as it was stupid, and brought up the same anti-Reagan rhetoric that the left has been spewing out of its collective mouth since before he was elected in 1980. Sobel made ten points that were the same blather the left always spouts when talking about Reagan. Why he had to revise the article is beyond me because nothing in it was original. Let me summarize and then offer a rebuttal.
1. Reagan cut taxes for the rich and increased taxes on the Middle Class. He lowered top tax rate from 70% to 28%, but was forced to raise taxes 11 times during his administration trapping the Middle Class in bad jobs and poverty.
As Reagan would say, "There you go again." (Heavy sigh!) This article is a distortion of the facts from the first point. In 1981 Reagan, who was known as "Rawhide" by his Secret Service detail, was able to get Congress to pass a 25% across the board income tax reduction for all Americans. Furthermore, the reduction of the top rate allowed businesses to grow and resulted in more jobs and the longest peace time expansion of the economy in history prior to the Clinton economic boom, which only came off when Clinton gave up his socialist tax hikes and adopted Reaganomics after the 1994 Republican Revolution. I get the impression Sobel is a young brainwashed Democrat who wasn't around to suffer through Carter's disastrous economy, or experience living through Reagan's robust economy once it got passed the recession of 1981-82.
2. He tripled the national debt from 900 billion to 2.8 trillion because the government was left short of funds due to the tax cuts.
As always, blame Reagan. And as always, not true. Reminds me of the WHO, who after five years still blames Bush. In fact, the government was not left short of funds due to the tax cuts in the 1980s. Revenues doubled under Reagan's administration proving his "trickle-down" tax cut plan worked. The problem was the Democrat controlled House tripled spending. A child can do the math. The House controls the purse, and the Democrat led House increased spending more than the double revenue coming in.
3. He secretly sold arms and money to Iran in the Iran/Contra scandal. He lost popularity and never recovered.
Oh please, do we have to do this again? Reagan was investigated and found innocent of involvement in any illegal activity in Iran/Contra. It was the biggest scandal of his presidency, the only one really, and it showed a failure of leadership on his part to have allowed the scandal to happen under his watch. His popularity did also take a nose dive, and although it never fully recovered, in the end it did remain above 50%. Nobody's perfect, but Reagan broke no law. And if you want to start pointing fingers at scandals, the WHO is presiding over more scandals than any president in history.
4. Reagan funded terrorists by sending money and weapons to the Mujahadeen and the Taliban, the same people that attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11.
We were at the height of the Cold War. The USSR had invaded Afghanistan. The US funded the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets. It was a battlefield of the Cold War. At the time nobody knew who bin Laden was, or had any knowledge that he would start an anti-American terrorist network in the 1990s long after Reagan was out of office. The reality of it is, the strategy was successful. By 1989 the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.
5. When Reagan came into office in 1981 unemployment was at 7.5% and it went up to nearly 11% in 1982.
This is totally disingenuous by Sobel. Reagan's first budget didn't go into affect until 1982. The 1981 recession came on the heals of Jimmy Carter's disastrous economic policies which had inflation at 12.5% when he left office. When Reagan left office inflation was at 4.1%, and had been as low as 1.1% in 1986. Unemployment peaked in January 1983 at 10.8% dropped back to 7.5% by 1984 and was at 5.8% when Reagan left office in 1988. In other words, capitalism recovered the economy from Carter's socialist policies.
6. Reagan Ignored AIDS, and said nothing about it until seven years into his presidency. Instead of using his position to bring awareness to it, he kept quiet about it. “A leader not so much.”
Again, not true. AIDS was an unknown disease when it began to show up in 1981. It was not labeled AIDS until September 24, 1982. At the time it was still only known to show up in homosexual men until an infant contracted it through a blood transfusion. Congress began hearings on AIDS in 1982 and allotted 5-10 million to the National Institutes of Health for research. In 1985 Congress allocated 70 million for AIDS research and the US military began testing for AIDS. It was in 1985 that AIDS began taking on epidemic proportions. On September 17, 1986 Reagan addressed Congress vowing to make AIDS research a priority. Six years into his term with a disease that was unknown when he started.
7. He gave an amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants.
Reagan was duped by Ted Kennedy and the Democrats who wanted amnesty for 300,000 illegal aliens in exchange for a border fence. Ultimately 3 million were included and funds for the fence were never appropriated. Liberals are smooth-tongued lying operators, and Reagan fell for one of their schemes. Shame on him for being naive enough to trust the Democrats. But if this is a criticism of Reagan, what hypocrisy is it of Sobel who apparently approves of the WHO's attempt to grant amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens?
8. He attacked unions, illegally destroying PATCO, proving he didn't care about the Middle Class or their jobs.
First of all, unions do not represent the Middle Class. In fact, they've done more to hurt their own employees than they have to help. General Motors is a grand example of union excess destroying a company. PATCO illegally went on strike. As a government union it was not allowed because of the danger it would have on air travel as well as the overall economy. The union was disbanded, new workers were hired, and ATC continued operating which was the best result for the whole country. There's nothing there to criticize. Reagan handled it firmly and properly.
9. He raided the Social Security trust fund.
The Social Security Trust Fund was broken into first by Lyndon Johnson and has been used ever since to cover government deficit spending, which, once again, tripled under the Democrat controlled House. It was the Democrat controlled House that dipped into the trust fund. If Reagan is guilty for that, even more so was Congress.
10. Reagan's loyal followers offer endless worship and never ending praise for “one of the worst presidents this country has had to endure over the last 100 years. (H)e would be considered too moderate to be nominated by today’s conservative standards.”
Sobel obviously doesn't know conservatives or our standards. Conservatives are constantly talking about how they wish they could find someone of Ronald Reagan's character to run for president again. He was definitely much more conservative than any Republican who has run recently. Twenty-five years after he left office Reagan deserves to be memorialized because unlike the self-exalting WHO, he actually was one of the three or four greatest presidents in our history.
There are two sides to every story. Sobel was very deceitful in the telling of his. The WHO was very deceitful in his comparisons. This is the truth about Rawhide and it needs to be remembered.
His comparisons with Reagan are really surprising since the left normally takes any opportunity it can to vilify him. Just tonight on CNN overseas a British reporter covering the crisis in Crimea referred once again to Gorbachev ending the Cold War. I thought, Oh no, here we go again. Actually though, he may be right. Gorbachev did end the Cold War by surrendering. He lost his grip on the Soviet Union and it fell apart right out from under him. He had no choice.
