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"The Church Report" and "Page Two" contain copyrighted material, the use of which may not always have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, and as such this constitutes 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Act. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Mar. 1st, 2010 @ 01:00 am
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| » From a Dr at Fort Hood |
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Dear Family and Friends,
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for us and the Fort Hood community, a community that has been deeply wounded both physically and spiritually. The past day and a half have been very challenging. I write to share my somewhat-insider perspective on the events. Please know these have been humbling hours for me and I write not to glamorize myself or this tragedy. I hope my personal experience is helpful as you all are processing the events.
At about 1:40 pm local time on Thursday, I was informed that a mass casualty situation was evolving at Fort Hood. At that time I was working in a trailer adjacent to the hospital. The only information I had was that one or more gunmen had opened fire at an SRP site, a type of processing facility where many soldiers pass through daily. Knowing the high density of soldiers at the SRP site, I braced myself mentally for the possibility of a large number of casualties. Upon exiting the trailer, I immediately heard sirens and saw several ambulances driving up to the ER bays, dropping off casualties, and turning right around to pick up more. I ran up to the hospital.
The hospital has pre-designated areas for personnel to report to in the case of a mass casualty/disaster situation. Ours (family medicine docs) is the family medicine clinic, located on the first floor of the hospital, about 100 feet from the ER. All casualties were going initially to the ER, where they were quickly triaged and dispersed from there to the operating room, our clinic, or elsewhere. There were already casualties being treated when I got to the clinic. We broke up quickly into teams, with one or more docs and nurses with each patient. All the patients had bullet wounds – not a common site in a family medicine clinic. Fortunately or not, several of the staff had extensive trauma experience from prior deployments. Initially there was no morphine available, so the halls were filed with shouts of pain as the patients were examined.
My first patient was a young second lieutenant. Her uniform trousers were cut almost completely off, a standard practice during trauma evaluation, designed to avoid missing any injuries. A bullet hole can be pretty small, and one injury can easily distract from others. The less immediately obvious wound can become deadly if not appreciated on the initial assessment. I had never treated a patient with a gunshot wound before Thursday. Thankfully the Army has sent us all to Ft. Sam Houston to an ATLS (Advanced Trauma Life Support) course, a course designed for exactly this setting, where a non-trauma-surgeon is evaluating and stabilizing a trauma victim.
When we asked the 2LT what happened and she was able to tell a sensible story in complete sentences, I knew that for the moment her airway, breathing, and circulation were intact. She had a tourniquet and some bright red blood on her left thigh, and said the shooter had looked her in the eye, then shot her in the leg. "He could have shot me in the head, but he didn't." I left the tourniquet in place, since it seemed to be working fine. I swept my arm under her body, looking for any blood when I pulled it out. Her vital signs were good. Her heart and lungs sounded good. She had IV access with fluids running. She had no other pain other than her leg where she was wounded, and she had good pulses and sensation in that foot, all encouraging signs. We gave her some morphine, removed the dressing and saw an entry wound, but no exit wound was visible. We got ready to take her to get x-rays.
Then, here comes the cavalry – the orthopedic surgeons arrived!
They quickly examined the 2LT, agreed she was stable, and moved on. X-rays showed a bullet near her hip with no fractures. Much later in the night, after reviewing the patient's x-rays with ortho again, she was released to go home with instructions to come back to our clinic in the morning for a re-check. A couple ER physicians came through to offer their help; not satisfied at saving lives in their own area, they offered their expertise to us as well. We were glad to have it.
We moved from patient to patient, making sure everyone was accounted for and getting the appropriate treatment and that their loved ones were contacted, to know that they were safe. Soldiers barely out of high school were dying in the ER. A new, young mother died on the operating room table. A family medicine intern with a baby of her own was there. There was no time to pause or grieve.
Based on the numbers you have heard, the vast majority of victims were treated at our hospital, but the flow of patients eventually abated. I was hearing little bits and pieces of what had happened; there were conflicting reports on the number of soldiers killed, the number of shooters, and the number of locations. A patient told me the shooter was in uniform, a Major, a field-grade officer, and he had called everyone to attention before opening fire.
Later we heard the unthinkable, that this was indeed an Army officer, but worse, a physician, entrusted to heal but causing great harm instead. This man had on occasion worked at the hospital, covering on weekends. Sometimes the family medicine inpatient service admits patients that have intentionally overdosed or are drunk and saying they want to harm themselves. Once these types of patients are cleared medically, they need psychiatric evaluation to determine if they are safe to go home; one of the family medicine staff physicians, Dr. K., had consulted this psychiatrist (the shooter) on such a patient only 2 weeks ago.
When she heard who the shooter was, Dr. K. was besieged with guilt, saying that she knew he wasn't quite right, that he seemed depressed, that she should have done something. She broke down in sobs in the middle of the clinic. A couple of us sat her down in a clinic room with her and listened. My mentor, a female Major and West Point grad, hugged her and let her cry. It was probably the first hug she'd had since her husband deployed to Iraq in September. They got 10 days notice.
I have never been so proud of our clinic. There wasn't a nurse in that clinic that wouldn't run to the other side of the hospital to get something if a patient needed it. The cleaning lady was unreal - I thought some of that blood would never come off, and by the time she was done (quickly!) I would've eaten dinner of those tables.
Things were letting up for us in our area, so we went to other floors of the hospital, helping do things like write admission orders for patients so their medications could be brought up from the pharmacy. The general surgeons were doing yeoman's work. They were cutting open chests and bellies and battling their mightiest to repair the damage done by the bullets. They mostly succeeded, doing the work of specialists in cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, simply because they were it, they were our best hope.
My fellow residents and I did what we could to help; most of us left around 9 pm simply because there wasn't anything else to do. I was so proud of those guys and their families; they would have stayed the whole night if there was a way they could help out. A good friend of mine stayed to carry the Internal Medicine on-call pager; I went home to Katie, then went back around 2 am to take the pager back from him. No matter, no one was going to the ER, so there were no admissions. I think they thought, "You know, I'm not shot, I think I'll be okay." I did what I could to help out in the ICU.
Another patient died in the time I was at home, a clean-cut 21-year-old. He had extensive chest and abdominal wounds, the worst to his aorta. When he arrived to the ICU from the OR, he had what surgeon's call the "unhappy triad" of hypothermia (his rectal temperature was 88 degrees), acidosis, and coagulopathy. It is rare to survive after reaching that point. He got 50 units of blood. Hospital workers were donating their blood. He was getting 4 IV medications to raise his blood pressure. He went back to the OR. He had cardiopulmonary arrest, was successfully resuscitated once, but not the second time. They gave him everything they had, even when it was probably futile, because what else can you do but everything? This is a kid who will never know what it's like to fall in love and marry, to have children, to grow old. There is no tomorrow for him.
There was another young 20-year-old private with a bullet in his chest, only it inexplicably stopped at his sternum, and one in his back, only it never made it past the muscle. When I saw him up on the wards, all he was worried about was when he could go downstairs and smoke. A little walking miracle with a pack-a-day habit, no clue how lucky he was and, for the moment, some extra metal in him.
Friday, there were a lot of generals at our little hospital. They visited every single injured soldier. George W. Bush, the former president, visited the hospital in the evening. Say what you will about his politics, but that man was here, and that counts for a lot in my book.
Keep everyone at Fort Hood in your prayers, especially the families of the fallen. There are not words to describe how sad and tragic this is. As a Christian, it is difficult to understand and hard to accept. Abstract ideas about the effects of sin on creation, the depravity of mankind as a whole, and the presence of evil forces in the world give way quickly to the concrete reality that mothers will bury their sons and daughters in the days ahead, and everyone knows that is not the way it's supposd to be. If I can offer you hope in the midst of this darkness, it is that I have seen all around me in these troubling hours people realizing their potential to do great good and to come together in unity to sacrifice for others. We as Christians must always remember that our God, not willing to allow us to suffer alone, took the form of a man and suffers along with us. When His friend Lazarus died, John 11:35 tells us that, like us, Jesus wept, and I know He still weeps along with us tonight.
Vol 6, No 61
Nov. 13th, 2009 @ 04:00 pm
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| » Opportunities in crisis |
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Nov. 3rd, 2009 @ 05:00 pm
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| » Going through the motions |
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>
Nov. 2nd, 2009 @ 09:21 pm
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| » Grace Like Rain |
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Nov. 1st, 2009 @ 05:23 pm
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| » My Savior My God |
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Nov. 1st, 2009 @ 03:25 pm
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| » EMP attack |
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Nuclear proliferation raises the specter of EMP attack
by John Keller
A blast of electromagnetic pulse (EMP), has the potential to bring down power grids, bring banking to a halt, and stop transportation in its tracks. Interest in EMP protection is growing, and companies are starting to step up to offer alternatives to shield critical infrastructure from these damaging rays.
What if an enemy of the United States could shut off the lights, computers, telephone networks, bank ATMs, factories, motor vehicles, and electric appliances in a large chunk of the continental U.S. with one surprise terrorist attack?
That could happen if a nation or terrorist group were able to acquire a nuclear-tipped missile, launch it from an apparently harmless freighter off the U.S. East Coast, and detonate it at an altitude as low as 80,000 feet over, say, Norfolk, Va. If this were to occur, there is a good chance the electric power grids would go down in an arc as large as from the Virginia/North Carolina border to Baltimore, and inland as far as Richmond.
That area would include the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., as well as major military installations in the Hampton Roads area, such as Norfolk Naval Base, Fort Eustis, Langley Air Force Base, and Oceana Naval Air Station. Explode a nuclear device even higher, and that arc extends from Boston to Savannah, Ga. along the coast, and inland as far as Chicago.
"The higher up in altitude, the worse it is," says Bill Magee, senior program manager for Transtector Systems, a manufacturer of electronic surge-protection products in Hayden, Idaho. "Explode a nuclear weapon 200 miles above Kansas City, and you can kiss off the power grids in all the United States. We're back to being hunter/gatherers."
Such a scenario is not outside the realm of possibility. There was a time not so long ago when only the United States and Russia (as well as Russia's predecessor, the Soviet Union) possessed nuclear weapons. The United Kingdom, France, and China joined the nuclear club in the 1950s and 1960s, and since then India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and South Africa have developed nuclear weapons.
Iran is suspected of being close to developing a nuclear weapon. Of all the nations that have developed atomic warheads, only South Africa reportedly has destroyed its arsenal, but the know-how still exists in that country.
Iran and North Korea are declared enemies of the United States, and have missile systems of their own capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Both also have demonstrated their support for known terrorist groups like al-Qaida. Pakistan is not the most stable of states, and its long-term friendship with the U.S. remains a question mark. Suffice it to say that the threat of surprise nuclear attack on the United States only grows with time.
Electromagnetic pulse (EMP)
The culprit in these nightmare scenarios is called electromagnetic pulse – better known as EMP – which in addition to blast, intense heat, and radioactive fallout comprises the overall effect of an atomic explosion.
EMP is electromagnetic radiation typically from a nuclear explosion or an intensely fluctuating magnetic field that can infiltrate unshielded electrical and electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. Nuclear-caused EMP has three parts – E1, E2, and E3.
The E1 pulse is very fast, is high in frequency, and generates very high voltages. This E1 component of EMP can destroy or damage computers and communications equipment – even if components are not plugged in to an electrical source or antenna – because its high-frequency energy radiates across very short wires, such as those on printed circuit boards and small electronic components. The short duration of E1, measured in nanoseconds, is too fast for conventional lightning surge protectors to be effective.
E2 EMP energy, measured in tens or hundreds of microseconds, is akin to the energy from lightning, and is considered to be the easiest component of EMP to protect against. Lightning-protection components are common in electrical and electronic equipment, and can provide adequate protection from E2 EMP energy.
The E3 part of nuclear EMP is considered to be the most damaging because it lasts from tens to hundreds of seconds, travels long distances along power lines, pipes, and other long conductors, and can burn out almost everything connected to the power grid – including computers and data networks, telecommunications equipment, radios, televisions, and home appliances like electric range stoves and washing machines. E3 EMP energy also can destroy large power grid transformers that can be difficult and take a long time to replace; the E3 component of EMP that can take down the electric power grids by causing damage that could take six to 18 months to repair.
Aftermath of EMP attack
Consider that, a worst case – a year without electricity all over North America. Some of the folks in the Northeast got a fleeting taste of how that might feel when an ice storm in early December caused widespread power outages that lasted a week or more. Still, the suffering of even those who endured the longest power outages before Christmas was virtually nothing compared to the human devastation that a sizable EMP attack could cause.
Fuel, food, and drinking water would disappear quickly – especially in the large cities; transportation and manufacturing would grind to a halt; cell phones and land lines would fall silent; little, if any, information would be available as the Internet would disappear, radio and TV stations would stop broadcasting, and newspapers and magazines would quit publishing; stores, restaurants, and hotels would be padlocked; hospitals would close; financial transactions would cease; the mail would stop; and companies would suspend business because their lights and machinery would not operate, and their employees could not get to work.
As weeks turned to months without electric power, there would be few jobs and fewer paychecks. What good is a paycheck, anyway, if all the banks and stores are closed, and there is no place to cash it?
For that matter, what good is cash if there's no place to spend it? Hearty souls would resort to a centuries-old economy based on barter – assuming they had things of value to trade. Many – particularly in densely populated areas – would try to move to where things weren't so bad, but they would not know where to go because of the information blackout. They might simply wander aimlessly for as long as they could.
Money, credit cards, even jewelry would be largely useless. On the other hand, fresh water, firewood, canned goods, meat and eggs, good knives, hand tools and lumber, medical supplies, blankets and warm clothing, sturdy shoes, fabric, needles and thread, candles, lamp oil, guns, and ammunition would be most highly valued. These commodities, along with coffee, liquor, and tobacco, likely would become the currency of the day.
By this time most of the fuel would be gone, and most cars and trucks would be broken down from the EMP attack, so travel would be slow and difficult. Some might make their way to airports and train stations, only to find them closed and abandoned. People would have to stay where they were, make the best of what they had. Desperation, anguish, suffering, and despair would become common. Hearts would harden as families, groups, and individuals looked out only for their own.
