A critical creative look at issues of Economics, Politics and Finding a Purpose in Life - Let's talk about it. I try to leave the woodpile higher than I found it.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Thursday, April 23, 2015
A fleet of Iranian warships arrived near the southern coast of Yemen on Wednesday in a move likely to add greater tension in a developing U.S.-Iranian standoff in the region
Don't worry. Obama ordered our ships to head west at FULL SPEED and raise the white flag!
The official Chinese government news agency, Xinhua, has demanded the US immediately adopt stricter gun control measures to reduce the number of firearms...
we are not a communist dictatorship so mind your own business! Continue to torture, imprison, and kill Christians.
The Travel List Challenge's 100 Places to Visit Before You Die - How many have you been to?
I got 47. But my desire to get on a plane to see the other 53 is less today.
The Travel List Challenge's 100 Places to Visit Before You Die - How many have you been to?
The Travel List Challenge's 100 Places to Visit Before You Die - How many have you been to?
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Who was it that said this was the Junior Varsity and won't call them Terrorists
Thank you Hillary and Obama for your awesome foreign policies! ISIS is taking over the globe is on fire!
No one will protest because she wasn't killed by a white person.
BREAKING:
Harborview confirms to KING 5 that one-year-old Malaja Grant has died.
She was hit Thursday in a drive-by shooting in Kent: http://kng5.tv
Friday, April 17, 2015
Why the $70,000 dollar "Minimum Wage" deal is deadly fantasy
I saw media and facebook reaction to this event and was horrified. Many treated it as a sign of good things to come. It is insane.
Here's what happened.
I'm sure you can find all kinds of link from all kinds of social justice left wing types. Holding him up as a paradigm of generosity. At least those at the link I shared above have their heads above water a bit.
Here are some truths for you to grasp before you analyze this event well.
There is no such thing as a Non Profit company, group organization. All non profits MUST have enough money to operate or they go out of existence. That come however it does, from donors, from efficiencies, from whatever source they have. But if that source dries up.. BOOM they are gone.
Profit in any organization is not optional. It is essential. It is not optional. Sure for a short period of building time one can run on fumes but unless a company cash flows positively it dies. Profit is not a dirty word, it is the life of any business. Positive Cash flow fixes all things.
Hiring and paying people does not come from profits, it come from operations. Cost of sales. What it costs to capture and retain a paying customer. Profits are always under attack. The moment a company starts to create magnificent profits, some competitor is looking for a way to take it from them. That mean that being foolish with cash flow will doom a company when the crunch comes. It is a maxim of business that money goes where the money is. Every day someone is trying to figure out a way to do what you company does better, faster, cheaper, easier and for more profit.
Paying all people the same is a crisis in culture waiting to happen. If the head IT guy who used to make 50 grand a year now is making 70 grand and the customer service guy who used to make 30 grand a year is also making 70 grand, for a while that will be OK.. then one day reality sets in. HEY, I do all the HARD work around here and Bill over there does nothing. FOR THE SAME MONEY.
Or let's suppose as every company has, there is a Wally (see Dilbert) he's a slacker. His main job is sloughing off. Doing nothing all day. Yet he's pulling down 70 gs too. The morale of this company has seen it's best day.
Then there is the CEO. The guy with the risk. The guy who started it all. The guy who's name is on the bottom line responsibility for liability issues. He is there early and late. Works his butt off and it's on the line as well. For all his ingenuity and risk he gets.. 70 gs.
I understand he is a smart man and I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this is a ploy to steal away some people. I don't actually think so. I think he has been sucked into a Utopian vision of left wing America. Well, my friends, at just barely 30 years old, he is about to get the education of his lifetime. This deal is doomed from the git go. There are no jobs at any wage rate at a bankrupt company
I'm willing to bet a hundred bucks with anyone who believes otherwise. HEY this guy put his butt on the line for a foolish venture, why not yours.
Here's what happened.
I'm sure you can find all kinds of link from all kinds of social justice left wing types. Holding him up as a paradigm of generosity. At least those at the link I shared above have their heads above water a bit.