About ten days ago, Robert Sobel, a leftist pundit for the leftist Orlando Liberal Examiner, revised and reposted an article he had written in December 2011, just before Obama crowned himself with greatness. The column was as audacious as it was stupid, and brought up the same anti-Reagan rhetoric that the left has been spewing out of its collective mouth since before he was elected in 1980. Sobel made ten points that were the same blather the left always spouts when talking about Reagan. Why he had to revise the article is beyond me because nothing in it was original. Let me summarize and then offer a rebuttal.
1. Reagan cut taxes for the rich and increased taxes on the Middle Class. He lowered top tax rate from 70% to 28%, but was forced to raise taxes 11 times during his administration trapping the Middle Class in bad jobs and poverty.
As Reagan would say, "There you go again." (Heavy sigh!) This article is a distortion of the facts from the first point. In 1981 Reagan, who was known as "Rawhide" by his Secret Service detail, was able to get Congress to pass a 25% across the board income tax reduction for all Americans. Furthermore, the reduction of the top rate allowed businesses to grow and resulted in more jobs and the longest peace time expansion of the economy in history prior to the Clinton economic boom, which only came off when Clinton gave up his socialist tax hikes and adopted Reaganomics after the 1994 Republican Revolution. I get the impression Sobel is a young brainwashed Democrat who wasn't around to suffer through Carter's disastrous economy, or experience living through Reagan's robust economy once it got passed the recession of 1981-82.
2. He tripled the national debt from 900 billion to 2.8 trillion because the government was left short of funds due to the tax cuts.
As always, blame Reagan. And as always, not true. Reminds me of the WHO, who after five years still blames Bush. In fact, the government was not left short of funds due to the tax cuts in the 1980s. Revenues doubled under Reagan's administration proving his "trickle-down" tax cut plan worked. The problem was the Democrat controlled House tripled spending. A child can do the math. The House controls the purse, and the Democrat led House increased spending more than the double revenue coming in.
3. He secretly sold arms and money to Iran in the Iran/Contra scandal. He lost popularity and never recovered.
Oh please, do we have to do this again? Reagan was investigated and found innocent of involvement in any illegal activity in Iran/Contra. It was the biggest scandal of his presidency, the only one really, and it showed a failure of leadership on his part to have allowed the scandal to happen under his watch. His popularity did also take a nose dive, and although it never fully recovered, in the end it did remain above 50%. Nobody's perfect, but Reagan broke no law. And if you want to start pointing fingers at scandals, the WHO is presiding over more scandals than any president in history.
4. Reagan funded terrorists by sending money and weapons to the Mujahadeen and the Taliban, the same people that attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11.
We were at the height of the Cold War. The USSR had invaded Afghanistan. The US funded the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets. It was a battlefield of the Cold War. At the time nobody knew who bin Laden was, or had any knowledge that he would start an anti-American terrorist network in the 1990s long after Reagan was out of office. The reality of it is, the strategy was successful. By 1989 the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.
5. When Reagan came into office in 1981 unemployment was at 7.5% and it went up to nearly 11% in 1982.
This is totally disingenuous by Sobel. Reagan's first budget didn't go into affect until 1982. The 1981 recession came on the heals of Jimmy Carter's disastrous economic policies which had inflation at 12.5% when he left office. When Reagan left office inflation was at 4.1%, and had been as low as 1.1% in 1986. Unemployment peaked in January 1983 at 10.8% dropped back to 7.5% by 1984 and was at 5.8% when Reagan left office in 1988. In other words, capitalism recovered the economy from Carter's socialist policies.
6. Reagan Ignored AIDS, and said nothing about it until seven years into his presidency. Instead of using his position to bring awareness to it, he kept quiet about it. “A leader not so much.”
Again, not true. AIDS was an unknown disease when it began to show up in 1981. It was not labeled AIDS until September 24, 1982. At the time it was still only known to show up in homosexual men until an infant contracted it through a blood transfusion. Congress began hearings on AIDS in 1982 and allotted 5-10 million to the National Institutes of Health for research. In 1985 Congress allocated 70 million for AIDS research and the US military began testing for AIDS. It was in 1985 that AIDS began taking on epidemic proportions. On September 17, 1986 Reagan addressed Congress vowing to make AIDS research a priority. Six years into his term with a disease that was unknown when he started.
7. He gave an amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants.
Reagan was duped by Ted Kennedy and the Democrats who wanted amnesty for 300,000 illegal aliens in exchange for a border fence. Ultimately 3 million were included and funds for the fence were never appropriated. Liberals are smooth-tongued lying operators, and Reagan fell for one of their schemes. Shame on him for being naive enough to trust the Democrats. But if this is a criticism of Reagan, what hypocrisy is it of Sobel who apparently approves of the WHO's attempt to grant amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens?
8. He attacked unions, illegally destroying PATCO, proving he didn't care about the Middle Class or their jobs.
First of all, unions do not represent the Middle Class. In fact, they've done more to hurt their own employees than they have to help. General Motors is a grand example of union excess destroying a company. PATCO illegally went on strike. As a government union it was not allowed because of the danger it would have on air travel as well as the overall economy. The union was disbanded, new workers were hired, and ATC continued operating which was the best result for the whole country. There's nothing there to criticize. Reagan handled it firmly and properly.
9. He raided the Social Security trust fund.
The Social Security Trust Fund was broken into first by Lyndon Johnson and has been used ever since to cover government deficit spending, which, once again, tripled under the Democrat controlled House. It was the Democrat controlled House that dipped into the trust fund. If Reagan is guilty for that, even more so was Congress.
10. Reagan's loyal followers offer endless worship and never ending praise for “one of the worst presidents this country has had to endure over the last 100 years. (H)e would be considered too moderate to be nominated by today’s conservative standards.”
Sobel obviously doesn't know conservatives or our standards. Conservatives are constantly talking about how they wish they could find someone of Ronald Reagan's character to run for president again. He was definitely much more conservative than any Republican who has run recently. Twenty-five years after he left office Reagan deserves to be memorialized because unlike the self-exalting WHO, he actually was one of the three or four greatest presidents in our history.
There are two sides to every story. Sobel was very deceitful in the telling of his. The WHO was very deceitful in his comparisons. This is the truth about Rawhide and it needs to be remembered.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham, Evolution Debate
Yesterday evolutionist Bill Nye and creationist Ken Ham had a publicly televised debate. I didn't see it, but a lot of people are talking about it, and I got into the tail end of a debate going on a friend's Facebook page. Michael, an agnostic because atheist sounds too harsh for someone who isn't anti-God, just doesn't believe in God, and Peter, a Christian biologist had a lively debate going on. They were discussing things with terminology I don't know, so part of it was way over my head, but other things were said that I do know a little about, so I added my two cents worth.
