Reflections from a shallow pool

Ron Santo - humble hero

2010-12-04T15:07:00.003-05:00

Ron Santo – humble hero

A hero has gone from among us. Ron Santo, sportscaster and former third baseman for the Chicago Cubs finally lost his battle with cancer and his lifelong enemy, diabetes on December second. Santo was exemplary in so many ways. He was a ten-time National League All-star pick, four times a Golden Glove winner and awarded the Lou Gehrig Award in 1973 by Phi Delta Theta. He scored 1,138 runs, batted in 1,133, put out almost 4,600 runners, led the league in triples in 1964 and got on base 3,400 times. That is the stuff of eight and nine digit salaries these days. This brings up the most noticeable way that Ron Santo was exemplary.

It may seem trite to note that Ron Santo was a different breed of professional athlete than we often see today. His exploits were outstanding. His ego was not. Ron Santo was a humble man. He did not show up in the celebrity gossip columns or the police blotter. He did his job and went home to his family. He was far from unusual in this during the years that he played. Very few players in the sixties and seventies did any trash-talking or grandstanding in press conferences. Those who did were not usually well regarded by their teammates or the fans.

This is a major reason that Ron Santo was so beloved by those who were his fans during his career. It was the humility that cemented the affection and made it so long-lasting that Santo was still well regarded long after he retired from the field and will be easily and fondly remembered for many years now that he is gone. Ron was a phenomenon on the baseball diamond but he saw himself as a common guy who just happened to work on a baseball diamond. The third base line was his office. He did his job and then he took off the uniform with the number 10 on it and went home. The closest he ever came to bragging was to run down the third base line and click his heels after a home win. Ron Santo will be greatly missed by those who miss a more innocent type of professional athlete. I like to think I can picture number 10 going along a golden road, clicking his heels. Farewell, Ron!

Murder by spotlight

2010-02-20T22:45:00.004-05:00

Murder by spotlight

It's happening again. The media are stalking some new prey. There's blood in the water and they are closing in for the kill. Some of you may say that this is ridiculous, the media doesn't kill anyone. Perhaps Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Anna Nicole Smith and some others may disagree with you.

Being pursued, hounded, watched, spied upon and scrutinized doing even your most routine and normal actions over a prolonged period has to have a marked effect on a person's mental well-being and behavior. Indeed, such effects have been well documented in groups such as survivors of the Holocaust and prisoners of war. How can it be that we, as a society, have missed this relationship when it comes to celebrities in stressful situations? Can it be that we actually don't see it or do we just refuse to care? After all these people have courted the cameras before to achieve their celebrity status! This is the same mentality that says a prostitute or stripper can't possibly be raped by virtue of the nature of their professions and it's a mentality that has no place in modern society.

Why have celebrities become media whores according to the rest of society, forced to perform at any and every time someone else chooses? What makes us think we have the right or the need to see how a celebrity dresses when they go to the market? Furthermore, why should anyone else get to criticize and comment on how a celebrity looks during those private moments? Those times are not performances. They are not intended for public consumption. What happened to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? Do these cherished rights not apply to someone in the public eye?

Furthermore, there seem to be several double standards at play here! A President admits to marital infidelity and nobody says he should step down or recuse himself from making speeches but, when a golf pro makes the same admission, members of the media begin to comment that he should concentrate on his sex addiction rehab and stop pursuing his livelihood. Beauty queens are cashiered for youthful indiscretions in men's magazines prior to their pageants but there is no mention of any need to forgive other public figures who consorted with known traitors and terrorists in their younger days.

Wake up, America! If you don't think the major media outlets are calling the shots, then you just aren't paying any attention. Look at the way that our opinions are shaped relative to the items cited above! Why was it okay for E!and Inside Edition to hound poor Anna Nicole Smith to death? Shouldn't there be some sort of limits put on this type of media feeding frenzy? Some may say that the media didn't force Anna Nicole to commit suicide! I say that type of thinking carries a distinct aroma of bovine residue and though the media played a huge role there was one other group that was even more culpable.

Those “inquiring minds” that the tabloids and tabloid programs claim as consumers are the most to blame. That's right! Every time someone buys one of those tabloid rags or turns on Inside Edition or TMZ (God, help us!) they are feeding the beast that is stalking other people to death! Isn't it time that we all come to our senses before there is another tragedy? How many more have to die in the name of entertainment? I think it would save a lot of time and be a lot more honest if we would just bring back the Circus Maximus. At least the Romans weren't hypocrites about their love for watching people suffer!

There ought to be a law

2009-09-17T19:37:00.003-04:00

Or perhaps there already is a law that makes propagating malicious programming on the web a criminal offense. The latest perpetrators are the folks at TotalSecurity.com. These worthless pukes have been running around sending out their Total Security program. This program is a well-known piece of malicious rubbish that infiltrates computers and begins to tell the owners of those computers that they are infected with malicious programs and viruses. Of course they are, the program's name is Total Security! The program does a fictitious scan of the "infected" computer always finding the same number of viruses, no matter which computer it is scanning and then offers to clean up this mess for an exorbitant fee.