With no cars on the roads, no planes in the air, no factories running, no TV, stereos, or iPods -- and as the last working generator ran out of fuel and coughed to a stop – a profound silence would descend over the land that humans have not experienced in nearly 200 years. Then people would listen, intently, day and night, for any sound of encouragement or threat – shouting, an engine, a gunshot, hammers and saws, running water, someone playing an instrument. Mostly it would be quiet.
By the time months without electricity turned into a year, most of the very young and the very old would have perished. Many others would be gone, too. "With no power for a year, about 70 percent of the U.S. population dies from starvation," says Charles Manto, president of Instant Access Networks (IAN) LLC, in Frostburg, Md., which provides systems and consulting to protect critical military and civil infrastructure from the effects of EMP.
In the United States one year after a serious and continent-wide EMP attack, all vestiges of the former high-tech economy would be only a memory; the population would be only one-third its former size; political institutions would be compromised, if not destroyed. Basically you're looking at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on a national scale.
Bear in mind that this scenario, dire though it sounds, only considers the disintegration of the electric power grid. What if pockets of the population somehow could generate their own electricity for the long term? It's possible, especially with the advent of what people are calling "micro grids," which describe power generation on a municipal scale with renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.
Islands of available electricity in a sea of devastation might mean that some folks could continue cooking, taking hot showers, conventionally heating their homes, and using electric lights. In those cases, however, procuring food would still be problematic; fuel availability would be spotty, at best; jobs would be scarce; communications would be sporadic; and transportation still a problem. Other areas of society would be similarly affected.
Congress formed the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack – better known as the U.S. EMP Commission – which published a detailed study last April. In addition to the electric power grid, the commission's report considers the effects of EMP attack on telecommunications, banking and finance, petroleum and natural gas, transportation, food and water infrastructure, emergency services, space systems, government, the psychological influences on the population. The commission's report is available online at www.empcommission.org.
Without a functioning nationwide power grid, telecommunications would be hobbled, at best. Cell phone towers largely would not be able to function, network hubs might not be able to connect to one another. Most likely only islands of communications could be established, and of questionable reliability. An unreliable national telecommunications system also would take a toll on banking, transportation, energy, and public services.
Without a nationwide voice and data telecommunications systems, the banking industry would be forced to fundamentally restructure and the change the way banks do business. They would have to rely on paper transactions and may not have access to computer databases of deposits and withdrawals.
The impact on SCADA
Other public infrastructure like oil and gas, transportation, food, and water distribution also would be severely affected. The core reason for this would be EMP damage or destruction to electronic devices called supervisory control and data acquisition systems, otherwise known as SCADA.
These devices, along with digital control systems (DCSs) and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) comprise much of the computer control of critical infrastructure such as nuclear and other power generation, food processing, oil and natural gas pipelines, municipal water distribution, oil refineries, subways and rail transit, traffic signaling, and banking.
EMP has the potential to disrupt or destroy automatic digital control systems in critical industries like these. Worse yet, much of this critical infrastructure is interrelated such that a problem in one or more can have a ripple effect on others.
Say EMP damage disrupts telecommunications networks or power grids. "The technicians who show up, through the transportation infrastructure, to make repairs would not do so unless they have been sustained by the food and water delivery systems," points out the most recent report of the U.S. EMP Commission.
In addition, loss of reliable digital control can compromise important safety systems and backups in oil refineries, nuclear power plants, oil pipelines, and other critical infrastructure, which in turn can cause even more extensive damage. A computer-controlled valve in a crucial section of an oil refinery, for example, could cause an explosion by failing to open or close at a given moment.
In the case of a refinery explosion, moreover, might automatic alarms damaged by EMP alert fire and rescue personnel? Might firefighters even be able to receive emergency calls if EMP had damaged the telecommunications and data networks? Might firefighters even be able to make it to work if EMP had damaged their cars or caused traffic gridlock because of malfunctioning traffic signaling? You get the idea.
What about the military?
The influence of EMP on critical military systems has been a consideration since the 1950s shortly after the atomic age began. These kinds of systems, such as warships and submarines, main battle tanks and other armored vehicles, jet fighters and military transport aircraft, as well as strategic weapons and communications systems, must meet the requirements of a variety of military and industry standards for EMP shielding and protection. These standards include MIL-STD-285, MIL-STD-188-125, MIL-STD-461E, MIL-STD-464, ANSI C95.3-1979, IEEE C63.14, and IEEE 299-1991.
In general, military and aerospace systems – especially those designed to go into combat or take part in strategic nuclear operations -- are protected by shielding, surge protectors, hardened cabling, and other measures that systems designers can take to cancel or mitigate the effects of EMP.
The rising level in the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and subsystems in military and aerospace applications over the past 15 years, however, is reason for military leaders to keep a close eye on the systems they deem to be crucial for continuing defense operations, and to ensure that programs for system testing are up to date.
Military forces also depend heavily on the commercial power grid for long-term operations, and a power grid failure could cause military problems of unknown severity.
Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, civil and military officials have become relatively lax in their attention to EMP and EMP issues of influence to all systems. Moreover, in times of intense military operations, such as the current global war on terror, commercial-grade devices like personal global positioning system (GPS) navigation devices make their way to front-line troops.
It is an open question if these kinds of systems would fail at critical times in the wake of an EMP attack in the U.S. or overseas. Nevertheless, interest is increasing in EMP and EMP protection for military as well as civil infrastructure. "Over the last 10 years we have seen requests for EMP protection go up substantially," says Scott Timms, president of EMP filtering specialist Captor Corp. in Tipp City, Ohio. "The U.S. recognizes that other countries have nuclear bomb capability, and we are hardening our systems to circumvent that."
How to protect against EMP
Several companies in the U.S. and in Europe specialize in EMP protection for military and civil electronic systems. Instant Access Networks (IAN) LLC in Frostburg, Md., for example, is an EMP consultant and is designing portable shielded shelters for military, government, and civil use to protect crucial infrastructure like computers, data networks, and communications systems.
"Our goal is to create a mass-producible means to protect 10 percent of the critical infrastructure, the bulk of which is in local government or private hands," says IAN President Charles Manto. "We are producing mass-producible modules for racks of computers, which are shielded on six sides, with super-surge protectors, and that fit in cargo containers."
These portable rooms, which offer shielding not only on the walls, but also in cables, connectors, and antennas with electrical paths into and out of the shelters, are for critical municipal infrastructure like telecommunications and emergency communications. "We could place these shelters for emergency centers in rural areas outside of cities," Manto explains. These EMP-hardened portable rooms most likely would have grid-independent power from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
Engineers at Captor Corp. specialize in electronic transient protection modules primarily for EMP protection of military applications, Timms says. Captor's transient protection modules integrate a transient device in addition to an electromagnetic interference (EMI) filter to reduce transient pulse. Also included are traditional filtering means, as well as Zener diodes
"Our customers come to us and say 'we have this system, and need to pass a mil-spec as far as EMP and EMI are concerned,'" Timms explains. "You have to put something on every line that penetrates that box, and protect every pin; everything that is exposed has to be shielded.
"Sometimes it is relatively simple, and other time it can be very costly," Timms continues. "People might be able to get by with a transient device on each pin, and sometimes they may need additional filtering. We see a whole spectrum on this. It depends on what is in the box, and how sensitive it is to those EMP pulses."
Generally speaking, it costs substantially more to retrofit an existing system with EMP protection than it is to design systems with EMP protection built in from the beginning, experts say.
"EMP protection does not just involve putting on a surge protector; it's a total systems approach," explains Bill Magee, senior program manager for Transtector Systems in Hayden, Idaho, which specializes in custom transient protection filters for ground based applications, and for AC power systems using electricity from the grid. The company is primarily involved in military applications.
"It depends on the environment you deploy in, with Faraday shielding, and cables that have to be hardened coming in and going out" Magee continues. "When you start adding all multipliers, you can add a lot of cost – unless you are designing from the beginning. Source
Oct. 31st, 2009 @ 01:00 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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Oct. 21st, 2009 @ 03:00 pm
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| » It is going to be a rocky road |
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By Chuck Baldwin September 22, 2009 NewsWithViews.com
Let's face it: most Americans live in a world of false security. This is somewhat understandable, given the fact that the majority of the U.S. population was born after 1945. Few remember the dangers and hardships of World War II; fewer still remember the Great Depression. Few Americans know what it's like to not have some sort of “supercenter” nearby with shelves stocked with every kind of food imaginable, twenty-four hours a day. Few know what life was like before there were restaurants of all sizes and types on virtually every street corner in America. And only a handful remembers when most roads were unpaved, or when sports were truly a pastime and not a megabuck obsession.
Modern living within the world's only “superpower” has created a giant unsuspecting, soft, lackadaisical, and lethargic society. We expect the government to keep our streets safe, our roads paved, our stores stocked, our jobs secure, and our enemies at bay. However, in the desire to make government the panacea for all our problems, we have sold not only our independence, but also our virtue.
Where the federal government was contracted (via the U.S. Constitution) to accept limited power for the overall good of both states and people, it has become a monster of gargantuan proportions, claiming authority over virtually every liberty and right known to man. And in the process, it decided it didn't need God, either.
It is no hyperbole to say that the U.S. federal government has been on a “Ban God” bandwagon for the past 50 years. Whether it kicks prayer and Bible reading out of school, bars military chaplains from praying in Jesus' name, burns Bibles in Iraq, removes state supreme court chief justices from their positions for posting the Ten Commandments, or threatens high school principals with jail for asking the blessing, the federal government has invoked the judgment of Heaven upon our country as surely as did Old Testament Israel.
Although the comfortable, sports-crazed, TV addicts probably aren't paying attention, this country is on the verge of an implosion like you cannot believe. For anyone who cares to notice, the signs are everywhere.
First of all, Israel and Iran are on the verge of war. And right now, I'm not concentrating on the "why" or "who's right or wrong" of the equation. I'm simply telling you, war between Israel and Iran could break out at any time. And when it does, the chances that it will not become nuclear and not become global are miniscule. Yes, I am saying it: the prospects for nuclear war have never been greater. The CBS-canceled TV show, JERICHO, could become a reality in these United States in the very near future. (I strongly urge readers to purchase both seasons of JERICHO and watch them, because this could be our future.)
Secondly, America is on the verge of total financial collapse. By the end of this year, America's budget deficit will stand at around $2 trillion. The debt gap is many trillions more than that. But the nail in the coffin for America's fiscal health will be the decision by China to dump the U.S. dollar. Ladies and gentlemen, this will be the death knell for our financial stability (and a painful lesson in sowing and reaping).
It is estimated that China owns around one-third of all U.S. debt. If and when China dumps the U.S. dollar there would be nothing left to stabilize it, and Weimar Republic/Zimbabwe-style inflation will ensue. America will be thrust into financial chaos. (If one doubts that China is planning to dump the dollar, consider that China is currently purchasing and stockpiling gold at an unprecedented level. This is why gold has suddenly surged to over $1,000 per ounce and why it will continue to rise.)
Third, the paranoia regarding the Swine Flu being demonstrated by both government and media spokesmen begs a giant push for some type of "government solution." If they keep hyping this "pandemic," mass hysteria and fear (created by the government and its lackeys in the media) will result. This would, no doubt, necessitate some form of forced vaccination, quarantine (maybe this is what all those internment camps will be used for), and martial law.
Exactly how and when all of the above will actually materialize is yet to be seen. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that within the next few months, the world that we know today is going to vanish. And most Americans are totally unprepared for what's coming.
If you are able to get out of debt, do it. If you need to scale down your lifestyle in order to be better prepared for difficult days, do it. If you don't have guns and ammo, buy them. If you have not prepared some sort of preserved food pantry, do it. If you don't have some kind of survival plan in place for you and your family, get one. If you are not physically fit, get in shape. If you are able to move to a more secure, out-of-harm's-way location, do it. (During any kind of financial or societal meltdown, urban areas will quickly turn into war zones. Can anyone say, "New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina"?) In other words, get your nose out of the boob tube, get your bottom off the easy chair, and get busy.
Am I worried or discouraged? Absolutely not! (But I am preparing.) The potential good that may result from all of the above is that perhaps God will protect and raise up a remnant of people who would be willing to rebuild a place where Natural Law is respected, constitutional government is revered, and where a ubiquitous, loathsome, overbearing federal government is far, far away. You know, like America's Founding Fathers did 233 years ago.
In the meantime, get ready. It's going to be a rocky road. Source
Oct. 15th, 2009 @ 10:10 pm
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| » 2010 |
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Oct. 14th, 2009 @ 10:18 pm
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| » Love Reproving |
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Arthur Pink
November, 1943
Some time ago we received the following inquiry from one of our readers, "Do you think it possible to be too critical of Christians (?) nowadays? The reason I put a question mark after 'Christians' was because I wondered if some of them really are born again of the Spirit. We cannot always tell, can we? Are we not, at all events, to speak the Truth in love? This is a very practical question with us just now."
It is a practical question for all who (by grace) really desire to conduct themselves according to the revealed will of God and follow the example which Christ Himself has left us. The wording of these questions indicates that the inquirer does not have in mind the matter of how I should act toward one who has wronged me personally—but rather, what is my duty unto professing Christians with whom I come into contact and whose ways grieve me and whose walk causes me to doubt their regeneration? As others of our readers may be exercised upon these points, we will here amplify the answer given to our friend.
First, let us turn the light of Holy Writ upon this matter, "Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly—so you will not share in his guilt" (Lev 19:17). There are three things which call for our prayerful response.
First, this is a plain precept bidding us to rebuke an erring brother—it is not optional but obligatory; this duty must not be omitted under any pretense. God requires His people to uphold the demands of righteousness. He will not wink at sin—nor must they.
Second, God would also correct our innate self-centeredness. We are so occupied with our own well-being as to be in danger of neglecting the good of our neighbor. This verse plainly denotes it is a lack of love for others—if we see them commit sin with indifference, and make no effort to bring them to repentance and forsake their evil course. A mild, plain, and seasonable reproof is the best way of expressing our solicitude for an erring brother, though it is distasteful to us and unwelcome to him.
Third,"So you will not share in his guilt" means that you become not an accessory of the act. Silence gives consent—if I don't rebuke him—I condone evil and share the guilt.