I'm not adding their conversations, but Michael criticized Scripture saying, No man has seen God at anytime, and then in another place it says someone saw the face of God. He also threw in a criticism of the Bible being unscientific. They had a discussion of amino acids being created in a test tube, which I have read about. I don't know the terminology they were using, but I know enough about the event to comment on it. So, with that introduction, here is my reply.
Wow. Wish I'd seen the debate. I've had these kinds of discussions and the intellectuals blow me away. I've heard Ham speak too and I thought he presented creation well, but it was never in a debate situation. It sounds from the comments that he didn't do so well. I don't suppose I could keep pace with Michael and Peter, but I would like to add a few thoughts.
Both men were arguing from subjective beliefs which require faith. Ham's position is based on a scriptural foundation which does indeed leave many details unanswered, but which are supported scientifically by such laws as thermodynamics. Evolution has just as many or more unanswered questions that scientific laws actually refute. Laws of probability show that the likely hood of getting enough amino acids to combine to even take the first step toward life are so astronomical that it is foolish to believe it could even happen.
There are many questions about Scripture and some of those probably have to do with translations not being exactly perfect, but it's an unfair argument to take a verse out of context and throw it into the mix without taking the time to do an exegetical study on the whole passage and finding out what its true meaning is. It's also unfair to make a blanket statement about scientific errors in the Bible without noting what and where they are so we can discuss them.
As for actual evolution, there are things that have honest scientists stymied. The eyeball, for example. No one has dared speculate on how it evolved. The same goes for sex. If life just mutates blindly into new life, what's the point of sex? And how could blind mutation invent something so pleasurable? For that matter, what is the purpose of blind mutation into life forms anyway? If there is no God, why are we here? What's the meaning of life? What answer does evolution provide?
The entire evolutionary argument falls apart when you start talking about evolving mushrooms. You alter and select mushrooms through breeding, but at the end of the day you still have a mushroom. It hasn't evolved into anything.
When you talk about fossils you start losing credibility. The fossil record all over the world proves one thing; no transitional forms, no proof of any change from one creature to another. Colin Patterson, an evolutionist, who was the curator of the British Museum of Natural History, realized this and made the comment that it should be a crime to teach the fossil record as proving evolution in public schools.
Stephen Jay Gould also realized this and came up with a theory he called Punctuated Equilibrium in which species don't slowly evolve, they leap forward all at once. In other words, a monkey didn't slowly evolve into a Neanderthal, he suddenly gave birth to a human, and all monkeys did the same thing at the same time. Patterson called these "Hopeful Monsters."
The fact is, if you can believe something like that, you can believe in creation, because that's essentially how God did it. All at once. Both ideas suggest an intelligence behind the action.
Creation shows purposeful design, and that's what we see all through the universe. Mathematical precision; everything working in an exact order dependent on everything else. Explain how an explosion out of nothingness did that? You can't do it.
A final thought. You bring up DNA, which is actually the death of evolution. DNA is the blueprint of life and it determines exactly what life is going to be. You alter it, or mutate it as evolution says, and you either deform or kill the life form. Down syndrome for example. Genetic mutations are almost 100% harmful, that's why evolution requires billions of years to develop. The problem is, the life form would become extinct long before it ever began to develop positively and ultimately you would have to have billions of sparks in the primordial ooze starting life over and over just trying to get the first amoeba to survive.
Not only is it easier, it is more logical to believe the biblical record of creation.
I'm not adding their conversations, but Michael criticized Scripture saying, No man has seen God at anytime, and then in another place it says someone saw the face of God. He also threw in a criticism of the Bible being unscientific. They had a discussion of amino acids being created in a test tube, which I have read about. I don't know the terminology they were using, but I know enough about the event to comment on it. So, with that introduction, here is my reply.
Wow. Wish I'd seen the debate. I've had these kinds of discussions and the intellectuals blow me away. I've heard Ham speak too and I thought he presented creation well, but it was never in a debate situation. It sounds from the comments that he didn't do so well. I don't suppose I could keep pace with Michael and Peter, but I would like to add a few thoughts.
Both men were arguing from subjective beliefs which require faith. Ham's position is based on a scriptural foundation which does indeed leave many details unanswered, but which are supported scientifically by such laws as thermodynamics. Evolution has just as many or more unanswered questions that scientific laws actually refute. Laws of probability show that the likely hood of getting enough amino acids to combine to even take the first step toward life are so astronomical that it is foolish to believe it could even happen.
There are many questions about Scripture and some of those probably have to do with translations not being exactly perfect, but it's an unfair argument to take a verse out of context and throw it into the mix without taking the time to do an exegetical study on the whole passage and finding out what its true meaning is. It's also unfair to make a blanket statement about scientific errors in the Bible without noting what and where they are so we can discuss them.
As for actual evolution, there are things that have honest scientists stymied. The eyeball, for example. No one has dared speculate on how it evolved. The same goes for sex. If life just mutates blindly into new life, what's the point of sex? And how could blind mutation invent something so pleasurable? For that matter, what is the purpose of blind mutation into life forms anyway? If there is no God, why are we here? What's the meaning of life? What answer does evolution provide?
The entire evolutionary argument falls apart when you start talking about evolving mushrooms. You alter and select mushrooms through breeding, but at the end of the day you still have a mushroom. It hasn't evolved into anything.
When you talk about fossils you start losing credibility. The fossil record all over the world proves one thing; no transitional forms, no proof of any change from one creature to another. Colin Patterson, an evolutionist, who was the curator of the British Museum of Natural History, realized this and made the comment that it should be a crime to teach the fossil record as proving evolution in public schools.
Stephen Jay Gould also realized this and came up with a theory he called Punctuated Equilibrium in which species don't slowly evolve, they leap forward all at once. In other words, a monkey didn't slowly evolve into a Neanderthal, he suddenly gave birth to a human, and all monkeys did the same thing at the same time. Patterson called these "Hopeful Monsters."
The fact is, if you can believe something like that, you can believe in creation, because that's essentially how God did it. All at once. Both ideas suggest an intelligence behind the action.
Creation shows purposeful design, and that's what we see all through the universe. Mathematical precision; everything working in an exact order dependent on everything else. Explain how an explosion out of nothingness did that? You can't do it.
