There is a strategy these mullahs have adopted from a menace of the past Adolph Hitler. The strategy is to brainwash through propaganda the citizenry to believe that all of their problems and misfortunes and hardships are because of the JOOOOOOOOOS. Makes it easier to keep control when people are angry and blame somebody else for all their problems.
This week I read accounts about red-haired lady from California , a young man from central Ohio , and another young man from Illinois . Their lives were cut short when a roadside bomb exploded near the truck they were riding in in Ramadi, Iraq on Wednesday 12/13/06. I have the utmost sympathy and prayers for the families and friends of these soldiers. I also have the utmost gratitude and appreciation for their service and sacrifice to the USA.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight;
The sparkling lights in the tree, I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep
In perfect contentment or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eye when it tickled my ear;
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near;
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold;
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light,
Then he sighed and he said "It's really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night.
"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line
That separates you from the darkest of times;
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
"My Gramps died at 'Pearl' on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram' always remembers;
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of 'Nam,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
"I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile;"
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red white and blue ... an American flag.
"I can live through the cold and the being alone
Away from my family, my house and my home;
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
"I can carry the weight of killing another
Or lay down my life with my sisters and brothers
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To insure for all time that this flag will not fall.
"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least
Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
"For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."
Michael Marks
December 7th, 2000
GARNER: Darth Vader?
Malcolm MacPherson, who you may or may not know, Malcolm writes for ”Time,” and he’s written several books. He was over there, and I asked him one day, I said, ”Hey, you want to go with me?” And he said, ”Sure.”
So, we went down to Al Hillah. And in Al Hillah, I had a team down there under a retired brigadier general named Buck Walters, a great guy.
And so, we were down there looking at things, and Buck says, ”Hey, Jay. Before you go back, I need to take you to talk to Darth Vader, because he wants to talk to you.”
And I said, ”Who’s that?” And he said, ”Well, he’s a pretty powerful player we got here. He runs things, and I need you to talk to him.” I said, ”OK.”
I said, ”Why do you call him Darth Vader?” He said, ”You’ll understand that when you see him.”
So, we go to the mosque and walk in, and the lesser clerics bring us, and they bring us in the room to sit down. And then Darth Vader comes in.
Now, this guy’s about the size of Shaquille O’Neal. I mean, he’s a huge man. He’s got his big, black turban on.
And he shakes my hand and just - a big old hand just wraps up around my hand. And he says, ”Please sit down.”
And so, I sat down, and he said, ”I’m glad you came to see me.” He said, ”Do you have any questions?” I said, ”Yes, sir, I do.”
I'm not going to put any more of the transcript out on this diary. I highly recommend that you read it for yourself. I am not going to call Jay a liar. Time magazine could call him out on it if he lied. What I really think though is that this Darth Vader said some of the best stuff that I have heard from anyone with respect to rebuilding Iraq. I wish that Jay had told President Bush about this meeting. The Darth Vader dude went off the deep end a little at the end. Still it is one awesome story.
A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Lately I have been thinking a lot about where
There are some especially here at RS that prefer to associate President Bush with
Connecticutt reminds me of a wonderful Mark Twain novel . This satire while a work of fiction is very much a reminder of the real problems that humanity faces. The novel reminds me of the similarities between the good intentions. One section of analysis of Mark Twain’s work that especially seems apropos to President Bush is this”
“Training v. Nature: A theme central to all of Twain's satires is the question of the power of training against an inherent human nature. On most levels, Hank Morgan believes that training and influence determine the good or bad outcome of a society; his project of civilization is based on the belief that he can train the English people to think and thus, live differently. But he is at a loss to explain why, despite training, people revert to foolish and destructive practices.. Even after giving them a new world of technological and economic improvement, Hank finds that this is insufficient to keep them from abandoning his system for the Church's favor.”
If you replace Hank Morgan with President George W. Bush, and English with Iraqi I think you have described the current circumstance that we have in
I searched some more with Google about historical rankings of US Presidents . The number 1 is Abraham Lincoln, the only President born in
President Reagan's unfinished business
I highly recommend reading this article of a speech President Reagan gave after he had left office. Almost 15 years later it is just as accurate if not even more so than when he delivered it. Everyone likes to talk about term limits or abolishing the Electoral College. Some people like to talk about new campaign finance reform regulations. All of this talk is a smokescreen pile of hooey. What we really need is a Constitutional amendment that calls for the U.S. Congress to balanced budget spending limits. What we need is a BRAC like program to take politics out of the equation and create Congressional districts from computer models that reflect populations. Don't allow the computer models to take party affiliation, religious affiliation, or ethnic affiliation into consideration. Just make the districts equal to groups of people who live next to each other. President Reagan is my personal hero and most favorite President. It is very unfortunate for the USA that he was not able to live to see the changes made. Sadly I do not see anyone in the current crop of politicians to grab this baton and run with it.
