Category Archive

I don’t even know how to begin this post, except to say “Oh. My. Lanta!” I can hardly believe the headline I saw yesterday, “ABCNEWS Asks: Are we living in the last century of our civilization?” As I read the story I quickly saw that this was a work of fear mongering at it’s worst. Not surprising as ABC is an entertainment company and not a group of scientists.

This story is an example of the application of questionable science by minds clouded by religion. Yes, religion. Man made global warming has become a religion. Anything that stands in the way of fulfilling the prophecies, directives and goals is willingly sacrificed to see the earth worshiped properly. You don’t believe me? Go buy a gallon of gas. The cost of a gallon is now about $4.25, for no flipping reason. And no, it isn’t because the gas companies are greedy. It’s partly because the market has driven the cost per barrel so high, speculators wreaking havoc. But notice what else is in your gas, ethanol. It’s there by order of the government. It shouldn’t be. Ethanol is corn, the edible stuff, turned into fuel. Did you notice that the cost of corn has skyrocketed? And that every other foodstuff has also become more costly? That’s because we are burning our food instead of eating it. That makes no sense.

I do not believe that anthropogenic global warming is real. At all. I do not believe it because the science just isn’t there and because the climate of the earth changes regularly. It has done so since the foundation of the earth. It always has and it always will, with or without us. I am not alone.

John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel sees things the way I do, as do many, many others. The sun is the source of much of the earth’s energy and heat, sunspots intensify that. Lately, the sun has been quiet. Really quiet. Back during the little ice age there was a 50 year period of low to no sunspot activity called the Maunder Minimum.

In the midwest are floods, tornadoes and destruction. I have heard the floods called 300 year floods, meaning this kind of flood only happens every three hundred years. So really, it’s not unprecedented, just unusual. Just follow the logic, if this sort of flooding happens every 300 years or so, that means that it’s got a cycle, a regular cycle, just a rather longer one that we humans tend to see because we don’t see 300 year floods everyday. (Thank God)

Do a search on “…caused by Global Warming…”, you will find everything from cyclones to shark attacks. Come on, people. That’s just crazy talk.

Here is how I see it, the climate changes regularly in long cycles that often span several lifetimes of men. Before you go blaming hurricanes and floods on global warming, go get some perspective. Nearly everything has happened before, and will happen again. We don’t need to toss virgins into the volcano to stop something that isn’t happening in the first place.

The 600 Things Blamed on Global Warming - This is a fabulously funny list of ridiculousness.

This past week end, for those of you with your heads buried in the sand, or stuck on American Idol* or Keeping up with the Kardashians*, a cyclone struck Burma leaving destruction in it’s wake. First estimates gave the death toll at 22,000, a terrible number. In the normal course of events, a government would do whatever it could to help the people survive.

Unless, of course, it’s the military junta that currently reigns in Burma. So far they have refused aid, taken what foodstuffs that did manage to make it in country and refused to notify it’s people of the pending storm. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people are dying, suffering and starving.

None of this is surprising if you’ve been paying attention. Last year, thousands of monks were slaughtered. Before that, the Burmese have kept Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest for years and oppressed it’s people for years since the junta took over in 1989.

Years ago I was introduced to Burma through a tiny restaurant in Chinatown in Washington, DC. Last time I looked, it was gone. I ate the most ambrosial mango pork curry, an ethereal stew that made me happier than I can remember. I discovered it again later at Mandalay Restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland. That pork mango curry was enough to give Burma a spot in my heart forever. Later I learned about Aung San Suu Kyi, learned of her sacrifices and strength. Of course I’d remembered the Burma Road, from WWII fame.

Many more people will die this week. Rain will be falling again shortly, flooding already flooded villages, washing more bodies into already fouled drinking water sources, spoiling any remaining food that wasn’t spoiled last week. Current estimates at the eventual total death toll of Cyclone Nargis are at 500,000. One half of a million people are expected to be dead before this horrible event is over. The Indian Ocean Tsunami killed 250,000, spread across many nations and several continents. I can only imagine the loss in intellectual, cultural and familial knowledge. Add to that the loss of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, neighbors…..it really is more than they can bear.

My father suggested that perhaps the junta is allowing all these people to die because they intended to kill them anyway, it’s just cheaper to let mother nature kill them than to spend the bullets. I don’t know. I just can’t imagine any other reason why the extraordinary suffering is allowed to continue.

I’m praying for the people.

*I hate these shows. A lot. I’d rather shove needles in my eyes than watch them.**

** Except for the audition episodes of AI. After those, I refuse to watch it.

From an article in The Independant:

For two hours, the villagers were standing in water up to their waists. “There has never been a storm like this before. This is the first time,” said another man, Ko Khin My Aye. He said that when the storm struck he had been on his boat, which was tied by rope tight to the trunk of a coconut palm. While he and his family survived, some friends and an aunt were among the dead. “There were many, many children. We could not hold on to all of them.”