A final thought. You bring up DNA, which is actually the death of evolution. DNA is the blueprint of life and it determines exactly what life is going to be. You alter it, or mutate it as evolution says, and you either deform or kill the life form. Down syndrome for example. Genetic mutations are almost 100% harmful, that's why evolution requires billions of years to develop. The problem is, the life form would become extinct long before it ever began to develop positively and ultimately you would have to have billions of sparks in the primordial ooze starting life over and over just trying to get the first amoeba to survive.
Not only is it easier, it is more logical to believe the biblical record of creation.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Minimum Wage
When Walmart workers went on strike in nine cities last November 29, demanding raises to double their minimum wage, the company did a cost analysis study and showed that if they raised the minimum wage of all their hundreds of thousands of employees to $15 an hour, it would cost more than the profit they took in 2012. The result would have led to either half of the workers being laid off, or a steep increase in the cost of their products in order to keep the stores open, followed by the average shopper being forced to go elsewhere and the beginning of the end of Walmart.
The argument is that corporate owners and CEOs take an unfair amount of their profits while single mothers with two kids have to take two or three minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. Obama continually invokes class warfare with his demands for income equality and closing the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Minimum wage sounds good to people at entry level jobs who don't understand business, or what it took their employers to build the companies they are working for, but it never works in the long run. There are obviously examples of CEOs milking their companies for ungodly personal benefits; GM for example. Capitalist systems are always wide open for corruption because money talks, but free enterprise/"trickle down economics" has made America the wealthiest, most accomplished nation on earth. The answer is not to destroy the system.
The problem is twofold; government interference through taxes and greedy unions. Unions had a purpose when they were started, but they have drifted far from fair wages and safe working conditions. Unions demanding unrealistically high wages of 70 to 80 dollars an hour plus lifelong benefits commensurate with salary at retirement is one of the things that broke GM. The union was so greedy that they preferred to let the company go under and their members lose everything before they would offer a single compromise to save their jobs. But why should they compromise? They had Obama and the government backing them up. You and I, the taxpayers, have lost 10 billion dollars propping up the company. How many GM cars do you have for your investment?
The bigger problem is government taxes and regulations. There are hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations handed down every year. Corporations are forced to hire hundreds of accountants and lawyers just to keep pace. There is part of the cost of your product. The cost of keeping up with OSHA is so great that companies have been forced to outsource to other countries just to stay in business. That's why everything in Walmart is made in China. It's cheaper to build a factory and a warehouse, hire cheap Chinese labor and ship the goods over here than it is to buy American made goods. Thousands of jobs are lost in America because of union greed and overbearing government mandates.
Then there is the ambulance-chasing legal profession that forces everybody with any money to get insurance for their own protection; the pharmaceutical companies that spend millions in advertising for experimental products that are so dangerous they take 30 seconds out of every commercial telling you the side affects to protect themselves; the health insurance debacle, which as bad as it is always made out to be, was still the best in the world, and is now falling apart with Obamacare; and on and on it goes.
The answer is for the Federal government to stop deficit spending, balance the budget, cut corporate taxes, abolish the personal income tax, close down the EPA, the DOE, OSHA, and the IRS, and let the capitalist free enterprise system, common sense, and the American entrepreneur work. The fewer taxes corporations are burdened with the more jobs they can provide. We are 17 trillion dollars in debt. If the government had put that in the bank and saved it, instead of wasting it on the socialist welfare state, they could give every American citizen, all 300 million of us, over 50,000 dollars each. For a family of three that would pay for a nice house. How is that for income equality? That would level the playing field quite well.
In his SOTU Obama pointed at the stock markets and admitted that corporate America is doing better than ever and that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is greater than ever. He used the argument to push inflicting more of his pain on the economy, but if anyone was paying attention, that was an indictment in his own words of the failures of his own policies. The gap has gotten wider under his economic program than ever before, and includes his own 12 million dollar increase in personal wealth. And no, it's not Bush's fault or Reagan's. The 1980s was not the decade of greed. That started with Clinton, grew through Bush, and exploded in 2009 when Obama took office. There will always be greedy people, but with a few exceptions, the problem is not in corporations. It is in the government.
Minimum wage increases sound good to people who don't understand economics, and to leftist, socialist politicians who see easy votes from non-thinking people. The reality, however, is that government required minimum wage increases have always caused the cost of living to go up at a faster rate than those on minimum wage can keep up with. It doesn't work. The answer is to end this goofball politically correct socialist nanny state and let the American people go back to work.
The argument is that corporate owners and CEOs take an unfair amount of their profits while single mothers with two kids have to take two or three minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. Obama continually invokes class warfare with his demands for income equality and closing the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Minimum wage sounds good to people at entry level jobs who don't understand business, or what it took their employers to build the companies they are working for, but it never works in the long run. There are obviously examples of CEOs milking their companies for ungodly personal benefits; GM for example. Capitalist systems are always wide open for corruption because money talks, but free enterprise/"trickle down economics" has made America the wealthiest, most accomplished nation on earth. The answer is not to destroy the system.
The problem is twofold; government interference through taxes and greedy unions. Unions had a purpose when they were started, but they have drifted far from fair wages and safe working conditions. Unions demanding unrealistically high wages of 70 to 80 dollars an hour plus lifelong benefits commensurate with salary at retirement is one of the things that broke GM. The union was so greedy that they preferred to let the company go under and their members lose everything before they would offer a single compromise to save their jobs. But why should they compromise? They had Obama and the government backing them up. You and I, the taxpayers, have lost 10 billion dollars propping up the company. How many GM cars do you have for your investment?
The bigger problem is government taxes and regulations. There are hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations handed down every year. Corporations are forced to hire hundreds of accountants and lawyers just to keep pace. There is part of the cost of your product. The cost of keeping up with OSHA is so great that companies have been forced to outsource to other countries just to stay in business. That's why everything in Walmart is made in China. It's cheaper to build a factory and a warehouse, hire cheap Chinese labor and ship the goods over here than it is to buy American made goods. Thousands of jobs are lost in America because of union greed and overbearing government mandates.
Then there is the ambulance-chasing legal profession that forces everybody with any money to get insurance for their own protection; the pharmaceutical companies that spend millions in advertising for experimental products that are so dangerous they take 30 seconds out of every commercial telling you the side affects to protect themselves; the health insurance debacle, which as bad as it is always made out to be, was still the best in the world, and is now falling apart with Obamacare; and on and on it goes.