Here are some truths for you to grasp before you analyze this event well.
There is no such thing as a Non Profit company, group organization. All non profits MUST have enough money to operate or they go out of existence. That come however it does, from donors, from efficiencies, from whatever source they have. But if that source dries up.. BOOM they are gone.
Profit in any organization is not optional. It is essential. It is not optional. Sure for a short period of building time one can run on fumes but unless a company cash flows positively it dies. Profit is not a dirty word, it is the life of any business. Positive Cash flow fixes all things.
Hiring and paying people does not come from profits, it come from operations. Cost of sales. What it costs to capture and retain a paying customer. Profits are always under attack. The moment a company starts to create magnificent profits, some competitor is looking for a way to take it from them. That mean that being foolish with cash flow will doom a company when the crunch comes. It is a maxim of business that money goes where the money is. Every day someone is trying to figure out a way to do what you company does better, faster, cheaper, easier and for more profit.
Paying all people the same is a crisis in culture waiting to happen. If the head IT guy who used to make 50 grand a year now is making 70 grand and the customer service guy who used to make 30 grand a year is also making 70 grand, for a while that will be OK.. then one day reality sets in. HEY, I do all the HARD work around here and Bill over there does nothing. FOR THE SAME MONEY.
Or let's suppose as every company has, there is a Wally (see Dilbert) he's a slacker. His main job is sloughing off. Doing nothing all day. Yet he's pulling down 70 gs too. The morale of this company has seen it's best day.
Then there is the CEO. The guy with the risk. The guy who started it all. The guy who's name is on the bottom line responsibility for liability issues. He is there early and late. Works his butt off and it's on the line as well. For all his ingenuity and risk he gets.. 70 gs.
I understand he is a smart man and I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this is a ploy to steal away some people. I don't actually think so. I think he has been sucked into a Utopian vision of left wing America. Well, my friends, at just barely 30 years old, he is about to get the education of his lifetime. This deal is doomed from the git go. There are no jobs at any wage rate at a bankrupt company
I'm willing to bet a hundred bucks with anyone who believes otherwise. HEY this guy put his butt on the line for a foolish venture, why not yours.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
I go to a Tea Party Rally
Heard at tonight's TEA PARTY meeting, and YES VIRGINIA there were many black conservatives there. They spoke to the assembled and said, come to our communities, make friends, start to form alliances, let people know you care, get our of your box, become a part of what matters. I am trying to do that.
Then one woman, Babette Holder, who directs the Fredrick Douglass foundation spoke and quoted the great man:
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass
Standing O
Pastor Corey Brooks was there and spoke as well. I talked to him afterwards and mentioned my friendship with Apostle David A. Rodgers. He at once recognized and said he knew Apostle Rogers was doing great things to create opportunity.
I have been to several of these meetings and this time it looked more like the racial profile of Illinois at large. Hispanic, White, Black, Asian... but no Native Americans.. not yet.
All in all a hopeful night. 114 former government officials were removed from office and replaced with tea party members in the last election in Illinois. It's not useful to protest, we have to take over the Republican part and remove the corrupt politicians replacing them with right thinking people.
Then this Speech ending from John Galt:
In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title.
Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.
But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.
You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:
" I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
Then one woman, Babette Holder, who directs the Fredrick Douglass foundation spoke and quoted the great man:
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass
Standing O
Pastor Corey Brooks was there and spoke as well. I talked to him afterwards and mentioned my friendship with Apostle David A. Rodgers. He at once recognized and said he knew Apostle Rogers was doing great things to create opportunity.
I have been to several of these meetings and this time it looked more like the racial profile of Illinois at large. Hispanic, White, Black, Asian... but no Native Americans.. not yet.
All in all a hopeful night. 114 former government officials were removed from office and replaced with tea party members in the last election in Illinois. It's not useful to protest, we have to take over the Republican part and remove the corrupt politicians replacing them with right thinking people.
Then this Speech ending from John Galt:
In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title.
Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.
But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.