The basic issue which is here raised narrows down to this—what is it for a Christian to "act in love" towards others, particularly the wayward?
Few words have been used more inaccurately and loosely in recent years, than has "love." With a great many people it is but a synonym for moral laxity, weakness of character, a taking the line of least resistance, a quiet tolerating of what is felt to be wrong. Multitudes of parents have supposed they were treating their children "lovingly" when they overlooked their folly, make excuses for their wildness, and refused to discipline them for disobedience. They have prided themselves on being "kinder" toward their children than the "stern measures" which were meted out to themselves in their own youth. But it is laxity—and not love—which allows a child to have its own way. "He who spares his rod hates his son—but he who loves him, chastens him early" (Prov 13:24). Let those of our readers who have young children ponder Proverbs 19:18; 22:15; 23:13, 14; 29:15, 17, and remember those are the words of Him who is Love!
That which we have referred to in the above paragraph has been by no means confined to home life—the same evil has held sway in the "churches." Leniency and weakness have overridden righteousness and faithfulness. Instead of maintaining and enforcing the discipline which God's Word enjoins—the great majority of the "churches" have winked at even glaring sins, refusing to deal with those who walk disorderly. This reprehensible laxity is misnamed "love." A maudlin sentimentality which shrank from "hurting the feelings" of others—ousted all concern for the glory of Christ and the honor of His "house."
This is one of the inevitable effects of the lopsided preaching of the pulpit, where the love and grace of God were constantly proclaimed—while His justice and wrath were studiously ignored. God is "light" (1 John 1:5) as well as "love" (1 John 4:8), 'holy' as well as 'merciful', 'severe' as well as 'good' (Romans 11:22), and unless the balance is preserved between those two sides of the Divine character, not only will He be grievously misrepresented—but the most serious results will follow!
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God—and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God" (1 John 4:7). Christian love is not a thing of nature—but is entirely supernatural. It is not a part of our "personality" or anything which issues from our "disposition," but is a Divine communication received at the new birth. It is neither a sentiment nor an emotion—but a holy principle which is spiritual in its origin, its nature, its characteristics, and its manifestations.
But alas, many of God's own children are today so ill-taught, so ignorant, and so carnal—that they are unable to recognize true Christian love when they see it in exercise. Their thinking is so much colored by the world, they are so much corrupted by mingling with hollow professors—that they mistake pleasant personality and cordiality—for spiritual love. They forget that some who make no profession at all, are naturally congenial, kind, warm-hearted, courteous, and sympathetic. Christian love is neither the milk of human kindness—nor creature congeniality. Much that passes for Christian love—is merely the amiability and affability of the flesh!
How are we to know when we truly "love one another"? When we feel our hearts drawn out to them because of their affableness, their charming demeanor, their "sweet" ways? No! for appearances are deceptive. A winsome smile, a hearty hand-shake, a kiss—is no sign of the new nature—as Judas' kissing of Christ demonstrated. Nor does a polite demeanor or honeyed-mouth expressions prove anything to the point—rather does the Christian need to be doubly on his guard in the company of those who flatter him—ponder Proverbs 20:19; 26:28; Psalm 12:3.
Then how are we to know when we "love one another" —and when they love us? When we truly seek their highest good—when we aim at their spiritual well-being. The one who evidences the most spiritual love for me—is he who is ever seeking to promote my eternal interests—by wise counsels, by beneficial warnings, by timely rebukes, by godly encouragements.
And if I am spiritual—I shall love others for their piety, heavenly-mindedness, and faithfulness.
"Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend—but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful" (Prov 27:25,26). Ah, my reader, as little as you may like it—the one who "wounds" you the most—may be the best friend you have, and who has the most spiritual love for you. But the one who winks at your faults, is silent about your sins, and refuses to rebuke you for what is dishonoring to God—is your enemy and hates you!
Alas, what a low plane even the people of God are now living upon. Many of them are so easily ruffled—that with the least criticism of them—they are "hurt," and offended; which shows they have more self-love than the love of God in them. O for grace to say with the Psalmist, "Let the godly strike me! It will be a kindness! If they reprove me—it is soothing medicine. Don't let me refuse it" (141:5). "Rebuke a wise man—and he will love you" (Prov 9:8), how few of the "wise" are now left!
"This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands" (1 John 5:2). Go back to the previous verse for the connection, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well." We love the brethren, because they have been made "partakers of the Divine nature" —it is that, and nothing pertaining to the old creation, which is the uniting bond. How that lifts us entirely out of the realm of nature, into the spiritual sphere! It is love for God—which produces love for those who bear His image. And what is the touch-stone of my love to God? Not rapturous feelings, nor beautiful words of devotion, nor heartily singing His praises—but by keeping His commandments —John 14:15, 21, 24; 15:10. The strength of my love for God—is to be gauged by the measure of my obedience to His Word. The same principle holds good in my relations with the brethren—love to them will be manifested by efforts to encourage them in the path of obedience—and that necessarily involves rebuking them for disobedience.
To come more immediately to the opening questions. "Is it possible to be too critical of Christians (?) nowadays?" Why the qualifying "nowadays"? Has God lowered His standard—to meet these evil times? Is it permissible or expedient for me to compromise because the present generation is so lax and carnal? Do not the days in which our lot is cast, call for a clearer drawing of the line between the Church and the world? If so, should not this help to determine my conduct toward the individual?
We are mindful that large numbers hold the view that God requires less from people in degenerate times—but we know of nothing in His Word which supports them. Rather are such days the very time when the Christian most needs to show his colors, when shallowness and hollowness marks the religious profession all around, there is greater urgency for us to make manifest the reality that we are "strangers and pilgrims" in this scene. The Scriptures are just as much the Rule—and the sole rule for us to walk by—as they were for our more godly forebears. In the Day to come, we shall be judged by them as truly as they will be. It is never right to do wrong—nor to condone wrong.
John, the apostle of love, began his third epistle with these words, "The elder unto the well-beloved Gaius, whom I love in the Truth." What a needed word is this for today, when so much that passes for love, even in avowedly Christian circles, is nothing but a sickly sentimentality at the expense of the Truth. One of the outstanding cries in the religious world, is to this effect— "though we have differed in our beliefs and practices, let us now sink our differences and come together in love." When I was the pastor of a church in Sydney, I was regarded as a narrow-minded bigot, because on what Rome calls "good Friday" I refused to take part in an "ecumenical Communion service," where Fundamentalists, Liberals, Unitarians, and Evolutionists were invited to gather together, and thereby express "brotherly love" for one another. What a travesty and mockery! The wisdom which is from above is "first pure, then peaceable" (James 3:17). The more I am walking in the Truth and the more my brother is doing the same—the more cause have we to love one another.
It may be helpful to answer the opening question by changing the form of it—Is it possible to be too critical of myself? May I permit myself a certain amount of indulgence, exclude some part of my life from the control of God, be less strict about some matter than others? In the light of such verses as "Catch the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines" (Song of Sol 2:15), "grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, even Christ" (Eph 4:15), "whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31) —is there any difficulty in answering that question! If not, am I justified in countenancing a lower standard for others than I seek to apply to myself? Am I not required to love my neighbor as myself? And am I doing so—if I gloss over something in him which I know to be against his or her spiritual interests and can only work ill for him? If it is my plain duty to warn him against physical evils—then on what ground am I justified in being silent when I see spiritual danger menacing him?
But let it be pointed out, that I certainly am not warranted in being "critical" about the conduct of others, unless I am accustomed to unsparingly judge myself. It is the very worst species of hypocrisy to point the finger of condemnation at another, while I am guilty of something equally as bad. I must first cast the beam out of my own eye—before I am qualified to perform so delicate an operation as seeking to remove a mote from my brother's eye. Since there has been a "beam" in my own eye—that is cause for humility; and if the humility is real and deep—it will preserve me from acting proudly and haughtily when seeking not to "criticize," but "help" my brother. Nothing is more un-Christianlike than for me to berate an erring one in a spirit of self-righteousness and in tones of self-superiority, rather than in the spirit of "consider yourself, lest you also be tempted" (Gal 6:1). If I am to wash my brother's feet from the defilements of the way—then I must needs take the place of lowliness in order to serve him.
On the other hand, we must guard against going to an opposite extreme. If pride and haughtiness are to be reprehended; then mock humility or even an undue occupation with our own frailty and faultiness, is not to be commended. If we must wait until we are blameless, then there are many precepts of Scripture we cannot act upon. If we must tarry until our own character and conduct be faultless, then we are disqualified from rebuking anybody. We greatly fear that many have created their own difficulty or deterrent through a wrongful appropriation of those words "he who is without sin—let him first cast a stone" (John 8:7). How often have we heard professing Christians say, when it had become their manifest duty to admonish another, "Who am I—to cast stones at others?" It should be remembered, that John 8:7 was not spoken to conscientious saints, jealous of the honor of the Lord, anxious to promote the good of others—but to hypocritical pharisees, who were deliberately seeking to ensnare Christ.
Is it possible to be too critical of Christians? It is certainly possible to expect too much from them—and then be irritated because they fail to produce what we look for. If our thoughts be governed by Scripture, which declares, "We all stumble in many ways" (James 3:2); if we bear in mind the frailties—some of them glaring ones—of the most eminent characters mentioned in the Word; if we constantly remind ourselves of how far short we come of the standard God has set before us—then we ought to be preserved from looking for anything approaching perfection in Christians. They too are men and women of "like passions" as ourselves. Hence the force of "bearing with one another in love" (Eph 4:2); yet that must not be twisted into "winking at one another's faults" or condoning sin—under the pretense of love.
No, we cannot "always tell" whether a professing Christian is a regenerate or unregenerate person, and therefore it behooves us to be cautious and conservative, lest we be guilty of giving that which is holy—unto dogs (Matt 7:6). It is a very serious and solemn matter to encourage a deluded soul in his deception, as we do when we lead him to believe that we regard him as a Christian. But how is this to be avoided? By a withholding the tokens of fellowship; for example, refusing to address as "Brother" or "Sister" —from all whom we stand in doubt of, especially from those whose walk is manifestly worldly and contrary to the precepts of Scripture. While we cannot read the hearts of those we mix with—we can test their outward life by the Word, and if its general tenor is opposed to the requirements of holiness, and is contrary to the example of Christ—we certainly are not warranted in regarding them as children of God.
Certainly we should be "loving" in rebuking sin. It is in love, that God chastens His people, that they "might be partakers of His holiness" (Heb 12:6,10). We are bidden to "speak the Truth in love," and Christ was doing so—as truly when denouncing the pharisees in Matthew 23—as when He was comforting His disciples in John 14. But does that mean that His countenance, the tone of His voice, or His general bearing was the same? He ever spoke the Truth in love—but if some would re-read the four Gospels with this particular thought in mind—it might cause them to revise, or at least modify their present conception of what "speaking the truth in love" really is. Something depends upon the particular fault committed. Mole-hills are not to be magnified into mountains. There are times when it is fitting to rebuke "sharply" (Titus 1:13), as Christ did in Luke 24:25. But for the most part, it should be done in "the spirit of meekness" (Gal 6:1). There is a happy medium between harshness and firmness, as there is between sentimentality and tenderness.
We know of a small church, far removed from these parts, the pastor and members of which are seeking to act one toward another in a spirit and manner which we deem highly commendable. Its minister tells us "I have never seen a congregation more pliable to the Word of God, more willing to rectify wrongs —endeavoring to walk as Christ would have them walk. Each member is interviewed by the joint-elders group concerning their position listed in the church discipline; and further, each one applying for membership specifies that it is his desire to have a pastor who will deal with the sin problems of that member, as a shepherd would the problems of the sheep." That admirably expresses our own convictions—love ministering to the needy—as a shepherd to the sheep.
Oct. 4th, 2009 @ 08:00 am
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| » What if I stumble? |
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Aug. 21st, 2009 @ 09:00 pm
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| » Presidential Countdown |
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Aug. 14th, 2009 @ 10:49 pm
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| » The Billings Murders, part 2 |
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by Chuck Baldwin
By now, most Americans are familiar with the horrific murder of a Pensacola, Florida, couple by the name of Byrd and Melanie Billings. They were the parents of 17 children, 13 of whom were adopted – most of whom had disabilities. This case hits home with me, because they lived in my hometown of Pensacola. I did not know them personally, but they were fairly well known around town. Byrd was a well-to-do businessman who owned a used car business and financial loan service.
Byrd and Melanie were shot to death in their own home. So far, eight people have been arrested in the case: seven men and one woman. The seven men are each charged with two open counts of murder, and the woman is charged with accessory to murder after the fact. Law enforcement officials said yesterday that at least one more “person of interest” is being sought.
The Billings murder case was broken open by the fact that their home was equipped with a surveillance system, which recorded the vehicle used to transport the murderers to the home and probably much of the criminal activity inside the house, although the sheriff's office has not released the video of what was recorded inside the house. The video of the van led police to the suspects. Our State Attorney, Bill Eddins, says that all of the perpetrators who actively took part in the shootings are in custody. At least five of the men were inside the house when the murders took place; and police said the killers were in and out of the house in four minutes.
In a news conference yesterday, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan and State Attorney Bill Eddins said they have the murder "weapon or weapons." They also said that the remaining "person of interest" was supposed to disable the surveillance system but did not do so, which is why the system was still operational when the crimes occurred. In addition, Morgan and Eddins said the motive was robbery, because a small safe was taken from the house, but that other motives could also apply to the killings.
To my way of thinking, this case smacks of much more than a robbery gone badly. There were at least eight, and maybe nine, people involved. Maybe more. The invasion and killings were perpetrated in less than four minutes, by multiple assailants, and with “military precision.” The home invasion took place at approximately 7:30 p.m. local time. And at the time of the shooting, nine of the Billings children were in the home.
I believe murder, not robbery, was the motive. Extraordinary planning and the number of personnel involved indicate to me that the Billings were executed, and that robbery was an afterthought – or was even intended to be a ruse to mislead law enforcement. The real reason behind the killings may never be known, of course.