The answer is for the Federal government to stop deficit spending, balance the budget, cut corporate taxes, abolish the personal income tax, close down the EPA, the DOE, OSHA, and the IRS, and let the capitalist free enterprise system, common sense, and the American entrepreneur work. The fewer taxes corporations are burdened with the more jobs they can provide. We are 17 trillion dollars in debt. If the government had put that in the bank and saved it, instead of wasting it on the socialist welfare state, they could give every American citizen, all 300 million of us, over 50,000 dollars each. For a family of three that would pay for a nice house. How is that for income equality? That would level the playing field quite well.
In his SOTU Obama pointed at the stock markets and admitted that corporate America is doing better than ever and that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is greater than ever. He used the argument to push inflicting more of his pain on the economy, but if anyone was paying attention, that was an indictment in his own words of the failures of his own policies. The gap has gotten wider under his economic program than ever before, and includes his own 12 million dollar increase in personal wealth. And no, it's not Bush's fault or Reagan's. The 1980s was not the decade of greed. That started with Clinton, grew through Bush, and exploded in 2009 when Obama took office. There will always be greedy people, but with a few exceptions, the problem is not in corporations. It is in the government.
Minimum wage increases sound good to people who don't understand economics, and to leftist, socialist politicians who see easy votes from non-thinking people. The reality, however, is that government required minimum wage increases have always caused the cost of living to go up at a faster rate than those on minimum wage can keep up with. It doesn't work. The answer is to end this goofball politically correct socialist nanny state and let the American people go back to work.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
A Newer, More Transparent NSA
Last night I stayed up until 2am here in the Philippines to watch Obama's speech on how he was going to fix the National Security Agency. It was a tedious speech that rambled the long way around the barn before getting to the point. Obama kept curling his lips around his teeth and then smacking them before beginning the next sentence, which about half way through became really obnoxious. The basic problem with it is that there isn't a thing he says that can be trusted, and this speech, when you look closely at what was said, doesn't give any assurance that anything is going to change for the better.
In 2008 Obama campaigned against NSA domestic spying as being criminal. Then he moved into the White House and increased domestic spying a thousand fold. The left has called the NSA practice of listening to and collecting billions of domestic phone records a phony scandal, but it has grown so big now that Obama can no longer ignore it. In his address he laid out a plan to reign in the NSA. Or did he?
He started out with a rehearsal of the spying and intelligence services in American history. He spoke of Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty prior to the American Revolution, the Union army using balloons in the Civil War, the code-breakers in World War 2, and modern technologies that have grown since 9/11. It all sounded so good, but considering how little he seems to know about actual American history, all I could think was, I wonder who wrote this speech for him?
His historical review missed the whole point. The Sons of Liberty were spying on the occupying British troops. Union balloons were used to spy on the Confederate army. The code-breakers in World War 2 were intercepting Japanese messages about war plans. Even the Bush "domestic spying" was on phone calls between known and suspected terrorists and required warrants before they could listen in. None of these were an invasion of American homes or private conversations, which is what is happening now.
Obama listed four changes he is making to the NSA. These are not helpful. Briefly, the first grants Obama more executive power. The second calls for a more transparent NSA. The third puts restrictions on our foreign intelligence gathering, and the fourth puts the Attorney General in charge of overseeing all the collected domestic data. Then he said Congress needs to act because there is little he can do by executive order. As if that's ever stopped him before. Interestingly enough, I listened to the Fox News analysts immediately after the speech and to more comments this morning, and I've yet to hear any of them discuss any of these four items. They need to be discussed because they are dangerous.
Obama has already assumed executive powers that the Constitution does not allow, and is acting more like a dictator than a president. He's only strengthening his hand by assuming more. The NSA more transparent? Coming from the "most transparent" president in history? That's laughable at best, and insulting at worst. Next, he told the world how he is going to restrict our intelligence services from gathering data. He said he would limit the NSA from tracking phone calls to only a party two calls removed from the original rather than a third which they do now. How is that going to help our national security? He talked about the damage Edward Snowden did, but it doesn't even compare. Obama just gave away our intelligence service strategy to the world.
Then, putting the Attorney General in charge of the illegally collected domestic data is like putting the proverbial fox in the hen house. This is the criminal behind Fast and Furious, who won't prosecute black criminals or deport illegal aliens, who is at war with states trying to increase their own security. This is the guy who just yesterday warned public school teachers not to discipline black or other minority students in their classrooms. This is a man who cannot be trusted to do anything in a non-partisan way.
Obama tried to reassure us by saying we "don't spy on ordinary people who are not a threat to our national security." Oh yeah? What about the IRS scandal targeting conservatives and anyone who dares say a word against the administration? Holder has apparently directed the FBI not to investigate the IRS while he puts a very partisan Obama donor in charge of the inquiry. This in itself is a scandal.
Obama concluded that these changes are necessary for the United States to remain true to who we are in a changing world. The truth is we haven't been true to who we are since Obama was elected, and these changes aren't going to help get us there.
In 2008 Obama campaigned against NSA domestic spying as being criminal. Then he moved into the White House and increased domestic spying a thousand fold. The left has called the NSA practice of listening to and collecting billions of domestic phone records a phony scandal, but it has grown so big now that Obama can no longer ignore it. In his address he laid out a plan to reign in the NSA. Or did he?
He started out with a rehearsal of the spying and intelligence services in American history. He spoke of Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty prior to the American Revolution, the Union army using balloons in the Civil War, the code-breakers in World War 2, and modern technologies that have grown since 9/11. It all sounded so good, but considering how little he seems to know about actual American history, all I could think was, I wonder who wrote this speech for him?
His historical review missed the whole point. The Sons of Liberty were spying on the occupying British troops. Union balloons were used to spy on the Confederate army. The code-breakers in World War 2 were intercepting Japanese messages about war plans. Even the Bush "domestic spying" was on phone calls between known and suspected terrorists and required warrants before they could listen in. None of these were an invasion of American homes or private conversations, which is what is happening now.
Obama listed four changes he is making to the NSA. These are not helpful. Briefly, the first grants Obama more executive power. The second calls for a more transparent NSA. The third puts restrictions on our foreign intelligence gathering, and the fourth puts the Attorney General in charge of overseeing all the collected domestic data. Then he said Congress needs to act because there is little he can do by executive order. As if that's ever stopped him before. Interestingly enough, I listened to the Fox News analysts immediately after the speech and to more comments this morning, and I've yet to hear any of them discuss any of these four items. They need to be discussed because they are dangerous.