You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:
" I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
Media completely censors march by armed black militant at SXSW festival conservative-headlines.com
If
it ever happens the casualties will be incredible. There are several
hundred thousand white racists who are itching for this fight.
EVERYWHERE. They are armed and really want to get it on.
I hope the BP's have practiced. The other end of the spectrum is ready, armed willing and able and just looking for a reason to kill. I'm going to be Swiss in all this when the shooting starts (neutral),
Course if anyone starts shooting at me or my wife.. well I too am ready..if you know what I mean. These men are fools.. but so are they on the other end. Don't either side start something you don't want finished.
I hope the BP's have practiced. The other end of the spectrum is ready, armed willing and able and just looking for a reason to kill. I'm going to be Swiss in all this when the shooting starts (neutral),
Course if anyone starts shooting at me or my wife.. well I too am ready..if you know what I mean. These men are fools.. but so are they on the other end. Don't either side start something you don't want finished.
I keep posting videos of low information people, the uninformed, the politically illiterate; they would be funny if not so sad
. I keep
asking the question, should this person be allowed to vote? The USA is
full of these people. Worse many of these illiterates are teachers. In
any case, I think this is a question that needs an answer. The
illiterate usually don't vote in off year elections, but they do vote
for President.. if they can find their precinct. We don't need another disaster... so maybe Ann has a point. You don't need to know everything, but shouldn't you at least have a clue?
Perhaps this voice from the founding of our nation will help reinforce what Coulter said:
"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson
"It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that, too, of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan." --Thomas Jefferson
"I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence." --Thomas Jefferson
"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson
"It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that, too, of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan." --Thomas Jefferson
"I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence." --Thomas Jefferson
Coulter argued that "maybe we could check to see if can name the vice president before letting them vote"
breitbart.com
REAL Barack Obama,
this video tells a great deal. Not that it
matters.. we have a year and 7 tenths of this insanity to endure.
Grasping who the man really is will help you understand why this has
been such a disaster. I think I would be right in saying that were it
not for Michelle there would be No Barack.
A
professionally shot video of Barack Obama from 1995 has recently
surfaced. Shot at the Cambridge, Mass. Public Library, the video
captures a skinny, youthful Obama promoting his then newly released
memoir, Dreams from My Father.
americanthinker.com
EXCELLENT READ!!
Too
many people succumb to the mistaken belief that being likeable comes
from natural, unteachable traits that belong only to a lucky few—the
good looking, the fiercely social, and the incredibly talented. It’s
easy to fall prey to this...
linkedin.com
Clean up your own first
Rep.
Ford can't even restore the block where his office is located. Empty
storefronts and garbage everywhere. When I hear that the justice system
is stacked against blacks I think of him. Seventeen felony counts and he
pleaded down to no time in jail. Must be nice.
State
Reps Mary Flowers Ford Works to Restore Justice & Criminal Justice
Reform Critical to Chicagoland & Illinois Communities Host
“Restoring Justice Summit”...
chicagodefender.com
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Your Tax Dollars at WORK
Thought
For The Day
is
that death doesn't get worse
every
time Congress meets."
1879
- 1935
Native
American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion
picture actor.
|
Your
Tax Dollars
At
Work
As April
15 descends upon us once again,
I
thought it would be fitting to reflect on
the
spending habits of our federal government.
There is
an old joke that goes something like this:
Even though the above story is more fable than
fact, the examples listed below are as real as a heart attack and you just might
have one when you discover how our elected officials have been spending your
money!
The National Institute of Health
spent $387,000 to study the effects of
Swedish massages on
rabbits.
Uncle Sam Looking for Romance on the
Web
$914,000 to "explore the fascinating, often contradictory
origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics,
advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective,
while looking back across time as far as the ancient
Greeks."
NIH
Spent Over $800,000 to develop material to help parents learn how to
better negotiate with their children
to eat
vegetables.
Free Luxury Gym Memberships For Federal
Bureaucrats
The federal government is all
about cutting the fat, just as long as 1) the fat comes from their waistlines
instead of their budgets, and 2) taxpayers are forced to pay for the whole
exercise.
