The Top 100 Political Blogs in America

Here’s the Top 100:

1 The Huffington Post 2 Think Progress 3 The Corner 4 Political Ticker - CNN 5 The Daily Dish 6 Political Punch 7 Michelle Malkin 8 Instapundit.com 9 Talking Points Memo 10 Political Animal 11 Firedoglake 12 Daily Kos 13 Crooks and Liars 14 fivethirtyeight 15 NewsBusters 16 The Caucus - New York Times blog 17 Gateway Pundit 18 Power Line 19 White House.gov Blog Feed 20 Michael Goldfarb - The Blog - The Weekly Standard 21 The Plank 22 AMERICAblog 23 Reason Magazine - Hit & Run 24 The Volokh Conspiracy 25 Balloon Juice 26 Washington Wire - WSJ.com 27 Marginal Revolution 28 Swampland 29 Glenn Greenwald 30 The Note 31 Atlas Shrugs 32 Hullabaloo 33 Wonkette 34 Eschaton 35 Political Wire 36 Jihad Watch 37 Lynn Sweet 38 The Jawa Report 39 George's Bottom Line 40 Political Radar - ABC Blog 41 The Next Right 42 forward movement 43 Don Surber 44 MyDD 45 JammieWearingFool 46 Patterico's Pontifications 47 iowahawk 48 The Blog 49 Stop the ACLU 50 Redstate - Conservative News and Community 51 Townhall.com 52 FP Passport 53 The Washington Note 54 TalkLeft 55 JustOneMinute

56 Ross Douthat 57 Outside the Beltway 58 Sweetness & Light 59 The Nation Blogs 60 Riehl World View 61 DownWithTyranny! 62 Flopping Aces 63 Oliver Willis 64 Gay Patriot 65 The Buzz Florida Politics 66 Global Voices Online 67 Michael J. Totten 68 jillstanek.com 69 Roger L. Simon 70 Moonbattery 71 American Power 72 PollingReport.com 73 Capitol confidential 74 GamePolitics.com 75 The Brad Blog 76 YID With LID 77 Debbie Schlussel 78 Confederate Yankee 79 The Club for Growth 80 The Belmont Club 81 Newshoggers 82 Soccer Dad 83 Say Anything 84 News Hounds 85 Founding Bloggers 86 the albany project 87 The Liberty Papers 88 The Anonymous Liberal 89 Mother, May I Sleep with Treacher? 90 Jack and Jill Politics 91 Burnt Orange Report 92 PoliGazette 93 The Radio Equalizer: Brian Maloney 94 Obama HQ 95 The LRC Blog 96 ScrappleFace 97 Sister Toldjah 98 The Strata-Sphere 99 The Sideshow 100 Naked Politics Ranking by Wikio.

I write for a few of these. I think we are seeing a change.

A Fish Story of Today

Went fishing. Caught fish, ate fish, and burgers and brats with a bunch of great men. Ah Summer. I just wish we could get some global warming. Cold as heck. I have worn short sleeve shirts 3 times so far this year. Whassup with that. ALGORE Pshaw.

If Not for D-Day, It Would Have Been Doomsday

by Scott Simon, NPR

Weekend Edition Saturday, June 6, 2009 ·

President Obama reminds us today that when U.S., British, and Canadian forces trudged into bullets and mortar shells on the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago, their success was not assured. We've seen the movie, and know the ending: John Wayne and Tom Hanks won the war, along with our plucky allies, David Niven and Michael Caine.

But the young soldiers of 1944, now gone or grown old, faced forbidding shores, bristling with steel. They had no exit strategy. They could only win, or die trying.

In recent years, several books have questioned whether that that war was wise. They range from the right, with Pat Buchanan's "Churchill, Hitler, and the 'Unnecessary War'," to the left, and Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke."

Several years ago, we asked John Keegan, the British military historian, what he thought might have happened if the D-Day invasion had failed.

"The Allies would have tried it again," he said. But the next time, they would lack any advantage of surprise. Germany's V-2 missiles, which could not be stopped by planes or anti-aircraft fire, became operational that summer, and could have decimated Allied soldiers and sailors even before they left port.