This is nothing short of extortion. These people send nasty programs around to plague your computer so you will buy protection from nasty programs, which they propagated in the first place! The worst thing about this is that these criminals have names and addresses that any child could find. This program comes from TotalSecurity.com, which has to be registered somewhere to be on the web. The name and location of the business can be found easily by plugging the name into a domain merchant's site, such as GoDaddy.com, which then spits out the name of the parent company and its address.

So the question becomes, why are these jokers still in business instead of behind bars? Get on the stick, police forces of the world and lock these miscreants up! How often do you have criminals hand you their names and addresses so easily?

Kevin Skinner won! Now what?

2009-09-17T02:40:00.003-04:00

This season of America’s Got Talent on NBC was off the hook. There was more actual talent on the stage than in any previous year, so much that on some nights Piers scarcely touched his beloved buzzer button. Out of this plethora of rising stardom emerged a man unlike most of the others. He was a simple man, a man of the country, a man laconic of speech but enormous in talent. He had to leave his job as a chicken catcher behind because his boss wouldn’t hold it for him. (Your loss, Mr, Legree! You should have sponsored the man and gotten all that publicity. You’ve been hanging out with your chickens too long.)

Kevin Skinner sings simple songs in a simple way. His approach to singing is honest, earthy, elemental, his delivery like a soft, warm, summer rain that refreshes without chilling. He is so lacking in the crafty artfulness so many singers now impose on the songs they sing that his modulation is scarcely detectable. Kevin came to the contest a diamond in the rough with a backwards baseball cap and an old cloth coat, looking like David coming to find his brothers. He took out his guitar and sang and everybody quit wondering why he was there. He went on to win the whole thing despite overwhelming odds.

Now comes the reward! Kevin is to be given his own show in Las Vegas, Nevada. I am reminded of a story I once read about a Scottish nobleman who had come to America and became part of the fur trade during the time of the mountain men. He had met and become friends with Jim Bridger. At one Rendezvous, he gave Bridger a suit of armor he had shipped over from England as a present. Bridger had no use for the armor and cached it before going back into the mountains to hunt and trap for the winter. The reward Kevin Skinner received seems to be as inappropriate as that suit of armor.

Las Vegas is a noisy, profane excuse for a town, trying desperately to live down its history. It is mostly glitter, with very little, if any substance. The closer one gets to the Strip, the truer this becomes. Enter Kevin Skinner! Not only do I believe Kevin will be uncomfortable with Vegas, I doubt Vegas will have much of an idea what to do with Kevin Skinner. I envision something along the lines of The Electric Horseman. Only on the movie screen does glitz and glamor have any dealings with honesty and simplicity.

Hollyweird has been assuming again! They believe that the lifelong dream of every performer is to have packed houses to play to every day and make bundles of money while they’re still a hot property. They have missed, once again, the enduring attractiveness of truth, the value of simplicity. Look at George Strait and Reba McEntire! They sing simple songs as honestly as they can and their careers have lasted decades.

Don’t get me wrong! I hope Las Vegas and Kevin Skinner find a way to thrive together. Kevin won a tremendous victory and is incredibly deserving of a fitting reward. The problem is that Las Vegas just doesn’t seem a fitting place or a fitting culture for a simple man, singing simple songs from his heart. Nashville or Branson, perhaps, but not Las Vegas!

And now a message from the Belove'd Leader

2009-09-03T18:20:00.004-04:00

Here comes more liberal Leftism, folks! Barack Obama is planning to make a speech to the schoolkids of our nation. Now that, in itself, is not so unusual or scary. Other presidents have spoken to our children. President Bush told them to stay off drugs in a televised address. Other presidents have had other messages for our students over the years. However, this is the first time that a Presidential speech aimed at students has included a lesson plan. And what a lesson plan this one is!

Students are encouraged to think about what the President is saying to them and what the President wants them to do. Isn't this an awesome load for kids not even in their teens? By the way, just exactly what does the President intend to say to our kids and ask them to do? Where is the politically responsible content in this lesson plan? Where are the questioning behaviors? Why is there no direction to ask kids if they agree with what the President just said or what they think we should do about whatever President Obama brings up?

The answer to that seems clear to me. The NEA was in lockstep with the liberals to get the Obamas into the White House and they are using the President's bully pulpit to press home their advantage to further indoctrinate our kids in what they deem to be proper socialization. When did our schools become all about how our kids are socialized instead of about the 3 R's? When will we realize that this is the garbage that takes up the time that is putting us farther and farther behind the rest of the industrialized nations in academics?