Over
$3,000,000 on a shrimp treadmill
study to test whether sickness would impair the mobility of the
crustaceans. It was determined that sick
shrimp had less mobility and thus
were more likely to not be
able to avoid being caught.
The
researchers contend the study could "provide nuance
to our
understanding of free will" or even
"inform
treatment for gambling addiction."
If scientists wanted to see a bunch of dumb primates gamble with money that wasn't theirs, they could've just gone
to
a congressional appropriations committee
hearing.
BIRD IS THE WORD: The U.S. Air Force Office
of Scientific Research spent $300,000 on a study
that concluded the first bird on Earth
probably had black
feathers.
FELLAS, GET YOUR GUNS:
The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research spent $681,387 on a study to confirm that a man appears taller,
stronger, and manlier when holding a firearm.
THAT'S ILLOGICAL,
CAPTAIN: The Internal Revenue Service
spent $4.1 million on a lavish conference in 2010 for 2,609 of its employees in
Anaheim, California. Expenses included $50,000 for line-dancing and "Star Trek"
parody videos, $135,350 for outside speakers, $64,000 in conference "swag" for
the employees, plus free meals, cocktails, and hotel suite
upgrades.
$175,587 for a study on the link
between cocaine
and the mating habits of
quail.
GET IN THE HOLE! Did you know
that golfers who imagine that the hole is
bigger boost their confidence and accuracy?
Thanks to the National Science Foundation, Purdue University, and $350,000
in taxpayer money, now you
do.
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
launched a project in 2005 to study
the oddities of the duck penis. In
2009, they funded an additional $385,000 to continue its work. The key finding of the study was that the duck
penis has a corkscrew-like
shape.
Hoping to increase its
reach with an international audience, the state department spent $630,000 "buying fans"
for
its Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Pimping the
tax code to subsidize Nevada brothels
with $17.5 million
And last but not least, if your wife is
angry at you and you don't want her to stay that way, you might want to avoid
passing along the findings of this government study: Wives would find marriage more satisfying if
they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands,
according to government-funded research. Cost
$335,500.
|
Hay Making
Even when one works out of a home office as I do, I still need to spend some quality time with Peggy. When she seems me head down, engaged, charging as hard as I do she sometimes thinks I am angry or avoiding talking to her. I'm not but it's perception. It's hard to find balance, but when I am on a project I get very focused. I can't talk, I have to keep going. Happens every year like this. So instead of going into the city to church I sat and held her hand last night. I feel bad for her to be this busy.. yet.. much of the income we develop happens in 5 months, 3 in spring, 2 in fall. So I must be busy making hay while the sun is shining.
Monday, April 13, 2015
What DO we owe?
There is a huge underclass of poor, uneducated, unskilled and misdirected people in the USA. Some have put this number at 66% of our population. That is a horror number. They are all races, all colors, all kinds of tribes, nations and description. They are the poor. The poor that Jesus said we would always have. He was right. We do.
I hear it said that we don't owe them a living. That they are lazy. I don't agree.. but can they be even helped?
I have been thinking this over. They are needy. They DO vote to supplement their need. Poor Democrat is almost legendary.
A few are able to rise above, out of their poverty. As long as some well meaning person doesn't come and put their arm around them, connect them to every form of state and church subsidy and train them how to stay on the gravy train they may have a chance.
So what do we owe them? Education, it's free (mostly) but really badly delivered. Job training.. sure if they show up. Showing up is the problem. Vocational training? Snap cards. What do we owe them?
I am not being hard hearted, I'm asking an honest question that demands an answer. How far, how high, how deep is the largess that the American Economy should invest in the permanent underclass without encouraging even more to enter therein?
We seem to have too many people pointing at others and saying THEY GET SOME. We have too many people saying if we can put a man on the moon or spend money on wars we can do this. OK. I'm in, how much, what, how far? Not infinity.