Mr. Keegan said that Churchill's government in Britain would have fallen, and a new one would have sued for peace. Franklin Roosevelt would not have run for re-election, and someone who had favored accommodation with Germany — a Charles Lindbergh, as Phillip Roth once imagined, or Joseph P. Kennedy — might have been elected in America. Without U.S. and British assistance, the Soviet Union would have collapsed.

"America would be marooned," said John Keegan, sweeping a hand over a globe. "Alone on a vast planet flooded by fascism."

Hitler might have let America alone for a while, he said. But every Jew in Europe, every Roma, every gay, Jehovah's Witness, disabled or retarded person, and millions more Poles and Russians would have been executed or worked to death.

How many millions would we allow to be killed, he asked, so that Americans could live in an isolation some would call peace? And what kind of Hell would be left to our children in a world dominated by the creators of the Nuremberg Laws and death camps?

New histories can usefully examine the terrible moral bargains America and Britain made to prevail, from the firebombings of cities, to making an ally of Joseph Stalin, who shared Hitler's immoral makeup.

But on some anniversaries, it seems right to remind ourselves that most of us alive in America today have grown up free to try on whatever ideas we like, like hats in a store window, because of the suffering, blood, and sacrifice of men and women now passing into history

So will the legacy of the Iraq War be. Every time I hear someone tell me there is no such thing as a just war, I want them to think of this. Sometimes war is essential.

This was one such time. Thank God for Brave Men and Women who wage what is essential if undesirable.

I hope no one ever thinks or believes this war was not needed. History tells the tale. It will tell the tale on Iraq. God Bless our troops. And God bless George W Bush.

North Dakota is now the land of Plenty

At least that's what The WSJ says.

Not Controversial

We are witnesses. Jesus said "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth." . In court witnesses don't need to be clever. We need only "speak the things which we know" as John said. We have only to be honest and not fear. The world wants to treat believers as defendants, "defending the ways of God to men". It demands of us explanations, apologetics, and argument.
Defense is not the business of witnesses. It is not believers who are in the dock, but the world. We are witnesses for the prosecution. The world lies in the lap of wickedness. Let the world defend itself if it can for its godlessness, wars, swindles, oppressions, greed and unbelief. We were also guilty, but have been forgiven, and have turned into the King's evidence. Our King, God Almighty, is not available at the impertinent demand of scoffing mortals to explain himself.

Witnesses have nothing to do with controversy. They want to make our witness controversial. But "We proclaim what we have seen and heard". as 1 John 1:3 says. It was called controversial when Galileo said the earth orbited the sun. Every scientific advance has been treated as controversial. They call it controversial that Jesus is alive, baptizes with the Spirit and heals the sick, but that doesn't make it controversial. The color of a rose is controversial only in the house of the blind.

Reinhard Bonnke

These are things that are indicators of people who are potential domestic terrorists and need to be watched

I guess Janet Napolitano will have to count me IN. If this is the list of what makes one a terrorist candidate or not, I are one.

• * Oppose abortion
• * Oppose same-sex marriage
• * Oppose restrictions on firearms
• * Oppose lax immigration laws
• * Oppose the policies of President Obama regarding immigration, citizenship, and the expansion of social programs
• * Oppose continuation of free trade agreements
• * Are suspect of foreign regimes
• * Fear Communist regimes
• * Oppose a “one world” government
• * Bemoan the decline of U.S. stature in the world
• * Are upset with loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India, and more

Why should I feel Obligated (guilty) to "Give Back"?

I have come to the conclusion that many people use the words Give Back to instill guilt on people who have done well.

I'm for giving. I give. I like to give. But, doing it from obligation because I have something seems to me to be screwed up. Like greasing the skids for more taxes. Like voluntary socialism.

I get a little irritated when I see these "Give back to the community" articles. I'm not fully convinced the motivation is philanthropic. I think it might be a mind game. I heard this before.