Fortunately for us, we homeschool our sons and the one that we have yet to finish off will be watching the speech with some additional questions. We are going to teach him to think for himself, not to sit around wondering what Barack Obama wants him to do. The Liberals want everyone to think alike, to act alike and have the same values, as long as they are liberal values, liberal thoughts and liberal actions. That is why they want our school children to be thinking about what President Obama wants them to do. Given some of Barack Obama's supporters and stances he has taken on issues our family cares about, I shudder to think what President Obama wants my sons to do.

How gullible are you - VroomLive

2009-08-24T16:48:00.008-04:00

Talk about a tax on people who are bad at math! VroomLive is the ultimate in this arena! I was recently joining some additional social sites when I came across a link on one of them for something called VroomLive. It was represented as a way to make money online and save on things I purchase. When I checked it out, I found some incredible information on the How it Works page.

The way you purchase things on VroomLive is by buying Vrooms. Each Vroom costs $1.00. Each Vroom you use removes $.25 from the price of the item. The person who gets the item is the one who Vrooms it to zero dollars. Does anyone else see the reason this should be illegal?

This is basically an auction where every bid costs you a dollar, whether you get the item or not. In the final analysis, the item costs four times as much as its listed price. This will happen with every last item sold on VroomLive according to this page. The reason nobody has complained so far I think is that nobody ends up paying the whole price for an item. I'd be screaming bloody murder if I had to pay anything for an item I did not receive. That's not the way an auction works, Vroom staff!

The FTC needs to look into this now. According to a local auctioneer I talked to about this, it seems fishy to him, especially when he heard that people would be paying for each bid they make whether they win the item or not. There just doesn't seem to be any way this can be legal. I've never heard of charging people to bid. Auctions are supposed to be a way for the seller to get more value out of items due to the competition. A buyer can get some good bargains provided they are shrewd and don't tip their hand. Everybody has fun but nobody gets anything for nothing and nobody pays anything for nothing either!

Let me know what you think!

School Superintendent or Demi-god?

2009-06-16T23:42:00.005-04:00

Well, boys and girls, it has happened again! Another school administrator has declared herself a demi-god, capable of overruling societal norms, commonly accepted behavior, the Constitution of the United States and just good old common sense!

Suzanne Lukas is the latest object of self-deification! She is the Superintendent of Bonny Eagle High School which held its commencement on June 12. One graduate (Yes, I called him a graduate, MS Lukas, because he should have graduated that day.) Justin Denney blew a kiss to his mother as he approached to receive his diploma. MS Lukas immediately ordered the young man back to his seat stating that "There's no fooling around up here". Really, MS Lukas? No fooling around at graduation? You seem to need to extract that stick from your backside and start looking around a little.

Every year, the news media brings us stories that show graduates of our service academies throwing their hats in the air at commencement. As an Air Force retiree, I can tell you for a fact that at any other time that would be considered conduct not becoming an officer. Are you saying that graduations are so hallowed, so sanctified that nothing should be allowed to interfere with your reverie? Wake up! It's a school, not a church. There is a big difference between celebrating and fooling around. Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls!

Are you going to tell us that graduations are not cause for celebration? Should we get hold of some of your classmates on Facebook and Classmates and find out how you acted at your graduations? I'm sure it would make interesting reading!

This is just another instance of a school official who has totally forgotten what schools and especially graduations are all about. It's all about the kids. It's not about your rules or any phony sanctification you attach to the ceremony. It's supposed to be about those kids and what they have accomplished. They are passing from your institution into the world and this ceremony was to be their big, memorable send-off; the last thing you did for them. Too bad that you ruined it so that now all anybody is talking about is you! For shame! Anybody who can forget that a graduation is all about the kids ought not to be in charge of one, ever again.

Digital TV So Far Not So Good

2009-06-14T19:08:00.006-04:00

The transition of the broadcast stations to Digital TV has not gone smoothly despite the delays, subsidies, millions of messages and public service announcements. Nielsen has estimated that 2.8 million households are still totally unprepared. There are households that were unable to get the government coupons because there were no coupons available, households that were told they were not eligible for the coupons, and still other households who couldn't afford the boxes even with the coupons. There are also households that don't seem to care about the loss of broadcast TV.

Locally there is one household that bought two converter boxes, without the aid of the hard-to-get coupons. Did this solve all the problems for these people? Oh, contraire! Two converter boxes leaves this family four boxes short, so now they have four TVs that are only fit for video game use or recycling as boat anchors. One of the converter boxes continually drops channels which it fails to find on their small, indoor antenna. Thus, entire evenings of programming are sometimes lost through the whims of the converter box.

This family also cares for the wife's elderly mother, onto whose TV the other converter box was connected. She continually gets confused about which remote to use. The error is easily detected when another family member is in the living room and suddenly hears white noise begin to blare from the old lady's room, at which time a family member must go in and set the situation right once again. It is also reported by this senior citizen that her box keeps turning off spontaneously. Whether such is actually the case, or whether the problem is entirely rooted in operator error the family has yet to determine.