That last line breaks my heart. I can not imagine the heartbreak.

Read the whole thing here. Mr. Chetwynd, allow me to salute you. That was a masterpiece of forgiveness and a clear teaching of the foundations of civility and civilization. Seriously. Thank you. Your letter reminds me very much of a hero of mine, Corrie Ten Boom.

Corrie lost nearly all her family in Ravensbrück and at the brutal hands of the SS. She held her sister Besty as she died in Ravensbrück, thought murderous thoughts at the female guard who beat Betsy. Before she left the concentration camp, released by a fluke of paperwork (read God’s gracious intervention), Corrie came to understand that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still. Later, after the war, Corrie was speaking her song of forgiveness and courage in the face of horror and pain around the world. At the end of one talk she was confronted by one of the guards who had abused Corrie, her sister and countless others, coming to ask her forgiveness, to tell her that he had repented and become a believer. Corrie struggled to forgive this man, struggled to make herself take his hand. She did repent of her unforgiveness, hardness of heart.

It was not for her ancestors that Corrie’s righteous and unrighteous rage was boiling, it was for her, her family, the people around her. How do you forgive the person who beat a friend to death with a rifle butt in front of your very eyes? With the help of the Almighty and a will to do the right thing.

I do not contest the history of this country in regards to the abuse and degradation perpetrated against black men, women and children. But that is in the past. The vast majority of people living here are not descendants of slave traders, owners, abusers. It is time to forgive, to start fresh, to believe that “Typical White People” don’t exist. We are not a homogeneous mass of faceless, soulless abusers. Rachel Lucas is right, you want equality - take it, but to do that, Rev. Wright, Sen Obama, you must forgive the past and release your ‘right’ to be angry forever.

Hat tip to the Lovely Dana for the Chetwynd letter. Dana, you rock, do you know that?

Lots of opinions, lots of anger and lots of hatred infect all issues surrounding the current all conflict in the Middle East.  We can argue over the origins of the violent conflict, but in the end it comes to tolerance.  No, I don’t mean that stupid politically correct “tolerance” that actually isn’t.  That, correctly defined, is a fit, yes, a fit.  The kind that a little child has when it doesn’t get it’s way and when it is denied sweeties.  Tolerance as used today really means that YOU must accept ME at all times and in all ways and refuse to challenge ME at all about anything.  If you do, then you aren’t tolerant.  I, however, can rag on YOU about anything I want to, because you must tolerate ME.  If YOU have any standards of behavior or a moral code, by definition, YOU can not be tolerant.  All bets are off if you are currently a white Christian, you are intolerant before you ever open your mouth, period, don’t bother.

Actual tolerance is really the biblical virtue inherent in the second commandment as defined by Christ, “Treat your neighbor as yourself.”  Which means being respectful of someone being who and what they are, NOT accepting and conforming to their belief system without question, but allowing a difference to exist, just the fact of a difference.  It also means that when I have a difference with you that can not be overlooked we approach in peace and discuss how to handle the difference, how to mediate or how to part amicably.  It doesn’t mean that hard things can’t be said, that relationships aren’t broken.  It means that HARSH and VILE things are not said, and that no one ends up dead.  Saying hard things is often the only way truth can come out, subtlety is usually wasted, no one ever gets it.

So, while I sit here a world away from the flying insults and rockets of the Middle East, I will pray for peace, but an actual peace, and for wisdom and truth to rule.

More to come…….

This is a rant on the British, one of our best allies, or so I thought. Until I heard something so terrifyingly silly I had to rethink the meaning of that word.

In the aftermath of the London bombings one British official had the following to say when questioned about Londonistan, the concentration of terrorism preaching imams in the local mosques, read carefully, the silliness may shock you, “We thought that if we were nice to them they wouldn’t harm us.”

Can you imagine? These terrorists think nothing at all of lobbing a bomb at their own people, from blowing up car bombs in a schoolyard, to ramming jets full of innocent people into buildings full of innocent people, but apparently if you are nice and give them a lolly they won’t mess with you. Not only is that scary thinking, it’s also deadly wrong.

And another thing, thank you so much for allowing the very sort of preaching that gave us Osama Bin Laden’s World Tour, 1995 - Present. If you are my ally, I expect that at all times you do not allow speeches encouraging the death of my family to be given with any kind of regularity, I especially do not expect that you will give these nutballs visas and allow them repeat access to your country AND that you would pay for their medical and dental plans. That’s a bit over the top for a marginal “ally” like France, but for one of our closest allies, it’s abominable behavior. Inexcusable folly, really.