My Vote Counts
Well, it’s time for mid term elections again. Once again I feel like Charlie Brown preparing to kick the ball that Lucy is holding in place. I can rationalize my vote decision and once again fall flat on my back when the “Lucy” politician pulls the ball back. Or I can vote for the outsider. I read all kinds of article where people opine that we need to vote for the lesser of 2 evils. I understand what they are selling, and I am not buying it anymore. I don’t claim to be the sharpest tool on the shelf, but I have found a pretty good road map here. These are bought and paid for by Soros. I do not vote for them. I also look at this , this , this , this , and this site for information about any additional politicians who are not listed on the first web site. I hope that I can be a better person than my liberal acquaintances if the conservatives are removed from power. I do not understand a mindset that puts party politics ahead of love of country. There are liberals who simply are opposed to everything that conservatives do. There is not even a consideration about what is being done. All of the energy and hate is just about who is doing it. For that reason I do not want to whine about any hypocrisy. If they do think and act in a matter that is a benefit to my country while their guy is in power, then I am OK with that type of hypocrisy. Happy Easter and God Bless
Immigration or Wetbacks Go Home
Let’s talk about it already. Lately there is so much hyperventilating and bloviating on this topic. If we could bottle up the bilge and bile we would solve our energy problems. Let me try to sort out the truth and the bullshit.
1. The problem with these people is a national security problem worse than what happened on September 11, 2001.
This is bullshit. These people are not coming to the
2. The problem with these people is a national economy problem. Our economy depends on these people doing jobs for less money than anybody. We can’t afford to lose the cheap labor.
There is some truth in that the problem is about the economy instead of national security. However, there can be an immigration plan implemented to allow people to legally immigrate to
3: The problem with these people is that we need to build a wall on the border to keep them out. We need to put a gate in this wall to allow guest workers to pass through it.
This is bullshit. Building a wall is one gigantic waste of taxpayer money. A wall will not stop people. Requiring employers to safeguard jobs will stop people. If they can not make any more money until they are documented then it will slow down the number of people sneaking into the country. I don’t like the idea of guest worker because of the problems it causes with loyalty and patriotism. Let’s say they don’t want to immigrate to
4. The problem with these people is that there are already over 11 million of them that are in the
This is true, but so what!! We don’t need to hunt them down, round them up, and ship them out of here. They got here and they will find a way out of here. We have history of ‘Trail of Tears’ marches that we absolutely do not need to repeat.
These are my opinions. I love immigrants. I want my country to run an immigration program like an efficient business. Right now this country runs the immigration program horribly. Then we have “reformers” politicians that want to make every person who tries to get a legal immigration visa feel like a chump.
"So the jihadists are for the most part doing no more than giving us a prod in the rear as we sleepwalk to the cliff. When I say "sleepwalk," it's not because we're a blasé culture. On the contrary, one of the clearest signs of our decline is the way we expend so much energy worrying about the wrong things. If you've read Jared Diamond's bestselling book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," you'll know it goes into a lot of detail about Easter Island going belly up because they chopped down all their trees. Apparently that's why they're not a G-8 member or on the U.N. Security Council. Same with the Greenlanders and the Mayans and Diamond's other curious choices of "societies." Indeed, as the author sees it, pretty much every society collapses because it chops down its trees.
Poor old Diamond can't see the forest because of his obsession with the trees. (Russia's collapsing even as it's undergoing reforestation.) One way "societies choose to fail or succeed" is by choosing what to worry about."
Jonah Goldberg
for another example of how 'Stuck on Stupid' the US political wonks have become. Please God, save America from all of the misguided reformers. Here is an excerpt...
"There’s an ancient cliché in Washington that the real crime isn’t what’s illegal but what’s legal. Campaign-finance “reform” is usually the most fertile soil for this cliché. Politicians complain that focusing on enforcement of existing laws misses the “big picture.” The whole “system” is corrupt.
And they are largely correct. Not just on campaign finance, but in terms of corporate involvement in politics across the board. The problem is that liberals and others wearing the “reformer” label consistently offer the wrong remedy for the right diagnosis. They want more regulation, more oversight, more government. This has it backwards.
If you think someone is hugging you too hard, what do you do? You push him away. You don’t hug him back. And yet, it is considered the height of enlightened policymaking to say that, in answer to corporate America’s bear hug, Washington should hug back twice as hard.
If you want to know why business takes such an interest in Washington, the answer can be found in your low-flow toilet, in the warning labels adorning your cars, in your 8 zillion page tax returns. It can be found while you wait on hold trying to get a human to answer your questions about your health insurance. And the answer is most certainly somewhere in your box of cereal, made with grains subsidized by Uncle Sam and coated in sugar that has no business being grown in the United States of America. Corporations meddle in Washington because Washington meddles with them.
It is simply naive to believe that a businessman will have no interest in politics when politicians have taken a great interest in him. And it is grotesquely unfair to assume that businesspeople are corrupt simply because they want to support politicians less inclined to hurt them.
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates used to brag that he barely spent a dime on lobbying — “I live in the other Washington,” he liked to say. But the very moment that government — federal and state — tried to tear apart his company, Gates abandoned his view that the New Economy could ignore the Old Politics. Now D.C. is awash in Microsoft lobbyists. Wal-Mart is only now learning the same lesson. If you don’t get in the game, you might be regulated out of it.