And when I see Corporate American, particularly public corporations giving money away in the name of the corporation, as a shareholder I become irritated. Who gave them the right to decide to give my money as a stockholder to someone I might not even approve of? Like Planned Parenthood.

It reminds me of:

Athiests most of the time, even on their deathbeds, come to understand they NEED Jesus, Only pride keeps them from HIM

From CT

Former atheist A. N. Wilson has slowly emerged from the closet as a believer again. The renowned journalist and biographer, who was raised in the church of England and who had once considered himself a believer, had a "conversion" to atheism 20 years ago at age 38 (midlife crisis, anyone?). And it really looked like a conversion. In an article in the April 6 New Statesman (partial text available here), he compares the tremendous sense of relief he felt when he stopped believing to the experience of Christian converts at a Billy Graham Crusade he was covering for the Independent on Sunday:

As a hesitant, doubting, religious man I'd never known how they felt. But, as a born-again atheist, I now knew exactly what satisfactions were on offer. For the first time in my 38 years I was at one with my own generation. I had become like one of the Billy Grahamites, only in reverse. If I bumped into Richard Dawkins (an old colleague from Oxford days) or had dinner in Washington with Christopher Hitchens (as I did either on that trip to interview Billy Graham or another), I did not have to feel out on a limb.

After that conversion, his biographical writing turned to demythologizing gospel stories about Jesus and viewing C. S. Lewis through a Freudian lens. (That effort provoked an outcry among Lewis lovers.)

But Wilson never fully disbelieved, just as before his conversion he never fully believed.

"My doubting temperament ... made me a very unconvincing atheist," he writes in the New Statesman article.

That is why, he says, he should have distrusted the radical sense of relief he felt when he underwent his reverse Damascus Road experience. Now, he chronicles a more gradual conversion back to Christian belief. In last Saturday's Daily Mail, he wrote:

But, as time passed, I found myself going back to church, although at first only as a fellow traveller with the believers, not as one who shared the faith that Jesus had truly risen from the grave. Some time over the past five or six years - I could not tell you exactly when - I found that I had changed.

This gradual transition echoes C. S. Lewis's account of his transition from unbelief to faith. He knew vaguely when it happened, but it was not a blinding, fall-off-the-horse experience. And because of its more gradual nature, Wilson now seems to trust this new experience more.

One more thing worth noting: There is a strong aesthetic dimension to Wilson's return to belief. Unlike many atheists and former believers, Wilson's testimony does not hinge on what empirical science does or does not tell us. He tells us frankly that the arguments provided by atheist friends of a scientific bent were as creedal and stretching as many assertions by Christians.

A materialist Darwinian was having dinner with me a few years ago and we laughingly alluded to how, as years go by, one forgets names. Eager, as committed Darwinians often are, to testify on any occasion, my friend asserted: "lt is because when we were simply anthropoid apes, there was no need to distinguish between one another by giving names."

This credal confession struck me as just as superstitious as believing in the historicity of Noah's Ark. More so, really. Do materialists really think that language just "evolved", like finches' beaks. or have they simply never thought about the matter rationally? Where's the evidence?

The aesthetic dimension dominates the empirical for Wilson because there was something about the great Christian artists and writers of past centuries that somehow seemed true to reality. (Wilson opposes J. S. Bach to David Hume and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Gilbert Ryle.)

Because of the gradual nature of Wilson's re-conversion, we trust he will continue to grow in grace and understanding and trust in God as should we all, whether our conversion happened in a flash or stretched over many years.

* * *

The Victorian era saw many Christians become atheists--and then return to faith, much as A. N. Wilson has done in 2009. Read Timothy Larsen's account of their double conversions in "Victorian Skeptics on the Road to Damascus" from the Christian History website.

It was Twenty Years Ago TODAY

This has nothing at all to do with Sgt Pepper.

I was in Taiwan on this date twenty years ago. On business. Tiannemen Square became a disaster.

Many of the Chinese people I was meeting with were distraught and upset with what they were seeing 24-7 on Chinese TV. The standoff and eventual massacre by the totalitarian Chinese communist government is a black mark of the soul that has not yet healed.