I am sad that London was bombed, and in no way do I think that the people injured in the attacks were asking for it. But I do think the British Government was.

Recently my brother was discussing the dwindling oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay. He rattled off some statistics that may or may not be true, but got me thinking nonetheless. If, as he said, there once were enough oysters in the Bay to cleanse the waters 4 times per day and now that number has dwindled to once a week, what the heck are we doing eating them? And the same is true of shrimp, crabs and all other bottom feeders. God forbade the Israelites from eating bottom feeders, carrion eaters and dung eaters. I began to think it wasn’t just what they ate, it was the service they provided, cleaning.

The more I thought about it the more convinced I was. The fish we eat would be much cleaner, our waters much purer and thus our environment much better. So, I made a decision to stop eating all shellfish and bottom feeders. I never ate mushrooms anyway, so the dung/carrion eaters is hopefully not something I’ll have to adjust. I really love Lobster, but they were supposed to perform a necessary but grotesque task, I mean for them to do it without interference from me.

Now I just have to convince everyone else and find a new way for the watermen who make their living on the oyster beds, the crabbers and shrimpers to make a good living. I have no idea. But I really think we would be better for it.

Shasta Groene suffered at the hands of a monster while her mother, two brothers and her mother’s boyfriend died, for what? So the wheels of a crooked justice could spew a monster out of jail to satisfy some weak thought process? Shasta spent a month and a half, 45 days, 6 weeks, in the hands of a despicable creature that should have still been in jail.

At some point the laws of this country have to change to protect children. I appreciate that we have to treat everyone humanely. Check, got it. But what we don’t have to do is allow predators to walk the streets hunting children for their sick pleasure. We would shoot a killer bear, why do we think these predators are any less dangerous because they have to “register”? Already we’ve seen that is an ineffective deterrent for child sex offenders. (see story on Jessica Lunsford below.) Again, why do we expect law breakers to be law abiders all of a sudden once they are convicted. Has something momentous changed? No, it never has.

I’ve said it before, child sex offenders should be imprisoned for life, no chance of parole ever, first offense. (It’s the first time they got caught, it wasn’t the first time they perpetrated.) If they killed a child during the commission of the crime, they die. Period.

Now, the Judge that let that man go so he could prey upon the Groene family should be made to pay a penalty also. He can’t get off with out some kind of justice.

Former FBI guy, Mark Felt, revealed this week that he was “the man” who leaked all that information to Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post (henceforth WaPo.) Mr. Deep Throat came out of the closet. Great. Expessly for money. Even better.

Mark Felt was J. Edgar’s poodle at the FBI, groomed to take over when Hoover died. When that happened, Nixon passed him over for the top spot and soon after Mr. Felt was breaking every oath he had ever sworn to out him. Funny, to me it doesn’t look like heroism, just a big case of poopy pants. There were other, and legal, options. Today it’s easy to say it just would have been too hard to take that evidence to the Grand Jury, or to say that if he had, the information still would have been suppressed. The problem is that Mr. Felt didn’t even try to do things the right way and through proper channels. He had taken an oath not to reveal classified information. He broke that oath.

Bob Bradlee, editor of the WaPo, has some interesting ties to JFK, cover-ups and such, that in light of the evisceration of Nixon on his watch are rather hypocritical in nature. He too is looked as a hero, as are Woodward and Bernstein. Whatever.

The left has often pointed at Nixon as proof of the corruption on the right, and in a gesture of fairness, I’ll give them that Nixon was unprincipled and uncouth, actually, not even a nice guy. But now in that same gesture of fairness I’d like to point out that nearly every democratic president from FDR on has acted the criminal. FDR stacked the Supreme Court, Truman overlooked and condoned Soviet spies in our midst, even to the highest levels of government, JKF, a drug addict, used his fathers methods and brother RFK to get things done that shouldn’t have gotten done including murder, LBJ, well, ick, there’s just too much. Carter’s missteps have come from bullheadedness and a petulance not seen often this side of the woobie, but as far as I know he hasn’t been charged with anything. Okay, except a case of stunning and stellar blindness, like when he said that Venezuela’s recent election is more democratic than our own. (What planet is he on anyway?) WJC, well, it starts with sexual harassment, misappropriating FBI files, the rape of Juanita Broaderick and we can just keep going from there. Remember that he was disbarred, you know, lost his lawyers license because he broke the law and lied under oath. On the Republican side you have Ike, one of the most honest politicians ever to inhabit the White House, Reagan, say what you will of Iran-Contra, he ended the cold war, and 41, he got us into GW1, and got us out again, but he made that “read my lips” mistake. Say what you will of W, his tenure is unfinished, and we still have to see what the WMD thing was all about.