Obama has already assumed executive powers that the Constitution does not allow, and is acting more like a dictator than a president. He's only strengthening his hand by assuming more. The NSA more transparent? Coming from the "most transparent" president in history? That's laughable at best, and insulting at worst. Next, he told the world how he is going to restrict our intelligence services from gathering data. He said he would limit the NSA from tracking phone calls to only a party two calls removed from the original rather than a third which they do now. How is that going to help our national security? He talked about the damage Edward Snowden did, but it doesn't even compare. Obama just gave away our intelligence service strategy to the world.
Then, putting the Attorney General in charge of the illegally collected domestic data is like putting the proverbial fox in the hen house. This is the criminal behind Fast and Furious, who won't prosecute black criminals or deport illegal aliens, who is at war with states trying to increase their own security. This is the guy who just yesterday warned public school teachers not to discipline black or other minority students in their classrooms. This is a man who cannot be trusted to do anything in a non-partisan way.
Obama tried to reassure us by saying we "don't spy on ordinary people who are not a threat to our national security." Oh yeah? What about the IRS scandal targeting conservatives and anyone who dares say a word against the administration? Holder has apparently directed the FBI not to investigate the IRS while he puts a very partisan Obama donor in charge of the inquiry. This in itself is a scandal.
Obama concluded that these changes are necessary for the United States to remain true to who we are in a changing world. The truth is we haven't been true to who we are since Obama was elected, and these changes aren't going to help get us there.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Obama's Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
In 1962, movie director Stanley Kramer had just finished his Oscar winning film, Judgment at Nuremberg, a sobering account of the Nazi war crimes trials. For his next film he decided to do something light-hearted for a change of pace, and for the first time ventured into comedy. Collecting a bevy of the greatest comedians in Hollywood, his creative genius turned non-sensical slapstick into the most spectacularly funny movie ever made.
About a group of greedy treasure hunters, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World takes them from the California desert to the fictional town of Santa Rosita on the coast in search of a fortune buried under a giant W. It starred Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Sid Caesar, and an A-list of jesters. The flick could only have been better if it had included Red Skelton, and Kramer apparently tried to get him, but he wasn't available, and Sid Caesar's role was originally Ernie Kovak's, but sadly he died in an automobile accident shortly after filming began. The only straight man (that is, non-comedian) in the movie is Spencer Tracy, and he got the last laugh.
Funny as it is, the movie is the perfect caricature of the Obama administration. Mad, mad, mad, mad. A bevy of greedy clowns searching for treasure in tax payer's pockets and blaming all its failures on a big W. And Obama, the "straight man," is getting the last laugh increasing his personal wealth by 12 million dollars since moving into the White House, playing 160 rounds of golf, an average of one game every eleven days in the last five years, and spending roughly a billion dollars on extravagant vacations to Europe, India, South Africa, and of course, Hawaii. It would actually be funny if it weren't for the fact that it's real.
Obama's press conference after his return to the White House was comedy at its best:
He chided Congress, particularly the uncooperative Republicans, for going on vacation and not working to get unemployment benefits extended for 1.3 million Americans. Let's see, just like he went on vacation at the cost of about 4 million dollars and did nothing to encourage the Republicans to cooperate with his socialist agenda. I'll bet if Obama had stayed home that 4 million might have been able to help some of those unemployed people.
He then went on to repeat another laughable lie that he had cut the deficit in half. As I seem to remember, the deficit was something over 9 trillion dollars when he came into office and now it is something over 17 trillion, roughly double what it was when he started. I also seem to recall that he increased deficit spending from 450 billion under George W. Bush to 1.3 trillion every year of his "reign of terror" until this year. This year the deficit is projected to be something under 800 billion. So deficit spending has been cut by roughly 39%, a ways short of half, but the deficit itself is still above 17 trillion and growing.
He followed that up with another laugher: extending unemployment benefits creates jobs. Yeah, just like fifty years of the Great Society has won the war on poverty. You don't create jobs by taking money away from employers and giving it to non-working people and increasing their dependence on the government. Actually, if Obama was smart he'd let the benefits end. He did that before and got the unemployment rate down from 10% to 7.2% by dropping the unemployed from the unemployment numbers, even though they hadn't found jobs. If he'd let it end again the numbers would drop below 7%. There wouldn't be anymore jobs but he'd look good to the undiscerning leftist welfare voter.
And then there's global warming, the issue Obama jumped on several months ago to try and distract our attention from Benghazi. Did you hear about the Russian research vessel that went to the Antarctic to find evidence of global warming and got stuck in the ever increasing ice cap at the South Pole? (Remember Al Gore about five years ago predicting the polar ice caps would be gone by 2014?) Now we've had record cold temperatures all across the United States in the last two weeks. Yesterday the White House made a statement about "polar vortexes" and how the deep freeze is actually caused by global warming. Right. I'm sure that in the frozen blood vessels in his one track brain Obama really does believe this.
Of course, there is always foreign policy. Obama, the great communicator, was going to talk the belligerent nations of the Middle East out of their WMD and bring peace. November 1, 2012, he trumpeted that Al Qaeda was decimated. Today Al Qaeda is getting ready to conquer Iraq and Obama is illegally helping the Al Qaeda backed Syrian rebels, and Iran is taking advantage of his naiveté to hurry up its nuclear program. Far from bringing peace, Obama's policies have contributed to the loss of peace in the entire Middle East region, and the loss of the world's respect for America.
BTW, who can't run and who can't hide? And how many people have been held accountable for Benghazi? Not one. Oh, but don't worry about it. The New York Times just ran an exhaustive 7,500 word article on Benghazi and found out it wasn't a terrorist attack, that it was an unknown at the time video that caused it, and that Hillary essentially had nothing to do with it. Talk about government controlled media. The piece sounds like Pravda or Isvestia.
Oh, and the IRS scandal. Did you see that Eric Holder has finally decided to investigate? He appointed a woman lawyer who contributed six thousand dollars to Obama's re-election campaign. Do you suppose there might be a conflict of interest there?
And how could we forget Obamacare? The healthcare.gov website was unable to verify Barack Hussein Obama's identity. Do you think the birthers might have had it right all along? Obama's signature legislation, the thing that is going to define his legacy, this communist disaster, is potentially the thing that could end his extravagant dictatorial reign. That's the biggest laugh of all except one. Nobody on the Republican side, including conservative radio talk show hosts, has the guts to pursue the issue. And the one laughing is Obama.
He told us he was going to change America and he has; spiritually, morally, culturally, and politically, and none of it for the good. Rather than the utopia he promised, he's walked on the Constitution, violated the law, presided over the slowest economic recovery in history, and given us a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
T'ain't funny McGee.