All of this expense, at $60 per box and $28 per antenna, was visited upon this family without their consent. They didn't get to vote on it. They lost a lot of cheap entertainment and regained very little of it. The government, in the guise of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), tells us the change was necessary to free up more bandwidth in the communications spectrum for first responders. I find this to be a curious reason since what I learned of signal propagation during my time in the military taught me that the bandwidth of a signal is inversely proportional to the smallest effective pulse duration the signal uses, i.e. the smaller the pulse duration, the higher the bandwidth. Now we are talking about digital encoding of television signals which is going to squeeze even more information into the same 6 MHz of bandwidth used by the now defunct analog signals.

This requires signals to be compressed. This causes smaller effective durations of information (pulses) which, in turn, should raise the bandwidths. However, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) decided to go with a system that can have up to a 55 to 1 reduction in the bits of information that actually make it from the transmitter to your television set. Hmm! Still 6 MHz per channel, even more channels and a big loss of signal information? Just what was this big change all about then?

For one thing, it will move the bandwidth used by television signals to another part of the frequency spectrum since the carrier waves used for digital signals are far different from those used by analog signals. Another reason for the change was, in part, a bailout of sorts for the television industry. Since the late sixties, television networks have basically been broadcasting on two separate networks.

They sent out analog signals to Mr. and Mrs. Public and digital signals to the cable and satellite companies. What do you think that cable box on your TV has been doing all these years? It has been converting digital signals for use by your analog television. This is why folks who already have cable or satellite service didn’t need to buy converter boxes to keep getting the broadcast channels. All that was needed for this final switch was to build converter boxes for the folks who don’t or can’t pay to watch TV. What they also didn’t tell us is that digital transmissions are very susceptible to atmospheric attenuation.

The moral of the story is that this switch to digital TV had more to do with convenience for the broadcasting networks and an en masse shift of their signals to a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum that could allow the change to be nuanced as a boon to our friendly fire and police professionals. So the next time you get pixellated transmissions because of a thunderstorm on the night you were hoping to find out who won America’s Got Talent, buck up and know that you’re doing your part to make our country safer! Then you can turn off the set and go play Parcheesi!

Fear me

2009-04-18T20:42:00.010-04:00

I wasn't aware when I got up this morning that I had become someone for people to fear. The country I served well and faithfully for over twenty years is now poised to add me to watch lists and terrorist alerts should I show too much evidence of being disgruntled. After all, I believe in such heinous things. I believe that Jesus Christ is the one and only Son of God and that He, not Barack Obama, is the only possible savior of the human race and I openly practice behaviors related to this belief and share my belief with others. I believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception. I am apprehensive of the intentions of the current administration towards the Second Amendment.

Apparently this makes me a security risk, according to Janet Napolitano. It's strange how such beliefs did not make me unable to hold a high security clearance when I was in the Air Force doing Intelligence work. Maybe it's because I'm too honest.

I tend to speak or write what's on my mind. Maybe I shouldn't tell people I listen to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson. Maybe I should quit telling folks that I think it's not moral to kill innocent babies in the womb. Maybe I should quit telling people I am a Desert Storm veteran. You know Timothy McVeigh was a Desert Storm veteran and look what he did. This seems to be MS Napolitano's justification for putting veterans under the microscope. One whacko out of how many thousands of Desert Storm vets? But wait, don't forget Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Whitman! They were veterans, too! I suggest you start watching Senator Kerry, too! Wasn't he a rather famously disgruntled veteran who threw his medals at the White House? Oh, I forgot! Those weren't actually his medals.

I know you supposedly apologized for the language in that report, MS Napolitano. I gave my grandfather an apology like that one once. My dad immediately cracked me across my smart butt and told me I'd better say it like I meant it. Like I said, I only gave Grandpa an apology like that ONCE.

By the way, I was wondering about that report itself. When I was in the Air Force I dealt with a great deal of classified information. If any report I handled which was labeled "For Official Use Only" had made its way onto the internet, the Air Force would have cheerfully presented me with a one-way all expenses paid trip to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where I would stay in the no luxury accommodations of the federal penitentiary. Are the rules so much different on Capital Hill? (When we get out of the current money mess, I'll start calling it Capitol Hill again.)

So, how about it, MS Napolitano? Am I to understand that any veteran who is critical of the current administration and its policies is to be considered an extremist, a terrorist, a traitor to the country he or she fought for? Are we to be banned from ownership of weapons? We once took up weapons to support and defend that which you now claim we are out to destroy. I weep for what my country has become.

Oh, well! I could be in worse company. I am a veteran like my grandfathers, my uncles, my brother and brother-in-law and my wife. I believe in the right of American citizens to freely bear arms like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. I also recall stories of another man who was considered an extremist, terrorist and a traitor by his country. They nailed Him to a tree, as I recall.

Love, law and reality

2009-04-01T20:23:00.005-04:00

I think it has become much too easy to be labeled in our society. People get labeled all the time for a myriad of reasons. Some of the labels are warranted. Some aren't. The problem is that there are some labels that are so potent that they stay with a person for a lifetime, whether they were warranted or not, and these labels can ruin people's lives.