One thing has always baffled me, the left’s hatred of the Vietnam conflict. All the protests, all the anger, all the “hawks and doves” junk, and it always looked to me that the left forgot who started, promulgated and LOST that “police action”. It was the left, that was their baby, if you look closely at Somalia you will see Vietnam on a smaller and shorter scale. That same fight-but-don’t-fight thing. We were in Vietnam because of the policy of “containment”, a leftist idea and a poor idea at that. It took Reagan’s vision to stop that silliness and bring an end to the coldwar. I just never understood all the anger from the left at the right over Vietnam when it was the left’s doing. Why didn’t those radical kids all go Republican?

Okay, so, back to Mark Felt. Is he a hero? No. And just to clarify, I’m not saying that Nixon didn’t commit crimes and wasn’t a mediocre president. What I am saying is that selling out your boss because you didn’t get a promotion and then outing your self as the mole for profit doesn’t fit the definition of a hero. Like I said, poopy pants. If Mr. Felt was still on the playground he would have been roundly pounded.

A hero looks like the firefighters who run into burning buildings when every one else is running out. And like Abdul Amir, who gave his life to protect his fellow Iraqi citizens so that they might vote. And like Amy Carmichael, who bought children being sold into prostitution and raised them as her own. And like the Ten Boom family, who built a secret room in their home so they could hide Jews from the Nazi’s and get them to safety. And like the men and women in uniform fighting a world away to give a people not their own a chance at peace. All these people are just ordinary folks who act admirably and bravely to aid others at great personal and physical peril. That is the definition of a hero.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8254
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/kessler200506010934.asp

In 1900 four journalists in Denver sat down to figure out what kind of blockbuster story they could come up with, but it would be a hoax. The story that ran was about a local contractor winning the bid to tear down The Great Wall of China. This story was picked up by the international press. It was all fun and games until the story got to China. In a land already inflamed by fear of foreigners and a fastly imploding ruling class, that was the spark that set off a year of slaughter. The Boxer Rebellion left many innocent dead, including many Chinese.

Now if any of this sounds eerily familiar, you may have heard about the the riots, the calls for jihad and the 17 deaths that have resulted from the fictious bit piece in Newsweek’s Periscope regarding the supposed desecration of the Koran in GITMO. Now, however much Newsweek apologizes for their error in reporting an unsubstatiated rumor, they can’t fix the havoc wreaked by this rumor taken as truth. It was absolutely irresponsible of them to print it, especially with out fully vetting it. Good luck trying to get the truth out there, Muslims won’t believe it, neither will the progressives. Both love conspiracies too much to hear the truth.

Lately, freedom of the presses is translating into slander, rumor-mongering and libel, and it begins to look more like abuse of liberty than freedom of the presses. CBS, The New York Times and Newsweek have all been guilty of making up stories to suit their political ends. But now it’s begun to cost the lives of innocents a world away. Just like it did in China a century ago.

Liberty and freedom are costly things, they come with a hefty price tag. One of the costs of liberty is the responsibility to use it wisely. Freedom of the presses means only that the government can not tell you what you can and can not print. It does not mean that you can print just anything. It means that with careful research, vetting and honor, you can choose to run stories that will matter, make a difference and inform. You also have a responsibility to weigh the outcomes of printing a story. It’s called self-editing.

Hmm - Part 1
So let’s say that your daughter steals some money from you then goes on a bike ride with her best friend when she’s supposed to be home grounded, what do you do? Probably stabbing the girls a total of 30 times and beating the heck out of them and leaving them to die in the park wouldn’t be high on a rational parent’s mind. But to Jerry Hobbs it made sense. He says he was mad that she was out WITH her mother’s permission ON Mother’s day, and that her friend pulled the knife on him. Yeah, right. Dude just got out of prison, I’m totally sure he could have disarmed a 9 year old little girl with out beating the crap out of her then turning the knife on her. Sheesh, he could have run back to her mother and told on her.

Hmm - Part 2
It’s 2005, right? If you live in the Washington DC/New York, NY area, which includes Pennsylvania, and you were able to vote in 2001 you remember life before the terrorist attacks and you can now tell the difference. One thing would be the extra security around buildings, much of which was actually put in place after the Oklahoma City bombing. Another change would be the much expanded no-fly zone around Washington’s power center. Now if you are a pilot, even of a small Buddy-Holly-Lawn-Dart Cessna, you would be aware of the extensive no fly zone AND of the stated intentions of the US Military to shoot down any aircraft straying into that no fly zone and failing to respond.