It was a turning point for China and although since that date China has become more prosperous it has also become more empty of any genuine spirit.

I remember at dinner after the crackdown the tears of my guests. How horrible it all was.

I wonder how far we are from that today in the USA. There is real anger in the heartlands of the USA. I have a feeling this would be different.

What will it take for martial law to be imposed and people mown down by snipers as they were in Tiennamen square.

Santayana's words ring in my ear as I ponder this day.

When the Feet of the Body of Christ falls asleep

The picture of the church in 1 Corinthians 12 is quite startling. We are shown not only the intended unity of the church but also the place of the Holy Spirit in its work and in its very existence. Paul describes the body as made up of many members, but “to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). Each one – not just the pastor or elders – everyone. No believer is on a higher spiritual level than another. The pastor “class” is not an indication of spiritual superiority. With God there is no distinction between priest and laity, for the Holy Spirit is with each person. He may operate though in a multitude of different ways though we all have the same anointing, if we are anointed at all. “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Corinthians 12:13).

The church wants no dead limbs, no feet going to sleep, but everyone alive with the life of the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that makes the body, bringing together its living elements; what is needed is for the whole body to work together and move together in the same direction. The church is God’s dynamic force on earth. We are told about “the unity of the Spirit.” We are responsible for preserving the unity but the Holy Spirit is the unifying element. He holds us together – if we want to be together.

From Reinhard Bonnke

WHY I LEFT THE ELCA

I'll never forget the day. Peggy and I had been married in that church. Our kids baptised in that church. I taught Sunday School in that Church. I even preached a bit in that Church. The largest (at that time) ELCA Lutheran Church in Fargo ND. First Lutheran.

Pastor Cole was a good friend. When Peggy and I had problems he was there for us.

But, the day when a pro Choice Doctor got up and stated the position of the ELCA as noted below was the day I left the Church. She said we were going to have a discussion on abortion. What is there to discuss I asked. Abortion is Murder. Plain and simple. No holds barred.

She was more relative. Even though it caused great pain and division even in our family I could not stay in fellowship with relativists.

To this day, conservative solid, non relativist theology is all I can abide. If God said it, that settles it. No compromise.

So, we left. What relativism will get you is the kind of thing Dr Tiller brought to his church as Usher, and oh, by the way, The BTK killer came from this same church.

I think I would find another church. Luther should demand they change their name to.... Oh, I don't know, Unitarian has the proper ring.

From Ann Coulter Regarding Dr Tiller the Dead Abortionist:

Tiller was protected not only by a praetorian guard of elected Democrats, but also by the protective coloration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America -- coincidentally, the same church belonged to by Tiller's fellow Wichita executioner, the BTK killer.

The official Web page of the ELCA instructs: "A developing life in the womb does not have an absolute right to be born." As long as we're deciding who does and doesn't have an "absolute right to be born," who's to say late-term abortionists have an "absolute right" to live?

I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists?

Following the moral precepts of liberals, I believe the correct position is: If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, then don't shoot one.

Dr Tiller Baptised and Memorialized Babies he Murdered

Abortionist Dr Tiller Baptized late term babies right after he killed them just before he cremated their bodies. This is Horror beyond belief. I want you to look at the website I have linked in bold and tell me that this barbarism was anything less than a heinous act dressed in pretty white clothes. This is beyond belief. Warning, graphic pictures.

From CRN.INFO:

Aside from the obvious issue of mixing of Christianity and nationalism, I have to ask “What about Tiller’s family?” He left behind a wife, four children and ten grandchildren. What about Tiller, himself? Make no mistake, he was a despicable man. He claimed to be Christian and an active member at a Lutheran church, and yet he killed 60,000+ children, oft-times baptizing their corpses before cremating them. Even so, should we not pray that he received the grace none of us deserve, rather than pray that he receives justice?