What if there is no hope at all for these lost souls. I am including a large population of mentally ill and mentally deficient people. What of them?
We are a civilized nation... shouldn't we offer hope to those without and manage the expectations of the others?
Did JESUS feed all the hopeless and helpless when He walked the earth. Did the Disciples recorded in the New Testament?
If you can answer this.. you would do the world a big favor.
I hear it said that we don't owe them a living. That they are lazy. I don't agree.. but can they be even helped?
I have been thinking this over. They are needy. They DO vote to supplement their need. Poor Democrat is almost legendary.
A few are able to rise above, out of their poverty. As long as some well meaning person doesn't come and put their arm around them, connect them to every form of state and church subsidy and train them how to stay on the gravy train they may have a chance.
So what do we owe them? Education, it's free (mostly) but really badly delivered. Job training.. sure if they show up. Showing up is the problem. Vocational training? Snap cards. What do we owe them?
I am not being hard hearted, I'm asking an honest question that demands an answer. How far, how high, how deep is the largess that the American Economy should invest in the permanent underclass without encouraging even more to enter therein?
We seem to have too many people pointing at others and saying THEY GET SOME. We have too many people saying if we can put a man on the moon or spend money on wars we can do this. OK. I'm in, how much, what, how far? Not infinity.
What if there is no hope at all for these lost souls. I am including a large population of mentally ill and mentally deficient people. What of them?
We are a civilized nation... shouldn't we offer hope to those without and manage the expectations of the others?
Did JESUS feed all the hopeless and helpless when He walked the earth. Did the Disciples recorded in the New Testament?
If you can answer this.. you would do the world a big favor.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Listen up all you Young Whipper Snappers ~
You all know, I have been a retired for a long time. I've become very bored so decided to open a medical clinic. I put a sign up outside that said: "Old Dr. Geezer's Clinic. Get your treatment for $500, if not cured get back $1,000."
My neighbor, a 'young' doctor, was positive that this 'old geezer' didn't know beans about medicine, and thought it would be a great opportunity to get $1,000.
So he visited my clinic ... 'Old Dr. Geezer's Clinic'.
This is what transpired:
He told me, "Old Dr. Geezer, I have lost all taste in my mouth." can you please help me ??
I called to my nurse, "will you please bring medicine from box 22 and put 3 drops in his mouth."
Apparently he didn't, like it because he said, "Aaagh !! -- "This is Gasoline!"
I told the young doctor, "Congratulations! You've got your taste back. That will be $500."
I guess he was annoyed because he came back after a couple of days, probably figuring he could recover his money.
He told me, "Dr. Geezer, I have lost my memory, I cannot remember anything."
Again, I called to my nurse, "Nurse, please bring medicine from box 22 and put 3 drops in the doctor's mouth."
He reacted by saying , "Oh no you don't -- that is Gasoline!
I responded, "Congratulations! You've got your memory back. That will be $500."
After now having lost $1000 he left angrily, but I was surprised because he returned for treatment after several more days.
This time he said, "My eyesight has become weak .... I can hardly see !!!!"
I felt a little guilty that I had taken too much money from this young doctor, so I said, "Well, I don't have any medicine for that, " Here's your $1000 back."
He glanced at it and said, "But this is only $500..."
"Congratulations! You got your vision back !!! That will be $500."
I've taken my sign down and closed the clinic, but remember the Moral of my story:
Just because you're "Young" doesn't mean that you can outsmart this Wise Old Geezer" !!!!
Saturday, April 11, 2015
The Danger of Misinformation, Myths, Conspiracies and Outright Lies
Thursday Night in Northern IL we had a real serious tornado come thru the area. Friday I visited as close as I could get to the damage. It's really bad. Two women died in the storm.
So, I decided to stop in a gathering place to see what the locals had to say about it. I heard one fellow loudly proclaim that there were 17 people still missing, unaccounted for, but that it was all a cover up.
Why? he didn't say.
I listened for a short bit and left the building.
This used to be conversation at the bar, coffee shop, water cooler or gossip fests. Now all that has changed. The Internet has now become the conduit of such things. A lie travels round the world while truth has yet to get his pants on. That was Churchill. It's still true.