Little boys, as young as six, are being labeled in this way. I remember reading that it happened to a boy of about that age who tried to kiss a little girl he liked. Not so very many years ago, that was considered natural and normal behavior for little boys who were beginning to discover little girls. But I guess that was a different time. It almost seems like it was an alternate reality now; that time in which I was a child. It was expected that little boys and girls were going to begin to explore the mysteries of the attractions between the sexes.

However, this little boy was expelled. He was tried in a court of law. He was labeled a sex offender. His life is ruined forever. Isn't this an excessive punishment for a little boy just beginning to understand that there is a difference between boys and girls?

Then there are the labels that have been used for many, many years. Let me give you a scenario. A boy and girl meet in school and they date for some years. He is a couple of years older. Their attraction for each other takes a natural course and they have intercourse. Should this boy now be labeled a sex offender because of some arbitrary age limit that has nothing to do with the feeling these two young people have for each other?

Do not misunderstand me! I do not advocate sexual assault or statutory rape. I don't even advocate pre-marital sex! I just think that our society should go a little way towards helping our children avoid actions that will ruin their lives. The pressure to engage in sexual activity is bearing down upon children as it never has before. It is in the movies, TV, music, websites and conversations that surround our kids every day.

Have we really become a One-Mistake culture? It doesn't seem so when we deal with celebrities. How many times have some of the more famous celebrity divas been in court over the past five years? Maybe that's more of the message we are sending our children. Backing over a paprazzo's foot is okay if you have plenty of money, but ordinary little boys are banned from a normal life forever for doing something normal.

Now we have a teen celebrity who admits she is dating a man who is twenty. I am not pre-supposing that anything untoward has happened nor that it will. As far as I know, the young lady in this situation is just that, a young lady and a Christian whose values mean a lot to her. However, attraction is attraction and things do happen no matter how fervently couples are committed to waiting. If anything should happen, the current system says that legal action could be taken against this young man, whether the coupling were consensual or not. Why?

We are so messed up as a society when it comes to appropriate ages for certain activities. At 16, a young girl can decide to emancipate herself from her parents, or have an abortion without parental consent, or drive a car that could kill dozens of others if used irresponsibly but she is not empowered to make a decision that will keep a boy she loves from a life that is ruined forever. The boy, for his part, may drive at 16, must register for the Selective Service at 18, can serve in the Armed Forces at 18 but cannot have a beer when he comes home on leave. And God help him if he comes home from the hell of war and makes love to his sweetheart who is still only 17.

It all seems so very cruel and arbitrary. It's a minefield of laws and contradictions that is maiming and crippling the lives of the very children we say we are trying to protect.

Craigslist: Oo-ooh, that smell!

2009-03-25T11:31:00.006-04:00

I want to hear from everyone who has had trouble with ads they have clicked on Craigslist. Recently, doing some job searching, I have been getting the same treatment from employers I contacted through craigslist. They sent me a reply to my resume` and say I need to go through some other application to qualify for an interview. Today a reply to a resume` sent me here: http://www.nationalcreditreport.com/lp/ncr1/index.php?cd=32 Being the observant guy I am, I saw the two asterisks by the word Free. I checked the disclaimers and found that the "Free" credit check would cost me $14.95 a month or $179.40 per year. Free? That stuff will grow mighty nice roses, pal! This is a scam. It's phishing. Anyway, I'd had enough, so I reported them to IC3. Have any of the rest of you been having this type of problem with craigslist ads? Sound off!

I also saw a blurb somewhere where law enforcement officials have said craigslist is complicit in millions of dollars worth of prostitution. The owner of craigslist fired back that they had nothing to do with that kind of business. My question would be, if that is so, what lies under the heading Erotic Services on your site? I know those are Marriage Counselors, right? Give me a break!

Windmills, anyone?

2009-03-24T10:52:00.004-04:00

Check out this comic strip! Wind turbines may be the wave of the future but in this one they meet up with a blast from the past! Enjoy!

Alternative Energy Revolution

Things They Don't Tell You

2009-03-21T20:01:00.008-04:00

I am becoming convinced that, short of one or two tutoring companies I have found, there is no substantive, legitimate telecommuting work available on the entire worldwide web. Every work-at-home or survey site I have responded to ends up being one of very few types of scams or dead-ends. People I know have referred to SPAM as an acronym standing for stuff posing as meat and folks online refer to SPAM as stuff posing as mail. I prefer to think of these sites as SPAW, stuff posing as work. These sites are set up to do one thing and one thing only. They exist to sell the unwary job applicant garbage he or she can ill afford. We will begin at the beginning.