Regardless of the "why" and "how" of the killings, one thing is painfully obvious: a violent attack took place against a man and his wife inside their own home. And while the circumstances of the Billings case may be sensational, the simple fact that a couple was murdered inside their own home has become rather commonplace throughout the United States. Nationwide, home invasions are skyrocketing.
Home is the one place where most of us feel safe and protected. Even those who have a keen sense of self-defense feel free to let their guard down at home. And, sadly, most people do not possess a keen sense of self-defense. Most people have the deluded opinion that law enforcement will protect them. But even law enforcement professionals will tell you it is not their job to protect citizens; it is their job to apprehend and bring those who have committed crimes to justice. In other words, after you are dead, the cops will try to catch the guys who killed you.
It is time that people wake up to the fact that the responsibility of self-defense rests with each individual citizen. We are all vulnerable to attack--even in our homes! For this reason, our federal Constitution and most (if not all) State constitutions recognize the Natural Law right of people to keep and bear arms.
Over the past 40-plus years, however, miscreants in Washington, D.C., and in our State capitols have been whittling away at the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Lawful gun dealers are being harangued and harassed out of existence by the BATFE. Law enforcement agencies and State prosecutors often side with criminals when they are shot in self-defense by intended victims (especially in the Northeast). The media often characterizes lawful gun owners as "gun nuts" or "militia members" to try to create the impression that they are "dangerous" or "extremist." Public education--especially higher education--is often a willing participant in helping to demonize gun owners. Even Hollywood often uses its influence to sway public opinion against gun owners. All this, coupled with a natural lazy tendency of urban living, equates to a careless and defenseless society: something both would-be tyrants in government and street criminals love.
Fortunately, America's founders were wiser than most of today's generation. They understood the relationship between the citizen's right (and determination) to keep and bear arms and his or her safety and security.
For example, Thomas Jefferson said, "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." He also said, "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
Likewise, Thomas Paine said, "[A]rms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property . . . Horrid mischief would ensue were one-half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves."
The Billings double murder is the latest example of just how vulnerable we all are to the violent tendencies of evil people. For this reason (and more), every American should (1) resist any and all attempts by government to curtail or restrict our legal right to keep and bear arms, and (2) purchase, practice with, and always keep our own personal firearms handy. Furthermore, we should always live in a heightened "state of alert" (even in our own homes), because both our lives and our liberty may depend on it. Source
Jul. 20th, 2009 @ 08:00 pm
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| » Heaven or Hell? |
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"...(Hunter Thompson) told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both,” Ralph Steadman wrote.
Jul. 16th, 2009 @ 08:47 pm
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| » We have nothing yet |
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I did not have many personal possessions when I landed in Viet Nam - no radio, no record player, no eight-track, no cell phone, no I-phone, no U-phone. I did have one record and someone in our barracks had a record player.
I really liked one song and played it over and over. One day I returned to the barracks and the record was gone. Obviously, someone had heard the song one time too often.
Jun. 29th, 2009 @ 05:43 pm
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| » Salon.com - All God's children |
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The Quiverfull movement saddles women with a life of submission and near-constant pregnancies. One mother explains how she embraced the extreme Christian lifestyle -- and why she left.
By Kathryn Joyce
March 14, 2009 | Vyckie Garrison wasn't sure she wanted to use her real name in this article. Until last year, Garrison (then Vyckie Bennett), a 43-year-old single mother of seven living in Norfolk, Neb., followed a fundamentalist pronatalist theology known as Quiverfull. Shunning all forms of birth control, Quiverfull women accept as many children as God gives them as a demonstration of their radical faith and obedience as well as a means to advance his kingdom: winning the country for Christ by having more children than their adversaries. This self-proclaimed "patriarchy" movement, which likely numbers in the tens of thousands but which is growing exponentially, bases its arguments on Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They shall not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull women commonly give birth to families of eight, 10 and 12 children, or more.
Unlike TV's "Big Love" polygamists or traditionally large Catholic and Mormon families, the Quiverfull conviction does not follow from any official church doctrine. It's a cross-denominational movement among evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants who have adopted some Catholic arguments against contraception and who have spread their ideas through the booming conservative homeschooling community.
Quiverfull has gained exposure through cable TV's fascination with extraordinarily large families, including the 18-child Duggar family. The Duggars, an Arkansas couple whose husband Jim Bob was a former Arkansas state representative, have appeared on several Discovery Health Channel specials about their immense brood and currently have a TLC reality show, "18 Kids and Counting," that focuses on the saccharine details of large family life.
But there's a lot more to the Quiverfull conviction than you see on the Duggars' folksy show. In 1985, homeschooling leader Mary Pride wrote a foundational text for Quiverfull, "The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality." The book argued that family planning is a slippery slope, creating a “contraceptive mentality” that leads to abortion, and that feminism is incompatible with Christianity. As an antidote, Pride told Christians to reject women's liberation in exchange for the principles of submissive wifehood and prolific stay-at-home motherhood. The core ideology was a direct contradiction of Roe v. Wade: Women's bodies and lives did not belong to them, but to God and his plans for Christian revival.
Since 1985, Quiverfull has been thriving in the Southern and Sunbelt states. Although the conviction of "letting God plan your family" is not an official doctrine in many churches, there are signs of its acceptance in high places; the Rev. Albert Mohler, Theological Seminary president of the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, argued, for example, that deliberate childlessness was "moral rebellion" against God.
While researching my book, "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement," over the past several years, I spoke with dozens of women who follow the Quiverfull conviction. I also met a handful who had left the movement and now denounce the lifestyle as one of unceasing labor and exhaustion – a near-constant cycle of pregnancy, childbirth and the care of small children – for the women at its center.
Vyckie Garrison is one of those who lost faith in the movement. For years, she was among its lay leadership. She homeschooled her seven children, from her 23-year-old daughter, Angel, to her 6-year-old son, Wesley, and was active in Quiverfull's popular sterilization reversal ministries. She ran a monthly conservative family newspaper that published some of the movement's foremost advocates. The Bennetts were even named Nebraska's "family of the year" in 2003 by the Nebraska Family Council.
“You couldn't have found a more godly family,” says Garrison, a sharp-witted and frank woman who has updated her look since leaving the movement – cutting her nearly waist-length blond hair and wearing light makeup to highlight an engaging smile.
She may have looked like the perfect Quiverfull wife, but Garrison was struggling to care for her seven children, three of whom have a rare bone disease, while juggling the demands of her husband and coping with difficult pregnancies. Though she preached patriarchy to her readers, practicing it at home required a major suspension of disbelief. Her husband, Warren, had been blinded in a work accident years earlier and had trouble keeping a job. Garrison founded her paper in part to create a sales position for him, to maintain the illusion of his heading their family. But Warren chafed against his dependency and was verbally abusive, Garrison says, browbeating her and the children into frightened compliance.
Garrison hadn't come to Quiverfull from a fundamentalist background. She grew up in an unstable household, moving frequently around Nevada with her mother and her mother's series of live-in boyfriends who molested her sister; she was rarely in school long enough to fulfill the potential her high grades indicated. At 16, she married a high school boyfriend in a friend's disheveled apartment and walked home in her wedding dress from a honeymoon in a nearby motel. They moved to Carson City, subsisting on Job Corps positions and crashing with hard-partying friends. In despair, Garrison found God while listening to a Christian radio station one night. When she began attending a Pentecostal church, a group of older, middle-class women shepherded the teenage Garrison through the basic lessons of biblical womanhood and submission, starting with the admonition that for wives, love is not a feeling but a choice. Garrison looked to her mentors as beacons of propriety, “like Princess Diana,” she says, giving her a glimpse of a better world.
Garrison's marriage ended, and she became pregnant with her oldest daughter, Angel, during a short-lived rebound affair. She moved to Iowa to be near her mother and met Warren at a church picnic. After getting married, Garrison followed a new pastor's counsel to homeschool her growing family, which eventually led her to the Quiverfull movement, where homeschooling, Quiverfull and submission are intertwined convictions. As Garrison says, "If you take one, you pretty much have to take it all eventually."
Accepting every pregnancy as a unilateral blessing meant some radical leaps of faith, however. Put into physical practice, Garrison says the lesson of leaders like Nancy Campbell, editor of the fundamentalist women's magazine Above Rubies and author of movement books like "Be Fruitful and Multiply," "was, if pregnancy can kill you, think of the missionaries who go off to foreign lands and put their lives on the line. It's no different if you're risking your own body or life." Indeed, Mary Pride referred to her mothers as “maternal missionaries.”
Garrison complied. She'd had her first three children by cesarean section, but after coming to the Quiverfull conviction, she was swayed by the movement's emphasis on natural (even unassisted home) birth. During one delivery, she suffered a partial uterine rupture and "felt like I'd been in a major battle with Satan, and he'd just about left me dead." The doctor who treated Garrison lectured her for an hour not to conceive again, but she felt that stopping on her own would be rebellion. When she turned to her leaders for inspiration, she received a bleak message: that if she died doing her maternal duty, God would care for her family. For six months, she couldn't look at the baby without crying.
For much of that time, her oldest daughter, Angel, effectively mothered the newborn – not at all uncommon in the Quiverfull community, where daughters learn early to follow their mothers in domestic service and sacrifice.
The strain began to weigh on Angel as well, though, and Garrison says her daughter began acting out: feigning injuries, bruising her own face and exaggerating stories of trouble at home when Garrison sent her to intern for Nancy Campbell – embellishments Garrison imagines sprang from Angel's inability to adequately convey her unhappiness to the fundamentalist believers around her. "She knew that something wasn't right, but she couldn't articulate it because we were family of the year."
Desperate, Angel made a clumsy suicide attempt with high doses of Tylenol and Maalox at the age of 21, checking herself into the emergency room after the attempt failed.
The episode shook Garrison, who drove from Norfolk to Nashville to retrieve Angel from a psychiatric ward. She began to see her younger children as joyless and traumatized. Trying to step between the children and Warren, she enraged him with her assertiveness. Her fatigue became overwhelming, and her blood pressure sank.
Garrison began corresponding with an intellectual atheist uncle whose gentle questions helped her acknowledge her mounting crisis of faith. She wrote her uncle: "If, as I kind of suspect, it turns out that I don't actually believe in a personal God, I know I'm going to be exceedingly pissed – knowing that I've done my best with the hand I've been dealt and it's cost me a lot and it's worn me down – only to discover midway through that the game is rigged and there's no way I can win."
Garrison fled to a friend in Kansas City for several weeks, though she eventually returned for her children, ending up in an ugly custody battle that she finally won.
When she told an editor at her paper that she was getting divorced, his first words were "Cheryl Lindsey" – a reference to Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff, an early Quiverfull leader who left her husband and the movement and was subsequently denounced and run out of business by her homeschooling peers. "I think he was warning me," Garrison says.
The experience of Garrison's friend Laura – a mother of 11 who collapsed under the demands of the lifestyle – also helps explain why many unhappy women are afraid to turn their backs on the movement, when they'll be left with scant financial resources, years without work experience, and a dearth of references from a community that often shuns them. Laura was near suicide when Garrison helped her leave; her husband took physical custody of all 11 children, and her oldest daughter seamlessly assumed Laura's duties and tended to the younger children, who now view their mother as a backslider deceived by Satan. “She feels so incredibly angry, so ripped off, so used. Her new motto is “[Bleep] God.’”
"Me and Laura both say we hope we don't end up as atheists," says Garrison, with a laugh, though she can't think of herself as anything else. This month, Laura and Garrison began a blog, cheekily named “No Longer Quivering,” to describe their experiences exiting the movement. Currently, Garrison is attending a relatively liberal Salvation Army church in Norfolk. She doesn't go for the faith anymore, but for the people, people in "bad shape" who remind Garrison of her childhood friends. She affectionately jokes with the pastor's wife that she's glad they “don't take the Bible seriously.”
For Garrison, taking the Bible seriously is synonymous with the punishing claims of the Quiverfull movement. But having lost her faith in the Bible-proofed patriarchy principles she was taught, Garrison is unable to accept any of it anymore. "I don't think you can get equality out of the Bible. You can't get away from hierarchy, strictly defined roles for gender, authoritarianism, submission, dominating." Many believers might take issue with that, but to devout believers of Quiverfull, patriarchy is simply "the logical conclusion of what Scripture teaches," Garrison says.
As for herself, Garrison says, "I gave my life to Jesus, and he didn't do with it what I would have done.” She feels as though she's in free fall, her “feet planted firmly in midair,” as the evangelical luminary Francis Schaeffer once remarked of non-Christians.
Sometimes it's exhilarating, but often she wonders when she'll hit the ground. The chaos and confusion that follow leaving the movement is a powerful deterrent to other women who face losing their children as Laura did, or becoming overwhelmed like Garrison. “The only thing that keeps these mothers going is they have incredible motivation,” says Garrison. “They believe they're building the kingdom of God." Though her children are thriving in public school, Garrison struggles to find the energy to mother seven children without the incentive, and threat, that the Quiverfull conviction provides: a promise that obedient Christian wives may, through their meekness, their submission and their posterity, inherit the earth. Source
Mar. 14th, 2009 @ 11:30 pm
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| » Milton Friedman |
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This is an old video clip of the Nobel Prize winning Economist, Milton Friedman interview by Phil Donahue.
Mar. 12th, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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Chicago Tribune, Jan 29, 2009
Yesterday: 1. Outgoing President George W. Bush quietly boards his helicopter and leaves for Texas, commenting only: "Today is not about me. Today is a historical day for our nation and people."
Eight years ago yesterday: 1. Outgoing President Bill Clinton schedules two separate radio addresses to the nation, and organizes a public farewell speech/rally in downtown Washington D.C. scheduled to directly conflict with incoming President Bush's inauguration ceremony.
Yesterday: 2. President Bush leaves office without issuing a single presidential pardon, only granting a commutation of sentence to two former border patrol agents convicted of shooting a convicted drug smuggler. He does not grant any type of clemency to Scooter Libby or any other former political aide, ally, or business partner.
Eight years ago yesterday: 2. President Clinton issues 140 pardons and several commutations of sentence on his final day in office. Included in these are: billionaire financier, convicted tax evader, and leading Democratic campaign contributor Marc Rich; Whitwater scandal figure Susan McDougal; Congressional Post Office Scandal figure and former Democratic Congressman Dan Rostenkowski; convicted bank fraud, sexual assault and child porn perpetrator and former Democratic Congressman Melvin Reynolds ; and convicted drug felon Roger Clinton, the President's half-brother.