Now read this wee little paragraph:
“The Cessna pilot appeared confused by the aircraft escort and did not respond to repeated signals ordering the plane to turn away. The F-16s fired four warning flares before the Cessna finally veered west and away from the secure zone.” (from My Way News, story linked below)

Some student pilot and his teacher from Pennsylvania wandered into the no fly zone and were seconds away from being shot and killed AND THEY DIDN’T RESPOND? Why? Maybe they turned their radio off or just didn’t like the “tone” of the F-16 pilots and ground control. What ever, they are obviously too stupid to be allowed to fly, maybe even drive. I’m not sure what’s really confusing about an F-16 wagging it’s wings at you and acting threateningly, they are fighting aircraft build for war after all.

Also, I’d like to point out that Washington DC has a VERY distinctive aerial look. It’s not really like you can miss either the Appalachians on one side, the Potomac in the middle and the Chesapeake on the other side, or DC itself.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050513/D8A207VG0.html

Was anyone else weirded out by the display in Red Square in Moscow yesterday? I mean the display of the hammer and sycle and the old Soviet uniforms. Did anyone else feel like that wiley old Putin, (former KGB guy if I must remind you) was putting on more than a show for the 60th anniversary of V-E Day, a Soviet specific day. And that this same Putin is the one denying that life was anything other than rosey for those Baltic States that got the snot kicked out of them when they were annexed for their own good by “Uncle Joe”.

For those of you who read this who have a short or faulty memory of life under Stalin, can I remind you of some things. Gulags. Pogroms. Ethnic Cleansing. Government Created Famines. Torture of Political and Religeous Prisoners. Nuclear Proliferation. China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Columbia. Remember. Don’t forget, the Soviets were brutal, life smothering, evil creatures who really did want to take over the world and subjugate us. Not free us, but smother us and remove from anyone any shred of individuality so that we would serve the purposes of the Kremlin. If you’ve been keeping up on your History Channel watching you would have heard this little refrain before, from the mouth of Himmler, a peach of a guy who was so grossed out by brain splatter watching his SS work at killing Jews with shots to the back of the head, and undone at the inefficiency of it all, that he invented the concentration camps.

Just a thought.

Now, I know I spent some time just a couple of weeks ago defending life. And I still do. Really. However, there is a difference between ridding yourself of an unwanted baby, wife, pope, by murdering them and administering the proper punishment for a crime committed. At least I hope you see a difference.

See, a convicted sex offender is likely to offend again, child sex offenders even more so. Terri Schaivo was never likely to do anything other than draw breath in and then press it out of her lungs for who knows how long and not much more, perhaps not to your standard of living, but she would not be perpetrating any crimes. Your average baby will also not be committing crimes, at least not until it reached 12. Sex offenders, i.e. rapists, pederasts, pedophiles, molesters, are guilty of criminal activity. Criminal activity as defined by all religions and nearly all cultures. Usually they are also guilty of crimes of violence as well, certainly when perpetrating against children.

In case you missed it, the autopsy for Jessica Lunsford and a bit of the transcript of Mr. Couey’s confession were released earlier this month. That poor little girl died a horrific death, she was raped and then bound, then buried alive within shouting distance of her grandparents and father as they searched for her. The villain who did so was committing several crimes at the time he committed that crime. He had not re-registered with the local police. That may or may not have made a difference whether little Jessica lived or died, but just maybe it might have. There is suspicion that she was alive when police first approached that house to canvas for the missing child, hopefully had they know of the prior proclivities of one resident of that house they would have searched it until they found her, BEFORE she died. One might be brought to wonder if Mr. Couey would have allowed himself to entertain the thoughts that led to the actions that led to Jessica’s death. The point is that the consequenses for not registering weren’t enough to make him register. Why do we expect that the law will be abided by a committed law breaker? (His other crime was that he was abusing an illicit substance when the rape and murder took place.)

In the weeks after Jessica’s body was found there have been multiple stories of other children stolen, raped and murdered in other places. Before this happened there were too many stories of missing and dead children preyed upon by a twisted and peculiarly unredeemable group of criminals, the sex offender that perpetrates against children. It will happen again. And we allow it to happen again because we continue to try to stop the unstoppable with ineffective means. These criminals have to be contained and restrained by other methods. The only effective ones that come to mind are life in prison or death. I prefer life sentences for those offenders who don’t kill and death for those that do. Period. First offense against a child under 12, you are in prison for life or you are dead. No appeals for parole, no second chances. They can reform all they like while in prison, but they can never again be confronted with access to the object of their twisted and evil desires.

I woke up early this morning to watch the funeral. Quite an amazing rite for quite an amazing man. A lovely spectacle, carried by telecast around the world, even into the hearts of darkness in China and the Muslim world. (Did anyone else see the feed from Al Jazeera? I wish I could read Arabic.)