The religious movement from which Jesus came, in the Galilee region of first-century Israel, had two main thrusts - Phariseeism and Zealotry - both with identical theology apart from a single key point - The Pharisees believed that God would bring about his kingdom through the obedience of His people, and not through violence, and the Zealots believed that they were called to bring about God’s kingdom as instruments of violence. In this matter, it is clear that Jesus sided with the Pharisees - even as he condemned their hypocrisy in other matters.

As I search my own soul, I have to say in my heart of hearts I cannot say that I am sorry the Tiller is out of business. His business was chaos, hypocrisy, death and destruction - as it is with each of us, even if on a smaller scale. But I must wish - even if I must force myself to wish it - that it would have been God turning his heart, and not man doing it in the name of God.

Hat Tip to Julie.

OUCH! The pastor that Cusses ED YOUNG JR

Ephesians 2:19-22 NLT as it is written and as it is practiced

A Temple for the Lord

¹⁹ So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. ²⁰ Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. ²¹ We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. ²² Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.

How it's practiced:

A Temple for the Lord

¹⁹ So now you Gentiles are strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people if we accept you. You are members of God’s family after you commit to us permanently. ²⁰Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the Church Board and a few influential people. And the cornerstone is the Pastor. ²¹ We are carefully joined together with some being over others, becoming a holy temple for the Lord sometimes. ²² Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit if you don't make too much ruckus. After all we have to stay in control.

Evangilism is NOT the main thing - Relational Discipling IS!

QUOTE: "We are not leading people into that immediate relationship with the living Lord. If you listen to most sermons, that intimate personal relationship is missing. If you talk to many church members, they feel they are in the right relationship to God when they attend all the worship services, they tithe, they go on a mission trip. And many a pastor would evaluate a member, not from the intimate relationship with the Lord, but for how faithful he is in all the activities of the church—and does he tithe? It's activity. Many of God's people have moved from the relationship to religious activity. We are content to live without the manifest presence, power and activity of God. ... There's a huge gap in the teaching ministry of pastors. We have put on them a huge sense of the priority of evangelism. We had an evangelist in our church not long ago. He said the thing I thought he would say: that the No. 1 priority above everything else is to reach out to the lost. I would say that's not true. The priority of every congregation is the lordship of Christ and everything else will come out of that. Many a pastor would not know how in the world to guide their church under the lordship of Christ ... because his life doesn't function out of that mindset." —longtime pastor and best-selling author Henry Blackaby [Baptist Press, 5/12/09]

What's really destroying America

5 Character Flaws That Are Destroying America’s Future

By robert108 on June 2, 2009 at 10:57 am

1) Lack Of Personal Responsibility: As a society, we encourage a “victimhood mentality” and an overweening government that never met an issue it didn’t want to dive into with both feet; so we shouldn’t be surprised that so many Americans expect to be rewarded for failure.

If GM fails, we’ve got to step in and keep it afloat. If people snuck into this country illegally, we can’t be so hardhearted as to obey the law and deport them! If you bought a house you couldn’t afford, you shouldn’t be penalized for that when the market takes a bad turn. If you bought a blender, tried to start it in your bathtub, and were nearly electrocuted—that’s not your fault! The manufacturers should have put a warning sticker on it.

We’re descended from pioneer stock. Our ancestors explored, conquered, and tamed a continent. They couldn’t rely on the police to show up if an Indian raiding party showed up at their isolated cabin at 3 AM. There was no school lunch program on the Oregon Trail. If your buggy whip company was going out of business because of those new fangled auto-mo-biles, you didn’t get 20 billion dollars in taxpayer money so you could open up a new branch in China, you went out of business. If our ancestors were alive, they would sneer in disdain at what a nation full of whining babies their descendants have become.

2) Short Attention Spans: Perhaps because of the internet, the stunning variety of news sources, or the complexity of modern society, we’ve become much less able as a people to follow logical arguments and deal with complex messages.

This has bled over into Congress where they write legislation dealing with issues they don’t truly understand. That legislation is voted on by legislators who admit that they haven’t read it and it affects the lives of millions of people who were unaware that such legislation was even being contemplated.