It's not a wise stupid, left right, black white, male female, rich poor, liberal conservative, Christian Muslim, Believer Unbeliever, educated ignorant issue.. IT is a gullibility issue connected with a desire to appear in the know. If you believe you have inside information on something, or the straight story, or see the lies behind a story you can propagate this and cause all kinds of upset and fear in seconds with the click of a mouse.
I see this on Facebook. I see it in news feeds. I see it in chat rooms. For every blatant lie and accusation there is an equal and opposite lie fabricated out of whole cloth.
It WOULD be innocent enough, except that it divides people. People love sensational over truth. Pontius Pilate asked Jesus "What is Truth?". That question still rings 2 millenia later.
Here's the issue as I see it. Christians should be truth carriers. We should be able to dispel rumor, lie, conspiracy and misinformation in a world fraught with lies. That's what Jesus said would happen, "For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." John 18:37
I don't hear much truth from many platforms today. I hear speculation, opinion, conspiracy, theory, misinformation and yes LIES. IF we cannot do better in our Churches and religious gatherings than deal in the devil's soup, the father of lies, then God cannot and will not allow that to long prosper.
I appeal, beg and hope that people will come to truth about what is happening all around us and stop using lies to divide. That is happening and it's killing people and it's killing any hope for the world.. that Jesus came for, lived for and died for.
STOP THE DECEPTION
So, I decided to stop in a gathering place to see what the locals had to say about it. I heard one fellow loudly proclaim that there were 17 people still missing, unaccounted for, but that it was all a cover up.
Why? he didn't say.
I listened for a short bit and left the building.
This used to be conversation at the bar, coffee shop, water cooler or gossip fests. Now all that has changed. The Internet has now become the conduit of such things. A lie travels round the world while truth has yet to get his pants on. That was Churchill. It's still true.
It's not a wise stupid, left right, black white, male female, rich poor, liberal conservative, Christian Muslim, Believer Unbeliever, educated ignorant issue.. IT is a gullibility issue connected with a desire to appear in the know. If you believe you have inside information on something, or the straight story, or see the lies behind a story you can propagate this and cause all kinds of upset and fear in seconds with the click of a mouse.
I see this on Facebook. I see it in news feeds. I see it in chat rooms. For every blatant lie and accusation there is an equal and opposite lie fabricated out of whole cloth.
It WOULD be innocent enough, except that it divides people. People love sensational over truth. Pontius Pilate asked Jesus "What is Truth?". That question still rings 2 millenia later.
Here's the issue as I see it. Christians should be truth carriers. We should be able to dispel rumor, lie, conspiracy and misinformation in a world fraught with lies. That's what Jesus said would happen, "For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." John 18:37
I don't hear much truth from many platforms today. I hear speculation, opinion, conspiracy, theory, misinformation and yes LIES. IF we cannot do better in our Churches and religious gatherings than deal in the devil's soup, the father of lies, then God cannot and will not allow that to long prosper.
I appeal, beg and hope that people will come to truth about what is happening all around us and stop using lies to divide. That is happening and it's killing people and it's killing any hope for the world.. that Jesus came for, lived for and died for.
STOP THE DECEPTION
Thursday, April 09, 2015
A German pastor and theologian was executed seventy years ago today for opposing Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.
Hitler personally ordered that Dietrich Bonhoeffer be hung in the nude with thin wire at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp on April 9, 1945, just days before the end of World War II.
“I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer...kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God,” according to Eberhard Bethe, who would later become Bonhoeffer's biographer.
Bethe cited the camp doctor's written testimony, who is said to have witnessed Bonhoeffer's execution.
“I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God,” Bethe wrote of the camp doctor who saw the execution.