Let me declare here first, I stand firmly in the Reformation, declaring “Soli Deo Gloria”, et all. In no sense do I wish to join the Roman Church. But I have heard and read a number of rumblings in the evangelical community about the Pope, how the papacy isn’t a biblical office, etc, lately as well as reminders about all the stuff about Catholicism that we Reformationists protested, selling of indulgences, the veneration of Mary, the elevation of the priesthood, celibacy of the priesthood, mixing works into the gospel of grace, etc. Mostly concern about the current popularity of the Pope, concern that popularity will dilute the gospel of grace.

I can appreciate that concern, but from where I sit, today it is popular to like the JPII, and will always be. What I don’t see happening is a mad dash to the Catholic Church from Evangelicals. He won’t be as popular in a month, or on everyone’s mind and lips in 6, and in a year, he will be fading from view in the rear view mirror. Which in my opinion is criminally shameful. But that is what will happen. Everyone suddenly loved Reagan when he died too, but dems didn’t rush out and convert to the GOP. (Logical choice, I know, but alas, loving Reagan didn’t help them think more clearly.

I would like to state here that I believe in some very specific things the Romans have it right and we have it wrong. There is an ancient majesty to the old rites that draws our gaze to the agelessness of God. We can worship God in spirit and in truth through observing those old rites and understanding their foundation. We miss that when insisting upon the latest worship music played upon the latest technology. It isn’t that other of God’s truths are not proclaimed by worshiping in the new ways, they are, powerfully. But I would submit that we miss our history, the amazing history of how God has sustained his church through wars, civil upheaval, famine, disease, invasion and persecution. Also, we can learn about and understand more of God’s King-ness through HIS veneration. Yes he is Father, that is how Jesus taught us to pray. But he is Father-King, and not something other, these two are together rather than singular. As C.S. Lewis says of Aslan, He isn’t safe, but He is good, that’s the way we should view God. There are ancient meanings behind the traditions of the Catholic Mass, it would behoove us to discover those meanings. I also think there is a much needed place for monasticism in the Protestant church, but that is a discussion for another time.

So, all that to say, I am not concerned about the Pope’s current place in the pantheon of popular dead people. He really did accomplish some amazing and incredible things in his lifetime. He lived through two of the harshest, cruelest dictatorships in world history and emerged from them a man of God, committed to peace. Not a pansy peace, but real peace, rather, the kind you stretch your neck out for. He reached out ecumenically to heal rifts and wounds that, frankly, needed healing. He never, as far as I know, sold out his understanding of what it was to be a Christian. Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II reached out to sinners as an ambassador of Christ. I think he was an amazing role model.

R.I.P.

I was thinking that the problem with Social Security, specifically that there are too few new workers to take care of the burden of the baby boomers is a problem that the baby boomers themselves have created.

By legalizing abortion, they have jeopardized their future benefits by killing millions of future SS contributors. Even if you made it illegal now, you would have to wait more than 21 years for the added workers to make an impact, and even then there is a diminished generation breeding, since the people now coming of age to have children are, for the most part, born after Roe v Wade. SS is due to be insolvent in 14 years.

Fascinating that selfishness would be the self-focused generation’s undoing.

Like I said, just a random thought.

Today in Florida a woman lays dying, murdered actually, it’s just not finished yet.

Over the course of the last two weeks the MSM has pontificated, postured and blathered all about the right to die. Once again they’ve got it all wrong, the story of Terri Schaivo is really about the right to kill those we find inconvenient, costly and ugly.

Surveys have asked over and over “Would you want to live like this?” NO! is the resounding American answer. Ask the question another way, “If you had an accident or injury that left you significantly disabled would you prefer to have all the rehabilitative might that modern medicine offers and all the tests administered to properly diagnose you or would you prefer to languish in a twilight place until they came to pull your feeding tube out so that you slowly starved and dehydrated to death, this death taking up to two weeks or more?” Um, tests and rehabilitation please.

That question “Would you want to live like this?” could get a “No” answer to dozens of situations and circumstances. For example: I don’t want to live with acne, back pain, headaches, old soccer injuries, in Denver, as an amputee, without wealth, without comfort and without my cup of coffee in the morning. Are we so selfish and vain that life actually loses all of its value simply because our circumstances change? I’m not saying that there isn’t heartache and pain involved, or that life is easy for Terri or her family. What I am saying is that life itself is precious, and must be held onto tightly at all times.

What I see at work here is misplaced and wrongheaded selfishness disguised as sympathy. Simply because you would prefer to not live in a specific circumstance does in no way mean that it is acceptable to put someone else to death because they are living in that specific circumstance. It looks like sympathy, but really is an aberrant form of selfishness.