Yesterday: 3. The Bush daughters leave gift baskets in the White House bedrooms for the Obama daughters, containing flowers, candy, stuffed animals, DVD's and CD's, and heartfelt notes of encouragement and advice for the young girls on how to prepare for their new lives in the White House.
Eight years ago Yesterday: 3. Clinton and Gore staffers rip computer wires and electrical outlets from the White House walls, stuff piles of notebook papers into the White House toilets, systematically remove the letter "W" from every computer key-pad in the entire White House, and damage several thousand dollars worth of furniture in the White House master bedroom.
Headlines On This Date 4 Years Ago:
"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops Die in unarmored Humvees"
"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"
"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, Ordinary Americans get the shaft"
Headlines Today:
"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $170 million"
"Obama Spends $170 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"
"Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate"
"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration"
Mar. 6th, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
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| » Professor calls student a fascist bastard |
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David French, of the Alliance Defense Fund: "Jonathan talked about his faith – and one of the things he talked about in context of his faith was...marriage," says French. "He read from the dictionary definition of marriage. The professor stopped the class [and] told the class that anyone who wanted to could leave if they were offended...."
According to an ADF press release, when no one got up to leave, the instructor simply dismissed the class, effectively ending Lopez's speech – which violated the student's free-speech rights, especially since other students made speeches on other subjects. Religious speech, notes French, apparently was excluded from the open-ended speech assignment.
Refusing to grade the assigned speech, Matteson wrote on Lopez's evaluation, "Ask God what your grade is."
One week later, after seeing Lopez talking to the college's dean of academic affairs, Matteson told Lopez that he would make sure he'd be expelled from school. Matteson's treatment of Lopez during his speech follows an earlier incident in which Matteson told his entire class after the November election, "If you voted yes on Proposition 8, you are a fascist bastard.” (More here.)
Mar. 3rd, 2009 @ 09:00 pm
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| » Our last best hope on earth |
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The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth
by Peter Hitchens, London Mail
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn’t yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.
Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn’t know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don’t try this at home).
I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.
And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn’t join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He’d have been better off bursting into ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.
If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.
If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.
And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.
I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth? Read more
Jan. 23rd, 2009 @ 02:08 pm
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| » Prop 8 Sodomy |
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Oct. 29th, 2008 @ 07:05 am
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| » ACORN |
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“’You’ve got only a couple thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog-food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don’t despair: You can still buy a house.’ So began an April 1995 article in the Chicago Sun-Times that went on to direct prospective home-buyers fitting this profile to a group of far-left ‘community organizers’ called ACORN, for assistance. In retrospect, of course, encouraging customers like this to buy homes seems little short of madness. At the time, however, that 1995 Chicago newspaper article represented something of a triumph for Barack Obama. That same year, as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to ACORN, and sending still more money ACORN’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported ACORN. And ACORN, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis... In June of 1995, President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and Secretary Cisneros announced the administration’s comprehensive new strategy for raising home-ownership in America to an all-time high. Representatives from ACORN were guests of honor at the ceremony. In his remarks, Clinton emphasized that: ‘Our homeownership strategy will not cost the taxpayers one extra cent. It will not require legislation.’ Clinton meant that informal partnerships between Fannie and Freddie and groups like ACORN would make mortgages available to customers ‘who have historically been excluded from homeownership.’ In the end of course, Clinton’s plan cost taxpayers an almost unimaginable amount of money. And it was just around the time of his 1995 announcement that the Chicago papers started encouraging bad-credit customers with ‘dog-food’ wages, little money in the bank, and even histories of bankruptcy to apply for home loans with the help of ACORN...ACORN is at the base of the whole mess... And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.” —Stanley Kurtz
October 13, 2008
08-42 Patriot Post
Oct. 25th, 2008 @ 11:04 pm
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| » Obama Kenya commie |
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This video documents Obama's support for a politician in Kenya who is a communist and
supports Islamic law. This is not a pretty picture.
Oct. 25th, 2008 @ 10:56 pm
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| » 'Survivor' contestant shares insights |
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by Shannon Baker
TEGA CAY, S.C. (BP)--Just five minutes into Survivor China, Leslie Nease discovered there was one thing that meant more to her than realizing her dream of being on the popular television show.
Nease, a member of Tega Cay (S.C.) Baptist Church, learned cast members were expected to bow before a statue of the Buddha in a traditional welcoming ceremony. Convinced that bowing before the idol would have constituted worship, Nease decided she would put her face on the ground only before God. Feeling the discomfort, she walked away quietly in tears. She knew an alternate player was waiting in the wings. Would she be put out of the game because of this decision?
Nease, a Christian talk show host from 91.9 FM in Charlotte, N.C., had auditioned 11 times for Survivor, which will premiere its 17th season on CBS Sept. 18. The show places 16 people in a remote location to see who can "outwit, outplay and outlast" the others for 39 days and win $1 million. Contestants are divided into tribes and are sent into the wild to struggle for food and shelter. Along the way they make alliances with other players, devise ways to win the game and face off in physical or mental challenges to win rewards and immunity from being voted off by other members at the tribal council at the end of each three-day episode.
When Nease was faced with having to bow before the idol, she discovered that her Lord meant more to her than even the dream of being on Survivor. She realized that the Buddha ceremony was meant for her. "God showed me that He is first in my life," she said.
Nease wasn't replaced by the alternate. Instead, her decision to not bow gave her an identity for the show -- "Sister Christian." All the other players knew where she stood, as did the entire worldwide television audience.
"I'm not religious," Nease said to the TV cameras, "but I have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and I'm only going to put my face on the floor for Him."
Now, weeks after her once-in-a-lifetime experience, Nease has compiled a lit of the top 10 things she learned from being on one of TV's most celebrated reality shows.
10. Never give up on a God-given dream and trust His timing.
For Nease, coming onto Survivor was a dream come true. She had filled out 11 applications for the show and made 11 audition tapes, with ranging content from "How to survive being a mom" to bungee jumping and skydiving videos to a Survivor-inspired rap song.
"I really wanted to be on Survivor," Nease said, acknowledging that she did, however, also want the dream to be from God. For her, that meant her husband, Rod, had to be in complete agreement with the idea.
"And my husband did agree," she exclaimed. "So much so, that he pretty much kicked me onto the plane ... and I am so glad he did!"
9. Holy huddles are great but you can't stay there.
"Trust me. If we don't break up our holy huddle, [God] will do it for us," Nease said.
She pointed to Acts 1:8 where Jesus tells the early church that they must go out and be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. But Acts 8:1 tells about the great persecution that broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and everyone except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
For Nease, Survivor was a chance to break away from her own holy huddle of a Christian job and Christian friends and family and be surrounded by non-Christians.
8. First impressions aren't always accurate.
Before the game started, Nease and the contestants were not allowed to speak to each other. Still, New York City waitress Courtney Yates' rolling eyes made her attitude very clear. Nease's first impression of her wasn't very favorable.
But when Nease was voted off, Yates was the one crying for her. She was the only one who voted for Nease to stay.
"Survivor brings out the real you," Nease said. "Courtney started out cranky, but she would get up in the middle of the night to walk with me when I was sick. I saw her like God saw her, and I am very thankful for her."
7. We are "crazy blessed" to be able to own and read God's Word in our country.
Nease had requested her Bible as her "luxury item" (one personal item that she could bring along), but program executives denied the request. As the days passed, she longed for her Bible. When she got sick, she longed for the reassurance it gave her.
"I had memorized Scripture, but I was surrounded by deception and needed truth," she shared. She hadn't always felt that way about the Bible. For 20 years, her "Sunday" Bible sat on a shelf, she said.
6. Know what it means to "dig deep for Jesus."
Nease admits she was a mess on Survivor. She had caught a parasite and lost 17 pounds in nine days.
"It had to be God that carried me through. He showed me that He is enough," she said. "I didn't have my reputation, my family or even shampoo and a toothbrush!"
The situation was complicated by the fact that her tribe was very cynical. She was "kidnapped" by the other tribe, which proved to have "a strong heart." When Nease shared her findings with her tribe, they became distrustful of her, ultimately deciding her fate as the third contestant to be voted off the show.
5. A good reputation means more than a million bucks.
Before the vote, Nease realized her dilemma, but knew she had to be true to her values. She had to admit she had told the other tribe things about her own tribe.
"I knew my kids were watching. I knew God was watching," she shared. "My goal was to be obedient to God, not to win the million dollars. Had I not been honest, I would not have been in God's will."
4. Forming relationships with people opens doors to share one's faith.
"My body may have not been strong, but my faith was strong. And the other contestants were starting to get it," Nease shared. "I listened to the Holy Spirit's promptings. Questions were asked, but I didn't preach."
When voted off, several of the contestants dubbed her "Mom," indicating their affection for her.
3. Others' opinions do not define you.
Nease has made attempts to gain human approval. She won the Mrs. North Carolina pageant in 2001. She also partied with her friends, living a double life between church and her world.
"When I said I believed Jesus is the Son of God, I finally realized I didn't understand what 'belief' meant," she admitted. "It is a firm conviction, a full surrender and a lifestyle that reflects that surrender."
When she finally understood what faith in Christ really meant, Nease's life changed radically and she focused wholeheartedly on the Lord. She affirmed she only wanted to please God and that stance allowed her to be herself on the show.
2. Man's rejection is God's protection.
Though Nease wanted to stay longer in the game, she was at peace with being voted off.
"God will not allow you to be rejected by anyone unless it is a part of His plan," she said, pointing to the Old Testament story of Jacob. "It is the darkest when you are struggling, but don't let go and give up before the blessing comes."
1. Nothing is more important than a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Nease had promised God: "If you allow this dream to come true, not only will I tell them my story, but I'll tell them Yours." "Jesus is not just your Savior, but also your Lord," she says. "He doesn't want just part of your life. He wants all of your life."
She said that Christians should have "symptoms of Christianity" (life change, sensitivity to sin and evangelism, a love for God's Word). "If you don't have the symptoms, then you don't have it," she said, admitting that for years she was a "Sunday Christian" only. But her life dramatically changed when she relaxed and let God do the work in her.
"Many people told me they were sorry when I didn't win Survivor, but I did win," she said. "Jesus just doesn't work the way we do."
--30--
For more information on Nease's ministry, visit online at www.leslienease.com. Shannon Baker is the national correspondent for BaptistLIFE (www.baptistlifeonline.org), newsjournal of the Maryland/Delaware Baptist Convention. Original link
Aug. 12th, 2008 @ 09:00 pm
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| » All you need to know about Obama |
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Vol 4, No 829
Jun. 14th, 2008 @ 10:30 pm
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| » Church & State |
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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." First Amendment, United States Constitution
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."
These sixteen simple words in the Constitution of the United States have a unique place. Together they constitute a principle our nation's Founders deemed so important that these two phrases, known as the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, respectively, became the first lines of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights – the principle (though not exhaustive) enumeration of inalienable rights deemed so essential to liberty that they should be named explicitly in the Constitution, to be protected by it.
Yet, for something so essential, the rights named in these two phrases have been subject to scrutiny out of all proportion to their sixteen meager words. What did the Founders intend for the relationship between church and state, belief and government, to be? Is there, as Thomas Jefferson suggested in his letter to the Danbury Baptists, a "wall of separation" between the two? In short the answer is yes. But to extend the wall metaphor, a simple "yes" does not answer how high or impenetrable that wall is, what are its contours, or if it contains gates whereby religion and the state may interact. To bring any clarity to these issues, the history and context of the American founding must be accounted for.
The New World's original colonists, especially the Puritans, came to the New World to flee the religious persecution of the Old, which intensified under James I and Charles I of England, following the more tolerant rule of Elizabeth I. With some exceptions, the American colonies would become havens for Europe's persecuted religions. Not limited to Puritans, those fleeing persecution later would come to include Roman Catholics, Quakers, Anabaptists and Jews. It is, however, the Puritan situation that forms the historical context for the First Amendment.
The special quality of the Puritan's persecution is that it was not simply religious persecution at the hands of the state. It was religious persecution at the hands of the state indirectly, by means of the Church of England, the official church of the state. Later, persecution was carried out by the state directly, prompted by the hierarchy of the Anglican Church. Read more
Vol 4, No 747
May. 25th, 2008 @ 01:15 pm
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| » Expelling God from the academy |
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Mark Alexander
From Patriot Post Vol. 06 No. 49; Published 8 December 2006
In the Gospel of Matthew (19:24), Jesus speaks to his disciples about wealth: "[I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
The Christian life, at its foundation, is characterized by humility, which is to say that wealth, which fosters elitism, is often at odds with Christianity. The Bible does not say that prosperity is sinful, but those who place wealth above God are engaging in idolatry - as defined in the Second of the Ten Commandments.
One may rightly infer that a wealth of knowledge leading to academic elitism, like economic elitism, is also hostile to Christianity. Idolizing knowledge or wealth isolates one from the Truth and Light.
While the federal judiciary erroneously cites the so-called "Living Constitution" to justify the eradication of God from the public square, it is wealthy university trustees and academic elitists who, under the aegis of "tolerance and diversity," seek to eradicate God from the academy. Read more
Vol 4, No 747
May. 25th, 2008 @ 01:00 pm
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| » Believe it or Don't - 2008.05 |
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Tree innocent until proven guilty
Three drunken men attacked a tree with an ax. They blamed the tree for a car crash that killed a friend, a court was told.
The attack was carried out just over 12 hours after a talented rugby player was killed when the car he was a passenger in hit the tree. Read more.
Screwdriver Control advocates upset with grandma
Armed only with a screwdriver, a 95-year-old woman in a wheel chair kept a burglar from breaking into her home by repeatedly stabbing his hand.
It was 3 a.m. when the woman heard somebody break the glass on her front door and push the door open. When a hand came inside and tried to unlock the door, she stabbed it. Again and again.
She stabbed that hand many times over the next hour Police said. The woman would not leave the door for fear the man would break in while she was calling for help. Read more.