But other eyewitnesses dispute the camp doctor’s account. They asserted that Hermann Fischer-Hüllstrung may have wished to minimize the suffering of Bonhoeffer and the sufferings of six other condemned men who were hung seventy years ago today to reduce his own culpability in their executions, according to Thomas O.H. Kaiser's 2014 book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
It is believed that Bonhoeffer suffered longer than a few seconds. To prolong the tortuous agony of death, Nazi executioners were known to have revived political prisoners who almost die, only to asphyxiate them yet again. The execution could had lasted as long as six hours, according to a former Flossenbürg Concentration Camp prisoner.
“The physical details of Bonhoeffer's death may have been much more difficult than we earlier had imagined,” wrote Craig J. Slane's 2004 Bonhoeffer as Martyr: Social Responsibility and Modern Christian Commitment book.
Bonhoeffer’s execution occurred just two weeks before American soldiers liberated Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, three weeks before the Soviets captured Berlin, and a month before Nazi Germany surrendered to the allies, according to Robert W. Hacker's unpublished manuscript.
It is interesting to note that Bonhoeffer was influenced by the black church. He went to the United States in 1930 as a postgraduate student and teaching fellow at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary. During this time Bonhoeffer attended Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church and taught Sunday School there. It is also interesting to note that the German Bonhoeffer fell in love with African-American spirituals, born from the turmoils, sorrows, challenges and inspirations of a minority people enslaved and oppressed by the majority.
After returning to Germany it was he would be oppressed by the majority. For ten years prior to his execution, Bonhoeffer spoke, wrote, taught, preached and courageously fought -- along with others in the German resistance movement -- Nazism, Hitlerism, totalitarianism and anti-Semitism. He criticized Germany's church, her religious leaders, as well as Christians who worshipped the Führer, rather than worship Jesus Christ the LORD.
The Bonhoeffer lesson learned is this: There's a danger when Christians hero worship political figures. So many German Christians in the 1930s were seduced by Hitler. It was Hitler who claimed to be a Christian. Bonhoeffer criticized them, German clergy and parishioners.
So many American Christians were -- and still are -- seduced by American political leaders, such as President Barack Obama. He says he's also a Christian, yet he is a proponent of late-term abortions, has increased the funding of abortion, believes in the equality of gays as a protected class and is a proponent of same-sex marriages. Christians are so willing to believe what leaders say rather than watch what they do.
Biblical purists – and I’m one of them -- would challenge Bonhoeffer for his ecumenical beliefs that go against scripture, and question his stance on social justice as it relates to forcibly taking from the have’s and giving to the have not’s. Yet Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an iconic Christian martyr. I afford him the respect on this – the seventieth anniversary of his brutal execution.
Let us remember the martyrs who died before Bonhoeffer and remember those who are being martyred for their faith now, from the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians beheaded in February to the 147 Christian students gunned down in Kenya last week.
Let us also pray for the millions of others who are persecuted for their faith, such as Asia Bibi, sentenced to death in Pakistan and Saeed Abedini, sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran.
Notice Anything?
- The top 10 states ranking in economic outlook for 2015 were as follows:
- 1. Utah - Republican Governor Gary Herbert
- 2. North Dakota - Republican Governor Jack Dalrymple
- 3. Indiana - Republican Governor Mike Pence
- 4. North Carolina - Republican Governor Pat McCrory
- 5. Arizona - Republican Governor Doug Ducey
- 6. Idaho - Republican Governor Butch Otter
- 7. Georgia - Republican Governor Nathan Deal
- 8. Wyoming - Republican Governor Matt Mead
- 9. South Dakota - Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard
- 10. Nevada - Republican Governor Brian Sandoval
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- 40. Illinois - Republican Governor Bruce Rauner
- 41. Pennsylvania - Democrat Governor Tom Wolf
- 42. Maine - Republican Governor
- 43. Montana - Democrat Governor Steve Bullock
- 44. California - Democrat Governor Jerry Brown
- 45. Oregon - Democrat Governor Kate Brown
- 46. New Jersey - Republican Governor Chris Christie
- 47. Connecticut - Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy
- 48. Minnesota - Democrat Governor Mark Dayton
- 49. Vermont - Democrat Governor Peter Shumlin
- 50. New York - Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo
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