1. Job ads on (fill in your favorite job search site) As often as not there are dozens of these ads set up to trap the unwary. They usually promise outstanding pay. There seems to be no other rhyme or reason to them, however. I have found them on craigslist and other job search sites under General Labor, Writing, Admin, Customer Service, Nonprofit, Marketing and Web. Some are as obvious as the home improvement firm that is supposedly looking for appointment setters. They receive your resume` and respond that you need to fill out one simple form for which they provide a link. The link sends you to a form that allows you to sign up for their home improvement service, as a customer.

Most of these ads will send you an email for your inquiry. The email includes a statement saying you have been approved. I have never been turned down, by the way. There is also a link to go to their site to check out what they do. That's when they start to become a little different.

2. Check out the Terms Of Service carefully! Very few of the sites you end up at will make it clear that you are signing up for a free trial. To get to that nugget, you must dig through the Terms of Service file which is written by lawyers with one purpose in mind. These "Terms" are labyrinths designed to keep those with little time to waste or no legal training from discovering how short is the free period and how high is the price of missing out on that period. The subscription after the trial, some of which are as short as 7 days, can be $69.95 per month or more! For this they provide you with links to either surveys or offers you can complete. Oh, joy! This is another point of differentiation.

3. Offer sites These insidious dens of vipers should be illegal. Consider, they offer you a nominal sum, say $10 to sign up for some "offer" that will cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars over the next year to 3 years. Talk about a Pigeon Drop! And the ONLY way you can get the nominal sum is to commit to the costly contract. These people aren't even honest to the people they are shilling for, because they tell you in the intro literature that you can cancel the offers right away and they will still pay you. They probably know what I know. I used to work for a mobile phone company and I am painfully aware of how hard it is to cancel most of these free trial "offers".

4. Survey sites Some of these also try to suck you into a free trial. They all go through the same start up. They start you out with surveys that extract every bit of demographic information they can get about you. They tell you that this is so they can match you with the surveys that will best fit you. Then the other surveys begin to arrive and you start to notice something. You can spend anywhere from 2 to 20 minutes filling out a survey only to be told something like, "We are sorry but you are not qualified for this survey". After all the demographic info they gather at the outset, how do they not know which surveys you are qualified to complete?

5. Secret Shopper programs So here's the deal! You sign up for their program and then you get to go buy some of their product. Then you write up a report of what you thought of the product and the service and submit it and the register tape for reimbursement and to get paid for your time. This might be nice if you had a steady job to allow you to buy the products in the first place. I put this under that same old rule for applying for work. Never pay to work!

Do you still want to go into a work-at-home scheme? I wish you luck, sincerely. You are going to need it and another good job before you're through!

Toxic TV- Family Guy

2009-03-08T22:15:00.003-04:00

"It seems today that all you see
is violence in movies and sex on TV
But where are those good old fashioned values
On which we used to rely" Excerpt from Family Guy theme lyrics

They sure aren't on the Family Guy!

Foist upon us in 1999 by Seth MacFarlane, Family Guy is an on-going cesspool of bathroom humor, sex, gratuitous violence and outright perversion that would make Homer Simpson blush and the kids from South Park snigger all day long. It's no wonder MacFarlane developed this show since he gets to write, direct, produce and play numerous parts. Sid Caesar, you say? Oh, contraire! While there is indeed talent here, it is not suitable for the prime-time airwaves.

Family Guy is a potpourri of sitcom stereotypes. Peter is the quintessential idiotic suburban dad. He is vain, gluttonous, oversexed, morbidly obese and terminally moronic. Of course Lois, his wife, is somewhat more intelligent at times and has a fabulous figure, aka King of Queens or Life With Jim and does not seem to find her gelatinous spouse sexually repugnant. Chris, the eldest son, is a chip off of Peter's warped block in almost every way except sexually. Meg is overwritten as the neglected middle child going through awkward pubescence as she is continually snubbed by her family. Stewie, a Machiavellian toddler, continues to plot ways to take over the world and kill his mother. By the way, if Stewie comes to the point of Oedipal musings, Peter is toast, given the enormous gap in their intellects. Brian, the family dog, talks, smokes, drinks liquor like a fish, gets busy with nearly anything female and has a gay brother. All that aside, Brian is usually the most intelligent and sensible member of the family.

I understand that Family Guy is intended as satire. I understand that we live in a free society with freedom of expression. However, the fact that Family Guy is a cartoon makes it answerable for some of its excesses in pushing the boundaries of decency. I read somewhere that it rated as the top primetime show for kids 2 to 12 at one point. Since this is supposedly not the targeted demographic for this show it begs the question of intent of Mr. MacFarlane and his cast. South Park is not shown on network TV until late night and then I understand that it is an edited version of the cable content. How is it that Family Guy is shown by local Fox affiliates during the hours when kids are coming home from school and being allowed a little TV while dinner is being prepared?

It's just another step in the long, long march toward total repudiation of what used to be mainstream American values. Ten years from now, our mainstream values will probably look just like the ones espoused by the Griffins. Won't that be sad?

Say It Ain't So!