An example of “New Math”
A Missouri man faces a felony indictment after trying to purchase a LCD television for less than $3 by replacing its UPC code with that of a water bottle.
According to documents filed in Court, the man allegedly tried to purchase a 26-inch LCD television from Wal-Mart, claiming the UPC code valued at $3.16 was the proper code the television, which normally sells for more than $517. Read more.
Maybe his fifth offense would have been the truck driver
Gary Sanborn pedaled his bike in the dark along Route 139, the price he had to pay after pleading guilty to four drunken driving offenses and having his license revoked.
In a sad twist, Sanborn died while riding his bicycle, struck by a pickup truck whose driver, police say, was drunk. Read more.
Mattress safer than bank
The number of Brits who think the best place to keep their money is under their mattress has nearly trebled during the past year, figures show.
Around 11% of people said they now thought their money was safest under their mattress, compared with just 4% 12 months ago, according to Newcastle Building Society.
The research found the crisis at Northern Rock and the credit crunch has caused people's confidence in banks and building societies to dive.
Just 57% of people said they now thought their money was safest with one of these institutions, down from 74% a year ago. Read more.
They should have used their mattress
A Chinese couple are distraught after their three year old daughter threw their savings out of the window of their 17th floor flat.
The little girl threw the equivalent of $1,400 out of the window of their rented apartment while her parents were asleep.
“When I woke up, she wasn't beside me, and my purse was on the bed, open, and with a thick wad of money missing,” said the mother. “I looked everywhere, then I noticed there were two notes on the windowsill, and another two on the window sill one floor down.”
The owner of a restaurant on the first floor of the building told her that money had been raining down on to the street, and that passers-by had gone crazy trying to catch it.
Mrs Huang said she spent the whole day in tears as $800 of the money had belonged to other people. Read more.
Not “normal people”
(England) A taxi driver ended up stranded after he followed his taxi’s navigation system directions – into a river.
The mini-bus driver was on his way to collect a fare when he took a wrong turn into the River Nar. Fortunately he had no passengers aboard – but he did have the embarrassment of having to call his bosses for help.
Taxis owners Keith Jarvis and Pat Bowles took along a towrope, expecting to find the eight-seater minibus just off the ford.
But Mr. Jarvis said: “It took ages to find him and we couldn't believe it when we saw where he was – it was several hundred yards along the river!
"The vehicle still had its engine running and headlights on, and he was sitting in it with his trousers rolled up round his knees. I shone a [flashlight] in the river and there were fish swimming around the headlights."
Pat Bowles added: “Normal people would stop and back out but because his navigation told him to keep going that's what he did.” Read more.
Former minister to quit driving
A veteran motorist ended 76 years of trouble-free driving by smashing his Ford Fiesta into two Porsches.
Jack Higgs, 93, was parking next to a Porsche showroom when his car shot backwards, causing $120,000 damage.
First, he hit a gleaming red Carrera II which acted as a ramp, causing his 13-year-old hatchback to flip over on to a silver Porsche 911 parked alongside.
Staff in the showroom ran outside to be confronted by a scene of wreckage and Mr Higgs hanging upside down by his seatbelt in his overturned car. Read more.
Unexploded missile as an anvil
Romanian firefighters were shocked after a farmer was spotted using an unexploded missile as an anvil.
The 122mm calibre missile, discovered by the man in his garden in Puieni village, Giurgiu county,a few months ago, had been used for sharpening hoes and scythes.
Explosive specialists said the missile was still active and endangered not only the farmer's family but also his neighbours.
A spokesman for the firefighters said: "We've had many problems because of these unexploded bombs which have been in the ground since the Second World War but this is really crazy.
"How can you hit a bomb with the hammer? It could have exploded any time.” Read more.
What a knob
A Hungarian farmer almost killed one of his labourers after wiring his barn door to the mains to stop crooks stealing animal food at night.
Laszlo Miklos, 57, from Bekes county, said he had been plagued by thieves for the last month who would break into a barn and steal food meant for sheep and cows.
He said: "I have no idea who would want to steal animal food from me but I was losing money and the thefts were driving me mad.
"I have an electric fence around parts of my farm to stop the animals getting out and that gave me an idea that I could use electricity to stop the thieves getting in, but I forgot to tell my staff."
Doctors who treated the 51-year-old labourer at a local hospital said he had suffered a heart attack that left him in intensive care and severe burns to his hand and arm.
A hospital spokesman said: "Only the insulated effects of his thick boots saved him from certain death. He is lucky to still be alive.” Read more.
Yoo hoo, anybody home?
A Kentucky man was arrested on drug trafficking charges after he was reportedly pumping gas into an imaginary vehicle. Read more.
May. 8th, 2008 @ 07:00 am
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| » Emergency Energy Summit |
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The Fort Report
Sent via Email, May 5, 3:50 pm
Emergency Energy Summit: Seeking a New Approach
Skyrocketing gas prices are causing severe hardship for families, communities, and small businesses in Nebraska and across the nation. There seems to be no end in sight. Just this week the price of oil shot up to $120 a barrel, partially due to political unrest in the oil-producing nation of Nigeria. Ironically, retail gas prices went down a penny. Analysts are split on their predictions for the future cost of a barrel of oil. Estimates range from $40 to $200 within two years. What is certain is that we are seeing fluctuations of a very uncertain market.
What should be done?
This pressing situation prompted me to request that the President and leaders in Congress convene an emergency energy summit to examine the causes behind the rising cost of petroleum and gasoline, and explore possible short- and long-term solutions.
I believe the urgency of the circumstances warrants a new bipartisan approach between the Congress and Administration, experts, analysts, and business leaders to address this burgeoning problem. This collaborative effort would fully analyze and understand the effects of commodity speculation and other potential factors: rising demand, supply restrictions, inflation, falling value of the dollar, boutique fuels, expansion of sustainable alternative sources, geopolitical instability, OPEC, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The significant economic dislocations from high prices demand a coordinated government response. And new thinking. Short-term relief should bridge to long-term solutions focusing on conservation, innovation, moving new technologies to market, environmental sustainability, and a portfolio of diversified energy sources to secure our nation’s energy future.
Sincerely,
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry
May. 6th, 2008 @ 05:00 pm
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| » Bearing the Silence of God, II |
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by Ziya Meral, Continued from here.
Post-Crucifixion Work
This reality forces us to take another look at what Paul means in Romans 8:28 by "our good." If our good is a stable, safe, healthy, happy, and reasonably wealthy middle-class life, then logically one can conclude that God really does not work for the good of the largest portion of the global church today.
Similarly, when we look at Paul's list of sufferings in 2 Corinthians 11, it's clear that Paul's life will never be known as a good one by today's pop psychology or quick-fix spirituality books. Didn't Paul ever stop and wonder why he wasn't blessed? Since Paul is clearly an intelligent man who can recognize the problem, we are forced to entertain other possibilities.
Maybe Paul was influenced by Stoic ideas that encouraged him to seek pain in order to develop his strength and be a virtuous man. Perhaps Neoplatonic ideas that saw the material body as a hindrance to be overcome in order to achieve the freedom of the soul encouraged Paul to pursue a life of suffering and sacrifice. Or, one can employ modern psychoanalytical tools that may show that Paul was a masochist who actively sought pain and enjoyed being in such conditions.
All of these potential answers point to self-gratification as the ultimate goal of life. This is parallel to our modern conceptions of the good life, for which the ultimate end is self-satisfaction and glorification (although self-discipline was long ago discarded as a means to that end).
At this point, the incapacity of the modern church to reconcile the suffering of the global church with the God of love is evident. But, our highest good is not a problem-free life; it is to be like the Son.
Paul continues to face a difficult life, but not because suffering itself is the end goal, as a virtue or merit. On the contrary, suffering is not about Paul or his salvation at all. He is not suffering because God is cruel and does not know how to treat his friends. Paul suffers and lives that life for a higher purpose:
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. (2 Cor. 4:10-12)
This higher purpose is identical to the purpose of the Son of God: to bring the life of God to us by his own sacrifice, and by doing so, to glorify God's name. This dual purpose, life and glory, echoes in the life and sacrifice of the apostle. Through his identification with the Son of God in his suffering, what emerges is the continuation of the post-crucifixion work of the Son of God.
When Silence Is the Voice
The only way a deaf and blind world can hear and see the gospel message is by seeing it in our lives. The only way the life of Christ can reach the nations is by us following his incarnation, submitting to God's will, and presenting ourselves in all of our vulnerability.
We do not accept this suffering in passive resentment, because the calling of the church and the core of Christian spirituality is to bring life to the world and glory to God. It is through our presence that others in spiritual need may receive the life Christ brings.
Through our stubborn commitment to love those who persecute us and to dwell in nations that torment us, our witness for the gospel gains power. That is why the Prophets of the Bible lived symbolic lives with symbolic actions, such as sitting in dust and ashes. The lives of the Prophets were the very voice of God speaking to people, just as the life and sacrifices of Paul were the channels through which God spoke to the nations.
In Europe, there is a saying: It is often dark at the foot of the lighthouse. There is often silence in the life that becomes the voice of God. The lighthouse imagery is helpful to conceptualize the paradox of death that brings life in the work and life of Paul.
Mar. 30th, 2008 @ 09:30 pm
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| » Bearing the Silence of God, III |
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Yet the silence of God is not the same as the absence of God. Within those silent moments, he is present in our pain, suffering, and isolation. He is hurting with us as we are hurting like his Son. In his silence, he is speaking loudly to the world around us.
The greatest glory Jesus brought to God was not when he walked on the water or prayed for long hours, but when he cried in agony in the garden of Gethsemane and still continued to follow God's will, even though it meant isolation, darkness, and the silence of God. Thus, we know that when everything around us fails, when we are destroyed and abandoned, our tears, blood, and dead corpses are the greatest worship songs we have ever sung.
The dead body is not the end of the story. The one who sacrificed his life is also the one who has been glorified: "because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence" (2 Cor. 4:14). When we identify ourselves with the humiliation, suffering, and death of Jesus, we are also granted the privilege of being identified with the resurrection, glory, and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Therefore we do not lose heart," even though we are weakened by suffering (2 Cor. 4:1).
The promise of sharing his resurrection and glory gives us a great hope: that our sacrifices are not in vain and do not go unnoticed, even though no other human being, nor the global church, may know or care about what we are going through, even though we may not see any apparent rhyme or reason in our suffering now.
This means that our calling to bring life to the world and glory to God has other blessings besides the joy we have now: the joy of bringing hope and light to a pain-filled world and the joy of pleasing the God we love, through our willing surrender to his desire. Here I am speaking of a far greater joy that awaits us: the joy of being welcomed, restored, and glorified by the Father, just as he welcomed, restored, and glorified his risen Son.
Faith is the most precious and important commodity, without which it is impossible to please God or follow him. And faith is only proven real in the pit of darkness. In the classic book by C. S. Lewis, the more experienced demon, Screwtape, warns the younger demon, who is assigned to lead a human being astray:
Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
We do know where God is in the midst of persecution. He is there, right with us, in us. He is present through our lives, words, pain, and deaths. He has not forgotten us or turned away his face from us. He holds back his power so that we can accomplish his work, so that our sacrifices can be sources of life and healing to the world. He is not distant from our pain; he is in prison with us, he is naked, he is beaten, he is raped, and he is killed! We know that he is not quiet, but is speaking powerfully through the lives, suffering, and death of his children.
As Christ prayed in agony in the garden during that dark night, he knew that he had to carry on his calling even though it would cost him his life. He knew that it was the only way to bring life. He knew that his brutal death would glorify God. History changed during that night, even before the cross. It changed when the Son of God chose to not give up, to hold firm to God's calling and promises, even though it meant bearing the silence of God.
Mar. 30th, 2008 @ 09:15 pm
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| » Squanderville versus Thriftville |
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(Continued from here).
It can be argued, of course, that the present value of the future production that Squanderville must forever ship to Thriftville only equates to the production Thriftville initially gave up and that therefore both have received a fair deal. But since one generation of Squanders gets the free ride and future generations pay in perpetuity for it, there are -- in economist talk -- some pretty dramatic "intergenerational inequities."
Let's think of it in terms of a family: Imagine that I, Warren Buffett, can get the suppliers of all that I consume in my lifetime to take Buffett family IOUs that are payable, in goods and services and with interest added, by my descendants. This scenario may be viewed as effecting an even trade between the Buffett family unit and its creditors. But the generations of Buffetts following me are not likely to applaud the deal (and, heaven forbid, may even attempt to welsh on it).
Think again about those islands: Sooner or later the Squanderville government, facing ever greater payments to service debt, would decide to embrace highly inflationary policies -- that is, issue more Squanderbucks to dilute the value of each. After all, the government would reason, those irritating Squanderbonds are simply claims on specific numbers of Squanderbucks, not on bucks of specific value. In short, making Squanderbucks less valuable would ease the island's fiscal pain.
That prospect is why I, were I a resident of Thriftville, would opt for direct ownership of Squanderville land rather than bonds of the island's government. Most governments find it much harder morally to seize foreign-owned property than they do to dilute the purchasing power of claim checks foreigners hold. Theft by stealth is preferred to theft by force.
So what does all this island hopping have to do with the U.S.? Simply put, after World War II and up until the early 1970s we operated in the industrious Thriftville style, regularly selling more abroad than we purchased. We concurrently invested our surplus abroad, with the result that our net investment -- that is, our holdings of foreign assets less foreign holdings of U.S. assets -- increased (under methodology, since revised, that the government was then using) from $37 billion in 1950 to $68 billion in 1970. In those days, to sum up, our country's "net worth," viewed in totality, consisted of all the wealth within our borders plus a modest portion of the wealth in the rest of the world.
Additionally, because the U.S. was in a net ownership position with respect to the rest of the world, we realized net investment income that, piled on top of our trade surplus, became a second source of investable funds. Our fiscal situation was thus similar to that of an individual who was both saving some of his salary and reinvesting the dividends from his existing nest egg.
In the late 1970s the trade situation reversed, producing deficits that initially ran about 1 percent of GDP. That was hardly serious, particularly because net investment income remained positive. Indeed, with the power of compound interest working for us, our net ownership balance hit its high in 1980 at $360 billion.