The problem with this is that there are many issues in life that are too knotty to be broken down into a soundbite or a 30 second commercial. Those affairs require more extensive knowledge and deeper thought and consideration than can be placed on a bumper sticker or weaved into a music video. When we lose sight of that fact, utter disasters that have been in plain sight all along for anyone with an attention span longer than five minutes can blindside much of the population.

3) Excessive Self-Esteem:

[...]

They’re just so darn sure that what they believe is right just by virtue of the fact they believe it. Traditions? Codes of conduct? Religious beliefs? Customs? There’s no need to even understand why previous generations believed what they did or to question what purpose it served. Just remember that they were racist back then and so they couldn’t have had any good ideas.

Of course, we don’t look back and say, “Gee? How did they make it without welfare, social security, or an income tax? Why is it that they had a divorce rate that was a fraction of the one we had today? How is it that the crime rate was so much lower? What made the people so much more polite than they are today? If we were in the same situation as the Founding Fathers, could our political leaders step up to the plate and do as well?”

[...]

4) Short Term Thinking/Instant Gratification: Thomas Sowell once said that killing the goose that laid the golden egg can be a viable election strategy as long as it doesn’t die until you’re out of office and no one finds your prints on the murder weapon.

[...]

That is primarily how government has gotten so out of control. A problem occurs. In an effort to get re-elected, politicians rush to create a program to “fix” it. Ten years later, the original problem may or may not have been solved, but the program put in place to “fix” it has caused new issues and costs five times more than it did when it was originally put into place. However, if anyone suggests we get rid of it, there are howls of outrage. Hence, government never shrinks and bad programs almost never die.

Meanwhile, large festering problems like Social Security and Medicare are studiously ignored for as long as possible because we don’t react until there’s a crisis. Only after the horrific events of 9/11 did we start taking terrorism seriously. It took a bridge falling down to get Congress interested in poorly maintained structures nationwide. The whole economy had to crash to get Congress to become alarmed about quasi-governmental agencies handing out loans to people who couldn’t pay them back.

Incidentally, we’ve already started going backwards on all of these same problems. The new President shows minimal concern about terrorism, nobody is talking about bridges anymore, and Congress has already started encouraging more bad housing loans.

[...]

5) Immorality: The default mode of Hollywood is hedonism and we’ve been told again and again, at least since the Clinton years, that character doesn’t matter for our elected officials.

The problem with this is that character does matter—quite a bit, actually.

Our leaders are corrupt to the core—and that’s not just the ones who are in violation of our laws, which have been crafted in order to allow staggering amounts of corruption to be done legally. The families of politicians are given plum jobs and paid ridiculous sums of money in order to gain influence with legislators. Government earmarks that aid campaign contributors or family members of Congress are common. Chrysler has even been handed over to Barack Obama’s union allies in broad daylight. Ethics have become the very last consideration for our government and perhaps it’s no surprise given the state of our society.

Civility is dead and buried. We have people protesting funerals and the private residences of citizens. There are perverted gay parades in the streets of San Francisco. The most grotesque, blasphemous, and offensive material imaginable is regularly displayed on the internet and TV and we are drenched in sex from the time we get up until the time we go to bed.

As a replacement for actual human decency and morality, we’ve turned to political correctness and bloodless legalisms, neither of which is an adequate replacement for doing the right thing because it’s principled or virtuous.

The corrosive effects of this decline are seen not just in our government, but all throughout our society in the size of our prison population, the number of unmarried women having children, drug use, school shootings, and even our staggering abortion rate.

Well said! The foundation of our prosperity and power has always been strong personal, individual morality, and as the lefties work overtime to erode that, we slide farther and farther into disaster.

Stop Going to Funerals

Early Pentecost Sunday Morning I had a vision of the Church on the Earth. Father said, "Stop Going to Funerals".

He reminded me what a funeral feels like. It's somber. People standing around. The deceased looks good. Is in a beautiful box. Dressed up. The undertaker has done his job. She lays there in all her glory. Of course there's no life there. She's just an empty shell.