2009-03-08T21:26:00.007-04:00

I just saw a blurb from the AP that said the Democrats were blasting Rush Limbaugh for a comment on Ted Kennedy. I'm shocked! Imagine Democrats taking issue with the scholarly erudition that flows like scented honey from the the oral cavity of the self-proclaimed smartest man alive! I would be even more shocked if it were not for one thing.

They are right this time! Rush let a comment fly about the proposed Democrat health care reform bill, stating that the Democrats will likely wish to call it the "Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care Bill." While such may come to pass, it shows poor form, Mr. Limbaugh, to comment that a bill that may be attributed to a man who has recently been diagnosed with cancer which is supposedly inoperable, is therefore going to be named posthumously.

Do not get me wrong! I am not a Democrat, nor am I a liberal. I do not ascribe to Senator Kennedy's politics or his liberal values. I do, however, applaud Senator Kennedy for his many years of service to the causes and values he believes in. I believe we need to try to get back to the type of politics that were practiced by President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill in the early 1980's.

Their political wrangling would go on and on. Then President Reagan would notice it was after 5 pm and call a halt for the day, at which point they would head off to dinner or to the bar. It was civilized. They were gentlemen who had respect for each other. The fact that we communicate our opinions through unofficial channels does not excuse us from similar conduct, sir!

Rugged Individual Stupidity

2008-12-20T19:18:00.004-05:00

The California Liberal courts have done it again! Now it's okay to sue a Good Samaritan who helps you out when you are in a car crash, according to them. So I guess they would re-write the old parable this way:

A certain man was driving along a road in California and was in an auto accident. He was badly injured and helpless in a car that was still on the road and could have been struck by another car at any time. The first person to find the man was a clergyman who decided because the man was not of his faith that he should not touch him. The second person to find the man was a business person who was late for a meeting and just pulled to the far outside lane to get around the crashed car. The last person to find the man was a Good Samaritan who stopped and got out and was about to help the man. Then the Samaritan's lawyer pulled up behind him and said, "Don't touch him! He'll be able to sue you if anything goes wrong." Then the Samaritan and his lawyer got back in their cars and drove away after calling 911. The man bled to death before any help came.

It would be poetic justice if the people who were responsible for this ruling were the ones lying there waiting for the first responders. When are people going to get it? The government CANNOT do everything for us, people! Nor should it! We applaud incident after incident where people act in emergency situations to help their friends and neighbors. We make sure the stories get on TV and YouTube and we watch them over and over. But the first time something goes wrong, we're ready to throw these same people under the bus of our victim-driven society! Thank God this mentality didn't exist in the days of the growth of this country! The Younger Brothers might have gotten away Scott-free from Northfield! Many of the potential drowning victims of the Dayton flood of 1912, the Johnstown flood and numerous hurricanes would have just had to drown, I guess. The more I hear about this kind of garbage, the more I want to be back in the military where refusing to leave a wounded comrade behind is part of the core of every person around you.

Beware, litigious miscreants of the granola state! Some day it may be you laying there wounded and in need of aid! Have fun waiting for the EMTs while your fellow citizens stand by, afraid to touch you for fear you might sue them! How about this instead? How about we jail people who refuse to render aid to wounded people, disbar any lawyer or judge who would help the recipients of such aid when they try to sue the person who aided them and definitely sentence the lousy ingrates who would sue someone that helps them in an emergency situation to some kind of community service? Maybe then people will start making sense and realizing that an emergency situation is one in which extraordinary acts are expected from ordinary people and that the recipients of those acts ought to be grateful to be alive!

Our Girl

2008-11-17T19:46:00.002-05:00

I am now a grandfather. Her name is Rebekah Lorraine and she was born on October 6th. She is a serious doll face and a very good baby.

Who says talk is cheap?

2008-11-12T22:01:00.002-05:00

A really neat comic about the potential cost of talking to radical dictators from a strip called State of The Union.

State of the Union

A John Wayne trivia quiz

2008-11-07T05:04:00.002-05:00

I just ran across a site called SurveyMonkey. It allows you to create quizzes and surveys so I generated one just to try it out. Enjoy!

John Wayne Trivia Quiz

Will You Choose Life or Money?

2008-10-28T18:44:00.017-04:00

This election is, for me, one that has to do with one very basic issue. Which is more important, the fact that babies should be entitled to a Constitutionally protected right to life or the fact that one candidate is promising to fix my finances? That is the only choice that I see when I look at this election. Barack Obama has voted several times to take away the basic human right of life from babies that survive partial-birth abortions. How much more viable must a life be than to have survived attempted murder while fresh out of the womb? Yet Senator Obama thinks that these poor children need to die simply because someone paid to have that happen. Isn't that murder for hire? What does the Liberal Left have against babies? The answer is simple. They are pandering to one of their largest constituencies, selfish women who want to pursue their lives however they choose without living up to the responsibilities of being a wife or mother. For these people it is much easier to simply have a child killed so they can get back to their previous lives, which apparently include having unprotected sex whenever and with whomever they please. How can people even begin to think that abortion should be allowed? Check out this YouTube video from Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL.