About a group of greedy treasure hunters, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World takes them from the California desert to the fictional town of Santa Rosita on the coast in search of a fortune buried under a giant W. It starred Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Sid Caesar, and an A-list of jesters. The flick could only have been better if it had included Red Skelton, and Kramer apparently tried to get him, but he wasn't available, and Sid Caesar's role was originally Ernie Kovak's, but sadly he died in an automobile accident shortly after filming began. The only straight man (that is, non-comedian) in the movie is Spencer Tracy, and he got the last laugh.
Funny as it is, the movie is the perfect caricature of the Obama administration. Mad, mad, mad, mad. A bevy of greedy clowns searching for treasure in tax payer's pockets and blaming all its failures on a big W. And Obama, the "straight man," is getting the last laugh increasing his personal wealth by 12 million dollars since moving into the White House, playing 160 rounds of golf, an average of one game every eleven days in the last five years, and spending roughly a billion dollars on extravagant vacations to Europe, India, South Africa, and of course, Hawaii. It would actually be funny if it weren't for the fact that it's real.
Obama's press conference after his return to the White House was comedy at its best:
He chided Congress, particularly the uncooperative Republicans, for going on vacation and not working to get unemployment benefits extended for 1.3 million Americans. Let's see, just like he went on vacation at the cost of about 4 million dollars and did nothing to encourage the Republicans to cooperate with his socialist agenda. I'll bet if Obama had stayed home that 4 million might have been able to help some of those unemployed people.
He then went on to repeat another laughable lie that he had cut the deficit in half. As I seem to remember, the deficit was something over 9 trillion dollars when he came into office and now it is something over 17 trillion, roughly double what it was when he started. I also seem to recall that he increased deficit spending from 450 billion under George W. Bush to 1.3 trillion every year of his "reign of terror" until this year. This year the deficit is projected to be something under 800 billion. So deficit spending has been cut by roughly 39%, a ways short of half, but the deficit itself is still above 17 trillion and growing.
He followed that up with another laugher: extending unemployment benefits creates jobs. Yeah, just like fifty years of the Great Society has won the war on poverty. You don't create jobs by taking money away from employers and giving it to non-working people and increasing their dependence on the government. Actually, if Obama was smart he'd let the benefits end. He did that before and got the unemployment rate down from 10% to 7.2% by dropping the unemployed from the unemployment numbers, even though they hadn't found jobs. If he'd let it end again the numbers would drop below 7%. There wouldn't be anymore jobs but he'd look good to the undiscerning leftist welfare voter.
And then there's global warming, the issue Obama jumped on several months ago to try and distract our attention from Benghazi. Did you hear about the Russian research vessel that went to the Antarctic to find evidence of global warming and got stuck in the ever increasing ice cap at the South Pole? (Remember Al Gore about five years ago predicting the polar ice caps would be gone by 2014?) Now we've had record cold temperatures all across the United States in the last two weeks. Yesterday the White House made a statement about "polar vortexes" and how the deep freeze is actually caused by global warming. Right. I'm sure that in the frozen blood vessels in his one track brain Obama really does believe this.
Of course, there is always foreign policy. Obama, the great communicator, was going to talk the belligerent nations of the Middle East out of their WMD and bring peace. November 1, 2012, he trumpeted that Al Qaeda was decimated. Today Al Qaeda is getting ready to conquer Iraq and Obama is illegally helping the Al Qaeda backed Syrian rebels, and Iran is taking advantage of his naiveté to hurry up its nuclear program. Far from bringing peace, Obama's policies have contributed to the loss of peace in the entire Middle East region, and the loss of the world's respect for America.
BTW, who can't run and who can't hide? And how many people have been held accountable for Benghazi? Not one. Oh, but don't worry about it. The New York Times just ran an exhaustive 7,500 word article on Benghazi and found out it wasn't a terrorist attack, that it was an unknown at the time video that caused it, and that Hillary essentially had nothing to do with it. Talk about government controlled media. The piece sounds like Pravda or Isvestia.
Oh, and the IRS scandal. Did you see that Eric Holder has finally decided to investigate? He appointed a woman lawyer who contributed six thousand dollars to Obama's re-election campaign. Do you suppose there might be a conflict of interest there?
And how could we forget Obamacare? The healthcare.gov website was unable to verify Barack Hussein Obama's identity. Do you think the birthers might have had it right all along? Obama's signature legislation, the thing that is going to define his legacy, this communist disaster, is potentially the thing that could end his extravagant dictatorial reign. That's the biggest laugh of all except one. Nobody on the Republican side, including conservative radio talk show hosts, has the guts to pursue the issue. And the one laughing is Obama.
He told us he was going to change America and he has; spiritually, morally, culturally, and politically, and none of it for the good. Rather than the utopia he promised, he's walked on the Constitution, violated the law, presided over the slowest economic recovery in history, and given us a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
T'ain't funny McGee.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Peace, Good Will Toward Men
On my son Ethan's birthday twelve days ago, his kindergarten class had a small party for him. His teacher asked him what he wished for his classmates on his birthday. Ethan replied, "Peace."
I don't know where he came up with that. It wasn't planned, but it was a good thought from a six year old.
The Gospel of Luke, chapter two, tells the familiar Christmas story of the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary in a cattle stall in a little village called Bethlehem. It then describes how an angel appeared to shepherds out watching their sheep in the night and announced to them the birth of their Messiah. "Fear not," the angel said.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
Then an angel chorus of multitudes joined in to say, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, Peace, Good Will Toward Men."
The Christmas season is an especially poignant time when families get together, friends are reunited, rivalries are set aside, and for a few days people try to get along in peace. How sad that in America atheists, with the apparent blessing of the government and a progressive judiciary, are trying desperately to remove the reason for the peaceful season.
Everywhere people are searching for peace. The purpose of the United Nations was to try and establish or maintain peace worldwide, but everywhere you look there is no peace. There is an ongoing drug war along the US-Mexican border. In the Philippines there are the Abu-Sayaf, and the Moro Muslim movements that want to split the country; there is the devastation in Tacloban, Leyte, and in Samar from the recent typhoon, and corrupt government officials are walking away with donated relief goods and selling them in Manila. There is unrest in Thailand, persecution of Christians in China.