People talk about how wonderful she was when she was alive. All the good memories. All the nice thoughts they have. Then after the time of remembering there is the funeral. Someone stands and gives a historical review of the life now gone. Born, lived, died - end.

Then a few songs are sung, old songs usually. A few familiar scriptures are read. A few written prayers are prayed and then the service is over. Then there is a fellowship time, a church lunch.

After the funeral, when it's all over, when she has been pronounced dead and gone they do an essential thing. They bury her. Forever. Seldom dug up again.

If they kept her around for a few weeks she would start to stink. Like Lazarus in the tomb. Even though Mary and Martha loved their dead brother, they didn't want him back because he stinkith.

Of course, the Master, Jesus, sometimes comes along and speaks life to the one lying in the coffin. She could rise up again, but I know this, if she did she would not be the same as she was. She would be different. Much different. She would be changed, radial. There's something liberating about someone who has been dead and then raised up again. They get reckless, radical, restored and reborn. They have another chance. They won't go back again to the old life they had. It's all new.

This is a picture of the Church of Jesus on the earth. Much of what passes for Church is a funeral remembering a not yet buried corpse that is beginning to stink. Even in Pentecost. We look to the glory of the former house rather than the glory of the latter house.

Father is saying, stop attending, stop conducting, stop participating in funerals. The day is long past. Bury the dead. Move on. There is no more life there.

Father is saying that there will be lots of burials in ministries and churches in the years to come. That is not the enemy, that is ME. Only by putting away the past can the glory of the latter house be revealed. The remembrance of the former house blinds us from seeing the destiny he has for us his church on the earth.

Father says: "Look up, your salvation draws nigh, I will put to death and bury everything NOT of me. Do not mourn for them. Let the dead bury the dead. Come FOLLOW ME I say. I am taking you places you did not expect to become salt and light for a world who needs new life. Don't mourn for, don't long for, don't even remember the former things. I do a new thing in the world and My glory I will share with no man nor anything man has devised. I alone am the Lord God. There is NO OTHER!"

Is this a harbinger of things to come??

This picture despite the fact that it says 2000 for a date was taken this spring. I don't set the date on my camera since it keeps losing it. I need a new camera.

Anyway, this is a picture of the phenomenal flower set on the chokecherry in my back yard this spring.

Since then the fruit set from this is almost zilch. Chokecherry is mostly wind pollinated. So this isn't about bees. What it may more likely be about is the very cold weather we keep having.

I posted a couple days ago that the sun has gone cool. It's in a cold cycle. Once a few centuries ago when this happened it caused the little ice age.

I am concerned that the cold weather we are having is a harbinger of things to come. We may be in for a long cold spell. Global warming is passe. We need to sun to fire up again or I may never get a chokecherry again.

OH, and in New York and Northern Michigan there are frost and freeze warnings tonight.

Our climate has changed, is changing. We are getting very much colder.

Wasting Money on Wind Farms

February 2008 in Texas the wind quit blowing for a couple days. It does that sometimes. 3% of Texas power comes from wind. So, all at once the grid couldn't keep up.

People went dark, were shut off, and no one knew what to do.

What if windpower was 20% of Texas power source. How dumb.

Windpower is another one of those really stupid money wasting ideas someone cooked up that just isn't going to work.

Ever.

If only BHO would think about what GWB said

’‘Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.’’ GWB 5/15/08

Bold Pushiness!

From Reinhard Bonnke:

Profound Assurance in God!

Without bold pushiness David would have stayed with his sheep, but we need to realize that his “go” stemmed from his profound assurance in God. His “go” and his faith were potent. We are not told how David acquired his assured faith in God but it was motivating power feeding his own natural disposition. Without faith what he did would have been blind presumption. That explains so much of David’s story. David said, “By my God I can scale a wall” (2 Samuel 22:30). That is the man of God every time, all through history, all around the globe … “by my God, I can”. Some have “go” but no faith. Whatever our energies, without faith it is impossible to please God. Gumption and trust are the two feet of those that walk with God.