Since then, however, it's been all downhill, with the pace of decline rapidly accelerating in the past five years. Our annual trade deficit now exceeds 4 percent of GDP. Equally ominous, the rest of the world owns a staggering $2.5 trillion more of the U.S. than we own of other countries. Some of this $2.5 trillion is invested in claim checks -- U.S. bonds, both governmental and private -- and some in such assets as property and equity securities.
In effect, our country has been behaving like an extraordinarily rich family that possesses an immense farm. In order to consume 4 percent more than we produce -- that's the trade deficit -- we have, day by day, been both selling pieces of the farm and increasing the mortgage on what we still own.
To put the $2.5 trillion of net foreign ownership in perspective, contrast it with the $12 trillion value of publicly owned U.S. stocks or the equal amount of U.S. residential real estate or what I would estimate as a grand total of $50 trillion in national wealth. Those comparisons show that what's already been transferred abroad is meaningful -- in the area, for example, of 5 percent of our national wealth.
More important, however, is that foreign ownership of our assets will grow at about $500 billion per year at the present trade-deficit level, which means that the deficit will be adding about one percentage point annually to foreigners' net ownership of our national wealth. As that ownership grows, so will the annual net investment income flowing out of this country. That will leave us paying ever-increasing dividends and interest to the world rather than being a net receiver of them, as in the past. We have entered the world of negative compounding -- goodbye pleasure, hello pain.
We were taught in Economics 101 that countries could not for long sustain large, ever-growing trade deficits. At a point, so it was claimed, the spree of the consumption-happy nation would be braked by currency-rate adjustments and by the unwillingness of creditor countries to accept an endless flow of IOUs from the big spenders. And that's the way it has indeed worked for the rest of the world, as we can see by the abrupt shutoffs of credit that many profligate nations have suffered in recent decades.
The U.S., however, enjoys special status. In effect, we can behave today as we wish because our past financial behavior was so exemplary -- and because we are so rich. Neither our capacity nor our intention to pay is questioned, and we continue to have a mountain of desirable assets to trade for consumables. In other words, our national credit card allows us to charge truly breathtaking amounts. But that card's credit line is not limitless.
The time to halt this trading of assets for consumables is now, and I have a plan to suggest for getting it done. My remedy may sound gimmicky, and in truth it is a tariff called by another name. But this is a tariff that retains most free-market virtues, neither protecting specific industries nor punishing specific countries nor encouraging trade wars. This plan would increase our exports and might well lead to increased overall world trade. And it would balance our books without there being a significant decline in the value of the dollar, which I believe is otherwise almost certain to occur.
We would achieve this balance by issuing what I will call Import Certificates (ICs) to all U.S. exporters in an amount equal to the dollar value of their exports. Each exporter would, in turn, sell the ICs to parties -- either exporters abroad or importers here -- wanting to get goods into the U.S. To import $1 million of goods, for example, an importer would need ICs that were the byproduct of $1 million of exports. The inevitable result: trade balance.
Because our exports total about $80 billion a month, ICs would be issued in huge, equivalent quantities -- that is, 80 billion certificates a month -- and would surely trade in an exceptionally liquid market. Competition would then determine who among those parties wanting to sell to us would buy the certificates and how much they would pay. (I visualize that the certificates would be issued with a short life, possibly of six months, so that speculators would be discouraged from accumulating them.)
For illustrative purposes, let's postulate that each IC would sell for 10 cents -- that is, 10 cents per dollar of exports behind them. Other things being equal, this amount would mean a U.S. producer could realize 10 percent more by selling his goods in the export market than by selling them domestically, with the extra 10 percent coming from his sales of ICs.
In my opinion, many exporters would view this as a reduction in cost, one that would let them cut the prices of their products in international markets. Commodity-type products would particularly encourage this kind of behavior. If aluminum, for example, was selling for 66 cents per pound domestically and ICs were worth 10 percent, domestic aluminum producers could sell for about 60 cents per pound (plus transportation costs) in foreign markets and still earn normal margins. In this scenario, the output of the U.S. would become significantly more competitive and exports would expand. Along the way, the number of jobs would grow.
Foreigners selling to us, of course, would face tougher economics. But that's a problem they're up against no matter what trade "solution" is adopted -- and make no mistake, a solution must come. (As Herb Stein said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.") In one way the IC approach would give countries selling to us great flexibility, since the plan does not penalize any specific industry or product. In the end, the free market would determine what would be sold in the U.S. and who would sell it. The ICs would determine only the aggregate dollar volume of what was sold.
To see what would happen to imports, let's look at a car now entering the U.S. at a cost to the importer of $20,000. Under the new plan and the assumption that ICs sell for 10 percent, the importer's cost would rise to $22,000. If demand for the car was exceptionally strong, the importer might manage to pass all of this on to the American consumer. In the usual case, however, competitive forces would take hold, requiring the foreign manufacturer to absorb some, if not all, of the $2,000 IC cost.
There is no free lunch in the IC plan: It would have certain serious negative consequences for U.S. citizens. Prices of most imported products would increase, and so would the prices of certain competitive products manufactured domestically. The cost of the ICs, either in whole or in part, would therefore typically act as a tax on consumers.
That is a serious drawback. But there would be drawbacks also to the dollar continuing to lose value or to our increasing tariffs on specific products or instituting quotas on them -- courses of action that in my opinion offer a smaller chance of success. Above all, the pain of higher prices on goods imported today dims beside the pain we will eventually suffer if we drift along and trade away ever larger portions of our country's net worth.
I believe that ICs would produce, rather promptly, a U.S. trade equilibrium well above present export levels but below present import levels. The certificates would moderately aid all our industries in world competition, even as the free market determined which of them ultimately met the test of "comparative advantage."
This plan would not be copied by nations that are net exporters, because their ICs would be valueless. Would major exporting countries retaliate in other ways? Would this start another Smoot-Hawley tariff war? Hardly. At the time of Smoot-Hawley we ran an unreasonable trade surplus that we wished to maintain. We now run a damaging deficit that the whole world knows we must correct.
For decades the world has struggled with a shifting maze of punitive tariffs, export subsidies, quotas, dollar-locked currencies, and the like. Many of these import-inhibiting and export-encouraging devices have long been employed by major exporting countries trying to amass ever larger surpluses -- yet significant trade wars have not erupted. Surely one will not be precipitated by a proposal that simply aims at balancing the books of the world's largest trade debtor. Major exporting countries have behaved quite rationally in the past and they will continue to do so -- though, as always, it may be in their interest to attempt to convince us that they will behave otherwise.
The likely outcome of an IC plan is that the exporting nations -- after some initial posturing -- will turn their ingenuity to encouraging imports from us. Take the position of China, which today sells us about $140 billion of goods and services annually while purchasing only $25 billion. Were ICs to exist, one course for China would be simply to fill the gap by buying 115 billion certificates annually. But it could alternatively reduce its need for ICs by cutting its exports to the U.S. or by increasing its purchases from us. This last choice would probably be the most palatable for China, and we should wish it to be so.
If our exports were to increase and the supply of ICs were therefore to be enlarged, their market price would be driven down. Indeed, if our exports expanded sufficiently, ICs would be rendered valueless and the entire plan made moot. Presented with the power to make this happen, important exporting countries might quickly eliminate the mechanisms they now use to inhibit exports from us.
Were we to install an IC plan, we might opt for some transition years in which we deliberately ran a relatively small deficit, a step that would enable the world to adjust as we gradually got where we need to be. Carrying this plan out, our government could either auction "bonus" ICs every month or simply give them, say, to less-developed countries needing to increase their exports. The latter course would deliver a form of foreign aid likely to be particularly effective and appreciated.
I will close by reminding you again that I cried wolf once before. In general, the batting average of doomsayers in the U.S. is terrible. Our country has consistently made fools of those who were skeptical about either our economic potential or our resiliency. Many pessimistic seers simply underestimated the dynamism that has allowed us to overcome problems that once seemed ominous. We still have a truly remarkable country and economy.
But I believe that in the trade deficit we also have a problem that is going to test all of our abilities to find a solution. A gently declining dollar will not provide the answer. True, it would reduce our trade deficit to a degree, but not by enough to halt the outflow of our country's net worth and the resulting growth in our investment-income deficit.
Perhaps there are other solutions that make more sense than mine. However, wishful thinking -- and its usual companion, thumb sucking -- is not among them. From what I now see, action to halt the rapid outflow of our national wealth is called for, and ICs seem the least painful and most certain way to get the job done. Just keep remembering that this is not a small problem: For example, at the rate at which the rest of the world is now making net investments in the U.S., it could annually buy and sock away nearly 4 percent of our publicly traded stocks.
In evaluating business options at Berkshire, my partner, Charles Munger, suggests that we pay close attention to his jocular wish: "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there." Framers of our trade policy should heed this caution – and steer clear of Squanderville. Source
Vol 4, No 541
Mar. 28th, 2008 @ 08:00 pm
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| » Cactus Cuties |
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Cactus Cuties is a group of singers from Lubbock, TX. Its members are girls, 13 or younger. In this video, you’ll hear them sing before 11,000 people.
Mar. 28th, 2008 @ 11:00 am
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| » The Legal Jihad (continued) |
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by Phyllis Chesler
I have been trying to find a publisher for a book titled The Islamification of America and guess what? No takers so far. I am ready to self-publish the work.
This is a very special kind of Gulag. The internet provides us with the most sophisticated and universal of platforms for such 21st-century “samizdats.”
We who write in the America are so far lucky. We are legally intimidated. We are silenced on campuses due to the “politically correct” ideologies that rule there. True, the American Jewish Committee recently paid for a full page New York Times ad signed by American college presidents who oppose the eternally-intended British boycott of Israeli academics and who bravely suggest that they be boycotted too. Well and good.
But guess who did not sign? Harvard, Yale, Vassar, California State University at Berkeley, Los Angeles, UCLA, San Francisco State, and of course, Norman Finkelstein's old perch, De Paul in Chicago. (Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they did sign in a Harry Potter kind of way in invisible ink).
But this is nothing compared to what Muslim intellectuals (and women and human beings) must endure in the Islamic world today. If they are lucky, they live in exile or in hiding and write under pseudonyms. A handful write openly and travel with bodyguards. Source
Feb. 16th, 2008 @ 08:00 am
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| » Hindu Extremists Intensify Anti-Christian Persecution |
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(AgapePress) - The president of Gospel for Asia says it appears that Hindu militants have declared an all-out war against Christians throughout India. Recently across that country, Christians have been falsely accused of crimes, arrested, and beaten -- all for witnessing to Hindus.
Dr. K.P. Yohannan is founder and president of Gospel for Asia, which trains native Indians for missionary work throughout India. He says GFA tells its workers to expect persecution as they serve the Lord.
The persecution and violence being waged against India's Christians is not being carried out or sanctioned by all Hindus but is being perpetrated by "extremists in the Hindu religion, like we have in any religion," Yohannan points out. "They are the ones who are taking the lead like the Taliban," he says.
"But this is not getting easier," the ministry leader continues. "I tell my brothers and sisters, let's not be looking for easy times in the days to come, because persecution is definitely on the increase, and it is in the midst of persecution and suffering that we are going to see the kingdom's work done."
Earlier this month, the government of Rajasthan became the sixth state in India to enact an anti-conversion law. In other states with such legislation, Christians have been targeted for attacks by Hindu extremists.
Nevertheless, Yohannan notes, Christians in India are standing strong, and the increased persecution has only increased the effectiveness of the church's witness across the country. "We have more people coming to Christ now," he says, "especially in places where the worst persecution is taking place."
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/4/172006f.asp
Apr. 17th, 2006 @ 06:00 am
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| » The Da Vinci Hoax |
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by Charles Colson
G. K. Chesterton famously said something to this effect: When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing-they believe in anything. A good example of this is Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum, in which a group of friends program a computer to "write" a book about secret hidden knowledge. Titled The Plan, the book is the result of random links between things like Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the Knights Templar, and other crackpot ideas. While The Plan was intended as a prank, other people take it seriously, with tragic results.
Well, Foucault's Pendulum shows us how gullible unbelieving people are. And this is particularly so in our postmodern age when truth doesn't matter. This phenomenon partly explains the remarkable success of The Da Vinci Code. Like Eco's novel, it's about a heretofore hidden knowledge that promises to let us in on the "true" history of Christianity. [My emphasis.]
Author Dan Brown gives us a Jesus who neither died on the cross nor rose from the dead. Instead, He married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. This "sacred blood line" is the treasure safeguarded by groups like the Knights Templar and the Masons. And the Catholic Church, in a desperate attempt to cover up this secret, murders those who threaten to expose it.
Devotees of The Da Vinci Code-like the fictional fans in Foucault's Pendulum-have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. They visit places mentioned in the novel, and "Da Vinci Tours" are a booming business. With the upcoming film, interest in The Da Vinci Code will explode. Christians need to seize this teaching opportunity, preparing ourselves to answer questions readers are asking. [My emphasis.]
The first is: Are the historical events portrayed in Brown's story true? Brown claims to have done extensive historical research and gives his readers no reason to doubt the novel's accuracy. Since the average person knows almost nothing about Christian history, they're vulnerable. For example, when Brown says that Knights Templar were put to death by the Catholic Church because they knew the "true story" about Jesus, people have no basis to question it, never having heard of the Knights Templar. Or when Brown says that at the Council of Nicea, the Vatican consolidated its power, most people are unaware that the Vatican didn't even exist in A.D. 325.
It is our job to expose the falsehoods. We can learn to answer Brown's lies with the truth by reading books like Darrell Bock's Breaking the Da Vinci Code and Erwin Lutzer's The Da Vinci Deception.
People flock to stories like The Da Vinci Code in part because all humans are searching for the secret knowledge that answers the mysteries of life. And when The Da Vinci Code debuts in May, millions more Americans will get a condensed tour de distortion. Knowing our neighbors will see this film, churches ought to begin to get ready now-preparing to answer questions about it and to tell our neighbors that there is no secret knowledge about God. It's all in the Bible and all true.
The good news is that The Da Vinci Code readers and viewers are seeking answers to the central questions of life. The challenge is for us to supply the true answers.