Considering that life is the one absolute irreplaceable in our time here on earth, the one thing we can’t do without, should we really be quantifying it’s value with what we used to be like, what we prefer and how we would LIKE to live? If you follow that logic, then why do we intervene in places like Darfur, after all who wants to live like a third world refugee? Just let them die. That of course is hideous thinking, of course we intervene, life is valuable. Sometimes.

In reading the opinions of the bioethecists weighing in on Terri Schaivo’s case I am more and more frightened of the future. These “ethicists” actually argue that because Mrs. Schaivo’s diminished brain function has reduced her hopes for her life, and even her ability to know that she has a life that her life is therefore less valuable and so she can be terminated like we would kill a cow for dinner. She is unaware that she is a person and therefore her right to protection as a person is forfeit. They argue the same for embryos, fetuses, infants and alzheimers patients. We should be harvesting these “Non-person people” for what they have that we lack. How on earth did these people come up with these sick, twisted and demonic ideas? Well, it starts with abortion, that leads to euthanasia, that leads to eugenics, that leads to a slaughter we can’t even imagine.

No, you say. Really? Wake up and smell the coffin. In Europe they kill babies and children because they don’t measure up, through the age of 12. In this country we allow a woman to kill her fetus right up to the moments before birth, we allow physician assisted suicide. In China they harvest organs from political prisoners in the hours before they are executed. AND WE ALLOW ALL OF THIS. Why?

Because we have consistently and willfully turned away from God, from the knowledge that He gave us this life, life for a purpose. Jesus came that we might have life, and that abundantly. So that we could walk in His ways and glorify Him. In seeking after Satan’s folly, pride and power in ourselves and our abilities, forsaking the One who gave us ourselves and our abilities, we have set up new gods in the temples of our minds. Youth, health, bodily perfection, fill-in-the-blank. These gods rule us with heavy hands, influencing everything they touch. Just look around, you can see them everywhere in everything. Most terrifyingly of all, these gods have taken up residence in the halls of medicine.

So, would I want to live like Terri Schaivo? Not with Michael Schaivo as my husband, because I wouldn’t live, I would die.

When you see it, you know. It’s that story on the news that makes you sit up and take notice, realizing that you are seeing something big, really big, and you know that you have to soak in every detail, every nuance, because you want to remember. There are lots of stories like that for me, and probably for you too. The Challenger Accident, Tiananmen Square, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bhopal Accident, the Execution of Ceaucescu, September 11, 01. And now added to that list are the protests in Lebanon.

The brave citizens of Lebanon have so far forced the Syrian-puppet PM Omar Karami to resign and now they are turning their efforts to rid their country of it’s Syrian oppressors. Lebanon has been under occupation for twenty years, in part because of the actions of Arafat and the PLO after Jordan kicked them out for doing exactly what they did in Lebanon in the early eighties, run terrorist missions into Israel. The subsequent response from Israel and the continued actions of Arafat destabilized Lebanon and opened the door for Syrian dictator and Moscow stooge, Hafez Asad to declare Lebanon his own. Syria has had troops on the ground, has hand picked governments, and has brutally repressed the people of Lebanon.

Now the people are rising up against oppression, as they have in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, etc. I can’t wait to see what happens. I hope they win!

A bit of history
http://www.lgic.org/en/history.php#h5
BBC Coverage of Lebanon
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4306925.stm

In case you don’t know him, you should get acquainted with Abdul Amir. Or, to be more precise, get acquainted with his story.

Abdul Amir was a 30 year old Iraqi policeman, which means that he is a relatively new officer who doesn’t have the background of free elections, free government, liberty, value for life and a strict sense of equality that we Americans take so much for granted. Mr. Amir could only have remembered the tyranny of the Hussein regime where it was the rule of the strongest and most violent, not the rule of law. Sunday, January 30, 2005, Abdul Amir offered his life to ensure that his fellow countrymen and women had the opportunity to vote. He noticed a man carrying something heavy under his arm walking towards a polling station, Mr. Amir grabbed him and dragged him away from the group preparing to vote. The detonation of the homicide belt killed both men, one a thug, the other, a hero. Living in Baghdad, Abdul Amir could have had no doubt that his very heroic action would cost him his life, and perhaps only a razor thin hope he could disarm the thug. Who knows, Abdul is dead. I hope he is never forgotten, that his name is remembered in Iraq the way we remember our founding heroes. So far there are hopes to rename the school where he died after him, maybe even erect a statue.