The Middle East is in flames. Libya is still not stable two years after Khadafi was overthrown. Yemen is the new recruiting and training center of Al Qaeda, which is not on the run. There is unrest in Egypt after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government, and Coptic Christians are being persecuted, driven from their homes, and their churches burned down. The civil war in Syria has killed over 100,000 people, and the Al Qaeda backed rebels, with illegal support from the current US administration, has wiped out and murdered entire Christian villages. Even Turkey is in trouble. War continues in Afghanistan. Suicide bombers still plague Iraq. Iran continues on its quest for nuclear weapons. The North Koreas threaten to use nuclear weapons every time they feel a little belligerent. There are civil wars across the African continent, including an erupting conflict in the world's newest nation, South Sudan.
AIDS is still a global problem. Malaria is a scourge in the tropics and Africa. New strains of diseases combat medicine. The global economy with high unemployment everywhere is on the brink of collapse. People are fearful of the future because there does not appear to be much peace in the world today.
But they are looking in the wrong places. People look for love and fulfillment in immoral lifestyles that only bring heartbreak and often disease; they look for escape in alcohol and drugs that bring only a temporary forgetfulness, but make their problems worse; they look for meaning in power by hurting and putting people down who are weak, and still they are empty; they look to religion and find contradiction; they look to government for answers to individual problems and find it has none.
It is interesting that in the Christmas season, the time we celebrate peace and God's love, the highest rates of suicide occur. The reason is that the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (I John 2:15-17), all that the world offers, cannot bring satisfaction to the heart or peace to the soul.
Peace is only found in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). The angel said, "Fear not." There is reason to have faith and hope because he announced the good news, news that will bring great joy. This news was not limited to the Jews, or to any small group of people. It was for everybody.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
The Savior was born. No longer does anyone need to fear about their eternal destiny. The Messiah has arrived; the One who will take away all our sins has come. Peace comes by putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Christ came, born of the Virgin Mary, to live a perfect, sinless life, because we are sinners (Romans 3:23).
He came with the intention of dying for our sins on the cross because we could not pay for our sins on our own (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Then He rose from the grave as proof that He can raise us up to heaven. This is the gospel:
That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. (I Corinthians 15:3-4)
Without Christ we are bound for hell (Romans 6:23), but if your faith is in Christ, His Christmas gift to you is eternal life and a place prepared in heaven. Jesus is the only way (John 14:6).
You don't need to fear the future. Jesus came as a baby in the manger to become the Christ on the cross to give you peace, and you can have peace in your heart by receiving Him as your Savior.
Dear God, I am receiving the Christmas gift of Jesus Christ and the eternal life you have promised. I understand that I cannot save myself, and that Christ is the only Savior. I am repenting of my sin, and asking you to forgive me and to come into my heart and save me. In Jesus name, Amen.
May the peace of Christ be yours. Merry Christmas.
I don't know where he came up with that. It wasn't planned, but it was a good thought from a six year old.
The Gospel of Luke, chapter two, tells the familiar Christmas story of the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary in a cattle stall in a little village called Bethlehem. It then describes how an angel appeared to shepherds out watching their sheep in the night and announced to them the birth of their Messiah. "Fear not," the angel said.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
Then an angel chorus of multitudes joined in to say, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, Peace, Good Will Toward Men."
The Christmas season is an especially poignant time when families get together, friends are reunited, rivalries are set aside, and for a few days people try to get along in peace. How sad that in America atheists, with the apparent blessing of the government and a progressive judiciary, are trying desperately to remove the reason for the peaceful season.
Everywhere people are searching for peace. The purpose of the United Nations was to try and establish or maintain peace worldwide, but everywhere you look there is no peace. There is an ongoing drug war along the US-Mexican border. In the Philippines there are the Abu-Sayaf, and the Moro Muslim movements that want to split the country; there is the devastation in Tacloban, Leyte, and in Samar from the recent typhoon, and corrupt government officials are walking away with donated relief goods and selling them in Manila. There is unrest in Thailand, persecution of Christians in China.
The Middle East is in flames. Libya is still not stable two years after Khadafi was overthrown. Yemen is the new recruiting and training center of Al Qaeda, which is not on the run. There is unrest in Egypt after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government, and Coptic Christians are being persecuted, driven from their homes, and their churches burned down. The civil war in Syria has killed over 100,000 people, and the Al Qaeda backed rebels, with illegal support from the current US administration, has wiped out and murdered entire Christian villages. Even Turkey is in trouble. War continues in Afghanistan. Suicide bombers still plague Iraq. Iran continues on its quest for nuclear weapons. The North Koreas threaten to use nuclear weapons every time they feel a little belligerent. There are civil wars across the African continent, including an erupting conflict in the world's newest nation, South Sudan.
AIDS is still a global problem. Malaria is a scourge in the tropics and Africa. New strains of diseases combat medicine. The global economy with high unemployment everywhere is on the brink of collapse. People are fearful of the future because there does not appear to be much peace in the world today.
But they are looking in the wrong places. People look for love and fulfillment in immoral lifestyles that only bring heartbreak and often disease; they look for escape in alcohol and drugs that bring only a temporary forgetfulness, but make their problems worse; they look for meaning in power by hurting and putting people down who are weak, and still they are empty; they look to religion and find contradiction; they look to government for answers to individual problems and find it has none.
It is interesting that in the Christmas season, the time we celebrate peace and God's love, the highest rates of suicide occur. The reason is that the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (I John 2:15-17), all that the world offers, cannot bring satisfaction to the heart or peace to the soul.
Peace is only found in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). The angel said, "Fear not." There is reason to have faith and hope because he announced the good news, news that will bring great joy. This news was not limited to the Jews, or to any small group of people. It was for everybody.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
The Savior was born. No longer does anyone need to fear about their eternal destiny. The Messiah has arrived; the One who will take away all our sins has come. Peace comes by putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Christ came, born of the Virgin Mary, to live a perfect, sinless life, because we are sinners (Romans 3:23).
He came with the intention of dying for our sins on the cross because we could not pay for our sins on our own (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Then He rose from the grave as proof that He can raise us up to heaven. This is the gospel:
That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. (I Corinthians 15:3-4)
Without Christ we are bound for hell (Romans 6:23), but if your faith is in Christ, His Christmas gift to you is eternal life and a place prepared in heaven. Jesus is the only way (John 14:6).
You don't need to fear the future. Jesus came as a baby in the manger to become the Christ on the cross to give you peace, and you can have peace in your heart by receiving Him as your Savior.
Dear God, I am receiving the Christmas gift of Jesus Christ and the eternal life you have promised. I understand that I cannot save myself, and that Christ is the only Savior. I am repenting of my sin, and asking you to forgive me and to come into my heart and save me. In Jesus name, Amen.
May the peace of Christ be yours. Merry Christmas.
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