(c) 2006 Prison Fellowship. Used by permission.
Sidebar:
Materials and events are being produced to prepare Christians for the cinema release of The Da Vinci Code. Some of the organizations offering material include:
- Campus Crusade (http://www.ccci.org) -- The Da Vinci Code: A Companion Guide to the Movie, a 20-page mini-magazine
- Church Communication Network (http://www.ccnonline.net/) -- two satellite conferences, one for evangelism training and one as an outreach event timed to the release of the movie
- Josh McDowell / Beyond Belief (http://www.beyondbelief.com) -- The Da Vinci Code: A Quest for Answers, a paperback with on-line study guide
- Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer (http://www.davincideception.com/) -- The Da Vinci Deception Experience, a DVD-based group study with sermon aids
- Probe Ministries and EvanTell (http://www.evantell.org/) -- Redeeming The Da Vinci Code, a DVD-based small group study toolkit combining apologetics, evangelism training, and outreach materials
- Lee Strobel and Gary Poole (http://www.gods411.com/da-vinci-code/) -- Discussing The Da Vinci Code, a DVD-based group study filmed at locations mentioned in the novel
Apr. 11th, 2006 @ 06:00 pm
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| » Can Christians hate? |
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We think that love is the answer to all social problems. Problems are the result of sin. Our response to sin is to hate it.
King David said, "I do not sit (or associate) with deceitful men," Ps 26:4
"The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Prov 8:13
A righteous man hates falsehood . . . Prov 13:15
Apr. 10th, 2006 @ 11:00 pm
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| » Seth the Impossible, Part I |
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By Susan Darst Williams
Her husband had left her for another woman. She was alone with her three children for three years after the divorce. Then she became a born-again Christian, and started reading the Bible for the first time, cover to cover. She came to the sibling rivalry scene in Genesis. Cain kills Abel and blows town, and God sends Eve another son, Seth.
For the first time in her life, she heard a voice in her heart that she knew was the Holy Spirit of the living God. She was awed.
He said that He would give her a son and she should name him Seth because God had given him to her.
As if!
That was impossible!
She had no husband! And she already had three great kids. . . .
Click below for the rest of the story.
© DailySusan.org, All Rights Reserved.
http://www.dailysusan.com/wfdata/frame961-1005/pressrel93.asp
www.DailySusan.com
Apr. 9th, 2006 @ 09:30 pm
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| » America today |
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For the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, [Why?] because there is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. [The result?] Therefore the land mourns. Hosea 4:1 ff
Apr. 8th, 2006 @ 08:30 pm
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| » Wrong-way Phelps |
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Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles. – Prov 24:17
Fred Phelps, pastor of the independent Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., picketed the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., with a dozen of his family members and followers. They carried signs stating “Thank God for Maimed Soldiers,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Hates You.”
Phelps claimed the injuries and fatalities suffered by American military personnel are the product of God's wrath.
“God almighty is punishing this evil nation by killing their kids over in Iraq and by maiming, crippling and mangling their kids over in Iraq,” said Phelps. “This nation is going to continue to be punished by God until they repent, but we don't believe they're going to repent.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200604/NAT20060407a.html
Do not gloat over your brother's day, The day of his misfortune. And do not rejoice over the sons of Judah In the day of their destruction. – Obadiah 1:12
God hates sin and He will judge the sinner. Maybe Jesus has been judging America through the terrorists, tornadoes and hurricanes. We deserve it, but I don’t think it is scriptural to rejoice in the suffering of others. For ourselves, we can “consider it all joy when [we] encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of [our] faith produces endurance.” – James 1:2, 3
I am to rejoice in my suffering, not your suffering. Phelps has his head screwed on wrong.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Apr. 7th, 2006 @ 10:00 pm
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| » The Da Vinci Code |
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What you need to know about Dan Brown's book, The Da Vinci Code
By Susan Verstraete
Do you know someone who has read The Da Vinci Code? If you don't by now, you probably will. Dan Brown's suspense novel has been on the NY Times best-sellers list for over 100 weeks and, according to Brown's website, "has become one of the most widely read books of all time." A quick search of a national bookseller's website yielded no less than 13 books written about this novel, and a major motion picture based on the book is in the works, to be directed by Ron Howard, and starring Tom Hanks.
So what does this mean to Christians? The bad news is that the novel is blatantly anti-Christian. Using fiction, Brown presents half-truths and mis-information as factual, endorsing a belief system that seems appealing, but cannot rightly be called Christianity. The good news is that since The Da Vinci Code deals extensively with Christian history, the authenticity of the Bible, and the life of Jesus, unbelievers may be interested in discussing these issues, perhaps for the first time. Christians need to take advantage of this opportunity to discuss why they believe what they believe, offering direction to those confused by the claims in Brown's book. While a comprehensive critique is beyond the scope of this article, the following two points are important to the discussion.
The Da Vinci Code misrepresents what happened at Nicea.
Emperor Constantine called the counsel of Nicea in the year 325 AD. Official persecution of the church had only recently ended, and some of the approximately 318 bishops who attended the council bore the marks of scourging and other tortures endured because of their loyalty to Christ. These men did not come together to create a new belief system, but to write a creed expressing what the church already believed and what they had personally suffered to embrace. The chief doctrine under attack at the meeting was not the deity of Christ (a belief clearly taught by the apostles and held by the early church fathers). The main point of discussion at Nicea was the teaching that Jesus was co-eternal with the Father. Only two of the representatives present refused to sign the final creed, which stated:
We believe . . . in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things were made . . .
As Dr. James White comments, "Nicea was not creating some new doctrine, some new belief, but clearly, explicitly, defining truth against error." The members of the Counsel had no illusions that they created doctrine; they only codified it, believing that Scripture alone was the authority by which all teaching was to be judged.
The Da Vinci Code gives undue credence to unbiblical writings.
The gospels of Thomas and Philip were two of fifty-two ancient texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1947. Scholars agree that the texts are dated around 350-400 AD, but they disagree about the dating of the originals from which these may have been copied. Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, writing in about 180 AD, declares that heretics "boast that they possess more gospels than there really are.'' So it is conceivable that the original versions of these false gospels may be dated as early as the second century AD. But how did Irenaeus know how many gospels there really were? Are the "secret" gospels of Thomas and Philip authoritative gospels as many modern writers suggest? If they were written early, and known of by Christian leaders like Irenaeus, why were they not viewed as authoritative then, and included in the canon of Scripture?
Unlike the questionable dating of the Nag Hammadi texts, all the New Testament books were undoubtedly written during the first century. All were accepted by the church as inspired Scripture because they taught doctrines in harmony with all the other books of the Bible. This cannot be said about the "gospels" of Thomas and Phillip which are filled with inconsistencies. The early church recognized some New Testament books as Scripture even as others were being written. Others were recognized over time as God directed His church in the truth.8 Existing papyrus manuscripts from the early church (before A.D. 325) contain parts of every book of the New Testament, except 1st Timothy, showing that the canon of Scripture was certainly established before the Counsel of Nicea and not by it as some have suggested. Simply said, God created the canon through the evolving acceptance of the early church. There is no evidence that the "gospels" of Thomas and Phillip were ever given such acceptance.
Summary
When talking to someone about The Da Vinci Code, it might be tempting to get entangled in he-said-she-said arguments over historical and factual errors in the book. Rather than speculating about what Da Vinci may or may not have hidden in his paintings, instead of entertaining the question of Jesus' marital status, encourage those interested in this fictional book to read the true historical accounts of Christ's life—the four canonical Gospels. Talk to them about the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and explain why it was necessary. Tell them what your life was like before and after you encountered the resurrected Jesus. Make the most of this opportunity!
Copyright 2005 Susan Verstraete
http://www.ccwonline.org/davinci.html
Apr. 1st, 2006 @ 09:00 pm
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| » Top Ten Excuses for Being Late to Church |
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by R.C. Sproul Jr.
10. I started reading ETC on the potty and I just lost track of the time.
9. I couldn't hear my "Resounding Trumpet" clock alarm because I was up all night reading Left Behind.
8. I was listening to Harold Camping on the radio and he ran late.
7. I drove all the way here at 5 miles per hour so my car wouldn't do much damage in the event of the rapture.
6. The service ran late last week, so I figured you owed me a few minutes.
5. I stopped at Barnes & Noble to pick up Joey Pipa's book on the Sabbath.
4. The dog ate my wife's head covering.
3. Why are you bothering me about this? I have peace in my spirit about it.
2. The alarm didn't go off because we turn off the electricity at midnight. We don't want to encourage the heathens at the electric company to break the Sabbath.
1. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to gather up all the eggs my chickens laid.
http://highlands.gospelcom.net/articles/topTenExcuses.php
Mar. 29th, 2006 @ 09:00 pm
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| » The object of hatred |
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Men of bloodshed hate the blameless (Prov 29:10). Have you ever wondered who are the blameless that are the object of hatred?
The synonym for blameless describes those who are the innocent, the irreproachable. Reproach brings to mind the words of the apostle Paul. He writes:
“Do all things without grumbling or disputing; that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world. . . Phil 2:14 ff
What an amazing coincidence that Paul would use the very two words that the thesaurus uses in conjunction: blameless and innocent. Paul even tells us that we are to be above “reproach,” the third word used in the thesaurus. I wonder if Paul had a laptop.
We are to be above reproach, which disallows grumbling and disputing. Does that mean we will live happily ever after? No, for we will be hated, even as Jesus, sinless and blameless, was hated.
Prov 29 concludes: An unjust man is abominable to the righteous, And he who is upright in the way is abominable to the wicked.
There is no love lost between the two, for we hate the sin which drives men from Jesus, while the sinner hates the righteous who convicts the wicked of sin.
Mar. 26th, 2006 @ 09:00 pm
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| » The first labor union |
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Acts 19:21 Now after these things were finished, Paul purposed in the spirit to go to Jerusalem after he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, saying, "After I have been there, I must also see Rome." 22 And having sent into Macedonia two of those who ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while. 23 And about that time there arose no small disturbance concerning the Way. 24 For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsmen; 25 these he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades, [labor union] and said, "Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business.
It appears that we have a labor union mentioned in the Bible. The tradesman, like any of us, were concerned with prosperity (prosperity meaning success). Prosperity, though, is a reward to the righteous ( Prov 13:21). However, the apostle Paul teaches that contentment is to be more desired than success (Phil 4:11, 12). The apostle John prays, “. . that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 1:2). He prays that we would succeed as we spiritually prosper.
Our focus should not be on success for the sake, or pride, of success, but on living a righteous life. The result will be a life of contentment.
Mar. 24th, 2006 @ 10:00 pm
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| » Man's steps are ordained by the LORD . . . |
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. . . how then can man understand his way? Prov 20:24
Six days a week a truck backs up to the dock and picks up a load. It is a one man job. As long as he does his job, I have no concerns. Today, however, it was snowing. I knew the driver would have trouble. Unfortunately, I never know when he will show.
As I worked in my office I occasionally looked at the snowfall. Periodically, I would go outside and shovel the snow away from the door. It was a wet, heavy snow that was determined to block the door. Normally, I leave the office two or five times a day for tasks in town. Visibility was down, the road was slick and I was trying to decide whether, or when, I should go.
Finally, I got into the truck and as I started to leave I said, "Lord, why am I going now? I don't really have to. I could go later, but I'm going if that's what you want."
Six blocks later I saw the truck and two (not one) men working by the dock. I could have driven by, after all it's not my job, but I pulled up to help. Because of the snow, it took three of us to do the job.
Of course I realized immediately why God had me leave when I did. Those men needed me, and God used me. More than that He let me see that He really is in control. He gave me a desire to be more aware of Him, to see His hand in the mundane.
Mar. 20th, 2006 @ 10:30 pm
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| » There must be justice |
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“Let us defy the very morals of society instilled upon us by our parents, our relatives and of course Jesus.” -Matthew Cloyd, church burner.
The first news reports, after the capture of three young men in the church burnings in Alabama, were that these college students did it for fun. Later, in a whisper, I heard that they were self-described satanists.
Gene Veith, Cultural Editor for World magazine wrote, “Many adults do not realize that nihilism (A revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake. A complete denial of all established authority and institutions.) has become a major strain in the youth culture, especially among intelligent, creative young people, who become convinced of their superiority to their peers and to adult society. They typically become cynics, believing neither in the liberal pap they are force-fed at school nor in the more conservative ideals of their parents. They scorn the church, which they blame for not understanding or appreciating them. Their attitude is reinforced by their music, and they relate to everything with mockery, irony, and theatrical self-displays.”
SIDEBAR Veith, in the March 25 issue, wrote that these men reminded him of the case of Leopold and Loeb. I mention it only because Clarence Darrow was the attorney for the defense of these two murderers and it is an interesting piece of history.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/Accountoftrial.html
I believe that narcissim (an exceptional interest in and admiration for yourself) in the parents has contributed to the nihilism in the youth.
As for the church burners, The execution of justice is joy for the righteous, . . Prov 21:15
http://www.christianexaminer.com/Articles/Articles%20Mar06/Art_Mar06_16.html
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060307/NEWS02/603070339/1009
Mar. 19th, 2006 @ 08:00 pm
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| » Why did my son have to die? |
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Cindy Sheehan asked President Bush, "Why did my son have to die in Iraq?"
Another mother asked President Kennedy, "Why did my son have to die in Viet Nam?"
Another mother asked President Truman, "Why did my son have to die in Korea?
Another mother asked President F.D. Roosevelt, "Why did my son have to die at Iwo Jima?"
Another mother asked President W. Wilson, "Why did my son have to die on the battlefield of France?"
Yet another mother asked President Lincoln, "Why did my son have to die at Gettysburg?"
And yet another mother asked President G. Washington, "Why did my son have to die near Valley Forge?"
Then long, long ago, a mother asked, "Heavenly Father, why did my Son have to die on a cross outside of Jerusalem?"
The answers to all these are similar – “that others may have life and dwell in peace, happiness and freedom."
June Kliewer adds, referring to Jesus: But this SON'S death brings peace, happiness, and freedom not only in this life, but through all eternity if we put our faith in Him
Mar. 16th, 2006 @ 08:00 pm
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