May we all remember the many, many lives lost in pursuit of liberty, ours and theirs. May we never ever forget that peace is purchased by blood, that continuing freedom is bought by never relaxing vigilance, that liberty can only rise from the ashes of absolutism and tyranny, never from the smoldering remains, that the sword is not sharp for no reason and must be bloodied to be useful for those it protects. Lastly, may we never forget that self-sacrifice is the standard our Creator meant for us to follow.

http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/9.html

This link will take you to some sobering pictures of the damage. It’s all before and after pictures of the areas most affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Some of these places look scoured, villages wiped clean of all living things and their belongings.

Iraq:

It’s all so interesting. The news I mean. When I watch the network news all I see is death and destruction and accusations of the Bush administration. Then I turn on Fox News and see a press conference from the head of USAID, a part of the state department. He is pleading with the reporters to please run stories on what they are doing & accomplishing. He said they have over 1000 projects currently running, that the infrastructure is improving, that electricity is now on in most homes 12 hours a day and should be on for 20 hours a day sometime in January. That they have rebuilt numerous schools and medical facilities. He also pleaded for them to remember that the infrastructure they are struggling to restore had been neglected by the Hussein regime for 20 years while he amassed wealth and murdered his own people. He said that many of his co-workers, including many who are in the field in Iraq, disagreed with this war. The ones who come back from working in Iraq to see what’s on the news are outraged and distressed to see that nothing that they have accomplished is reported and that the view of the war is distorted. hmm. (Please forgive me, I don’t remember the man’s name or the correct name of the agency, except I know that it is part of the State Department.)

France:

Algeria and Ivory Coast. Both former colonies of the French, both in chaos. hmm. And now tonight there is a report of a massacre at a protest in the Ivory Coast. hmm And then there are charges of bribery in the Oil for Food program. Hmm. Other reports coming out of France indicate some serious cultural issues are looming for the French and their imigrant population. hmm. In fact, all of Europe seems to be in the grip of losing their identity to imigrants and they are fighting back, passing laws limiting the number of imigrants, specifyingwhat jobs they are allowed to have. hmm. This is all just interesting.

The UN:

The more I read about the UN, it’s dealings, who sits on the security council, who sits on the human rights council, the more I wonder if this body is really the most effective way to deal with the world-community. We can’t go back and isolate, it’s a century too late for that. In a perfect world, where all countries are democracies and the leaders are duly and fairly elected, we could hope for real thoughtful consensus and truly helpful intervention. That’s not what we have. Right down to their “diplomatic immunity” that allows the “diplomats” to ignore the law, the UN acts as a corrupt institution. I get why diplomats need to have a level of immunity, but that immunity should not translate into getting away with murder, or even 1000’s of parking tickets. Perhaps they need a watchdog to be sure they get due process and are not persecuted or wrongfully charged, but being above the law has never once in the history of the world encouraged a free and liberated society. In fact, just the opposite.

I remember exactly what I was doing the day that tragedy struck at Bhopal, working in a pesticide filled greenhouse. When I got home that evening and saw the horror in India, I cried at all the death and destruction. Then I heard the name of the chemical and recognized it as one that we used regularly at the greenhouse, Sevin, found in Round-up. When we showed up for work the next day nearly all of us refused to enter the greenhouse, it smelled like chemicals and the dead faces from India were clear in our minds. Management told us it was okay. Nope, not going in there. We were screamed at, but none of us budged, the ones who hadn’t seen the news crept back out and, after hearing about the 2000 dead, refused as well.

Now, after 20 years, that incident still is a landmark for me. In human cost, thousands dead and thousands sick. It is overwhelming. The grossness of the company’s failure to compensate the survivors is overwhelming as well. From their website it is pretty clear they feel no need to care for those injured by the second most serious industrial accident of all time. (The first being a burst dam in China, at least according to the Learning Channel.)

I appreciate American companies going overseas to find cheap labor, cheap land, all that fun capitalist stuff. What I find detestable is that there isn’t a mind to make working conditions in these overseas plants better. Americans enjoy such an amazing quality of life that when we go overseas to make money we should be bringing that quality of life with us. Granted it won’t be up to US standards, but at least the basics should be covered. Stuff like plant safety, worker safety and proper chemical storage should all be a given.

While I am a conservative and think that regulations on private companies can become so burdensome as to make them unable to make a profit, I do think that some regulation is appropriate and needed. This kind of regulation would have to impose fines on American companies operating overseas when their operation costs lives, as in the case of Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant. Now, of course, it would have to be carefully and specifically defined. Since that is where government tends to bloat, I don’t see this as ever becoming a reality.

The best solution would be that these companies would hold themselves to a high standard, both in operation and compensation. I am sure some do. I don’t know anything about them, which makes sense. We never hear the good news, it’s the bad news that always gets the best press.