Of course, not all businesses that support politicians of either party are doing it out of self-protection. Some are merely rent-seeking opportunists. Some are both. Sugar growers, for example, have ripped off taxpayers and consumers to the tune of billions. If government stopped protecting the industry from competition, it would mostly disappear and stop gouging us at the same time.
Liberals think Republicans are living up to their principles when they get cozy with fat cats. The reality is that Republicans betray their principles when they give fat cats a reason to come to Washington to begin with."
The War in
It’s All About Oil?
It’s All About Religion?
My country, the
One argument that does not sound very convincing to me is that President Bush lied to the Congress about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction that would result in a clear and present danger to the
The next argument is that this war is all about oil. The businessmen in multinational oil companies are roundly vilified as being personally responsible for getting the
The next argument is that this war is all about religion. It seems like these days that it is extremely popular to take swipes at politicians and leaders who are openly religious. I can understand a resentment for some of the things that this guy and this guy say and do. However, I do not blame the religion. Remember that Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, or Bhudda are not saying or doing these things that are bad. People are saying and doing bad things in the Name of Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, or Bhudda. That is a BIG difference. The other important thing to remember is that there have been wars fought around the
My argument for why we are fighting a war over there is that we need to keep the evil jihadist terrorists from ever again getting as powerful as they most recently were. I do not want the Taliban to return to power in
You can get some pretty good historical information about the Mesopotamian region here. This is an exerpt from this web site:
It was therefore over a crippled and impoverished land that Osee ruled as a vassal-King. For relief from this galling pressure he turned to
(2) The Ten Tribes in Exile
The exiles were settled by their conquerors "in Halah and Habor [a river] by the
| Cain And Abel
|
I added a question mark to the title of this post to let you know that I am not absolutely certain. I only can write about my experience assimilating into a small fraction of the churches of the Circle City metropolitan area.
a) Like the song goes from 'Sly and the Family Stone' 'it's a family affair'. If you visit a church it is better to visit as a family. Most of the regular church goers come as a family. They are going to be more comfortable greeting you and your family than greeting you.
b) Sign the guest book including your address, telephone, and a request for a visit. You will receive a telephone call. The caller will be working from a script. Never will someone come to your home.
c) When you converse by telephone or even if they do come to your home to see you in person never expect them to care about your wellbeing. They are there to ascertain how much of your time, talents, and treasures are available to support their church.
By now you might be wondering what all this has to do with raising Cain, and I will tell you. I happened to come across a very interesting article on the internet about Cain before he killed Abel.
Just before Cain goes for that fateful stroll in the fields with his brother, the Almighty speaks to him. This is what He says:
Why are you angry and why has your face fallen? Is it not the case that if you do well — lift up! And if you do not do well — sin lies crouching at the door, its desire is unto you, and you can rule over it (4:6-7).
In this article Cain is compared to a person who is awakened at 2:30 am by a pet cat that is meowing strangely. This person wakes up the roommate and the following conversation ensues.
You: "She really doesn't sound right. I think we should call the vet."Your Roommate: "What do you mean, call the vet? It's the middle of the night!
You: "I don't know. She really sounds pretty bad. I think we should call the vet…"
Your Roommate: "Look, just go back to sleep. She probably swallowed a hairball."
You: "Are you sure we just shouldn't call the vet?"
Your Roommate:"Goodnight!"
You both go back to sleep, and when you wake up in the morning, the cat is dead.
Now, take a deep breath and ask yourself: How are you going to feel towards your roommate, when morning comes and you discover the lifeless kitten lying next to your bed?
You are likely to be enraged.
"It's all your fault! Here I was, telling you that we should take the kitten to the vet, and all you could think about was getting a good night's sleep! And now, the kitten is dead…"
Whether you like it or not, though, the reality is otherwise. You were not the victim of circumstances beyond your control here. You were not betrayed by your sleep-seeking roommate. You had free will. There were choices open to you, choices you refused to grab hold of. No one forced you to get permission from your roommate before calling the vet; you could have made whatever calls you wanted to. If you feel angry or depressed here, it is because you choose to see yourself as helpless, as a victim of your lousy, insensitive roommate. But in fact, you weren't a victim at all.
Cain, in feeling angry, locates the source of his problem outside of himself, in God. No one can control God, and as long as that's the problem, you're nothing but a victim. But that wasn't the reality. The core of his problem lay entirely in the choices Cain was himself making, in the nature of the relationship he was trying to build with God, and this was a realm entirely within his control. The first step off the bridge, then, is letting go and of anger and depression, and reclaiming this element of control.
I submit that a very similar pattern occurs when church goers converse with each other about somebody that they have not seen at church lately. They can come to many conclusions, and nobody telephones the person or visits their home. It is so much easier to feel sad and angry than to feel empowered to talk directly with the person.
Maybe God is saying something like the following:
Why has your face fallen? If you are active; if you seek out the good — you can lift up your face. And if you are neutral — if you do not act positively — you can't tread water. While being neutral is not itself an evil — it leaves you vulnerable to evil. Sin lies crouching at the door, and even the most well intentioned neutral party can still become its prey.