If this man, who helped set up abortion as a legal practice, by intentionally misleading the courts and our legislators can admit that abortion is an evil practice and must be stopped, why can't these other knuckleheads get it? But here is Obama in his own words stating that he does not want any limits on abortion!

Wake up people! Even Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton upheld the Born Alive Act! Yet Obama will continue to support this barbaric practice! It seems that he wants to be Pharaoh! The nurse in this last video says the babies were issued both birth and death certificates. How can anyone be getting away with allowing or causing the death of a baby with a certificate of live birth? If they have been born and that fact has been recognized by the state with a birth certificate, then causing their deaths would be murder and allowing their deaths would be gross negligence, malpractice, child endangering and manslaughter.

Yet there are many people who are about to vote for this man simply because the economy is messed up and they have been personally inconvenienced by this fact. Go on! Vote for your wallet and let the babies die! Sacrifice them for the sake of your lifestyles! You will be just as guilty of their blood as the doctors who are killing them and the politicians who are selling their deaths to garner votes.

It's just that simple a choice, people! You either vote for what is right, which is the defense of living babies, worthy of a birth certificate, or you vote for your wallet which is as dead as a beaver hat. I don't care if you don't believe in God. He believes in you and He is waiting to see which way you will choose!

For more on this subject, check out The Judeo-Christian View

Just a dollar or two to help me keep writing would be appreciated!

Stranger in a strange land (with apologies to Heinlein)

2008-10-18T00:06:00.008-04:00

I find myself in a very strange place just now. First, let me give you some background on my situation. Through a combination of forces including my sometimes overly forceful personality, poor choices and bad breaks, I find myself almost completely destitute. Yet I am very hopeful and I have a great deal of faith that things are about to turn around. So now I wonder, do I have any right to be optimistic or do I just not see the financial shark rapidly closing in from below me?

Little things mean so much in circumstances like ours. For instance, I recently started attending again at the church where I was an associate pastor in 2000 - 2002. Last Sunday, they asked for prayer requests and I put mine in for increased sales since we are almost broke. This week I did not get any sales commissions. However, I got a mentor from SCORE who was in the insurance business for over 30 years and he advised me to get a part-time job until I can build my clientele.

The very next day I called my boss at the guard company where I had been working until September 30 when we lost that contract. He had told me to check back with him for a letter of reference. He told me he was on his way back to the office from signing the contract on a new job that paid $11 per hour instead of the $8.25 I had been making before. He asked if I was interested and told me he still had not done my separation paperwork after the other contract. I asked him when he would be in the office so I could pick up some new shirts. So now I have an even easier part-time job, with more hours (36 instead of 32) and better pay.

On the insurance front, my boss has teamed us up with some ladies who are cold calling to get appointments for us. This removes one of the major headaches of insurance sales and allows me to have something resembling a life. My caller is getting more and more confident and setting more and better appointments for me. I went on one of those appointments on Wednesday with my boss and she is very confident that we are going to close that sale on Monday. I also went to drop-off some info at a local union hall and was invited to call again after the election to write some health business on the secretary of the head man there.

Then there is the money issue. God just keeps working it out somehow. For instance, I was distraught because I did not know where I was going to get the money to pay our phone bills. We have two. Our landline includes the internet service I must have for business and my wife and middle son must have for college. The other bill is our cellular phone service which is vital to my business and our communication and coordination as a family. The landline is about $70 each month and the cellular is a bit over $100. I double checked my checking account and found that I had about $180. I also found that, due to a credit we had from a previous service change, the cellular bill was only a little over $30.

So God worked it out for me to pay the phone bills and have a little left over! Praise God! Jehovah jireh, our Lord provider has come through again! I am becoming increasingly confident that everything is going to be okay. Maybe I'm naive, but I know one thing. I serve a great God and He is able and willing to take care of me if I will only ask.

Just a dollar or two to help me keep writing would be appreciated!

Three Political Limericks

2008-10-12T18:16:00.011-04:00

Obama says he is for rights
But he also would turn out the lights
On babies who live, past the prerogative
Of the women who spawned the wee mites

Obama just never salutes
Old Glory while the honor guard shoots
Their twenty-one guns, over daughters and sons
Who weighed their last measures in boots

Wall Street has led us to fear
The end of our country is near
While they all parachute, holding all of our loot
Not a one will shed even a tear

If you like these, check out the limerick I submitted for a contest on
Associated Content.

Also you might like the piece written by my friend, Pat, which he titled The Left Is Caught, Finally, Being Their True Selves

Just a dollar or two to help me keep writing would be appreciated!

Sleeping Cat

2008-08-22T08:09:00.007-04:00

Sleeping Cat

Feline grace, in such repose
Curling tail and pinkish nose
Furry, whitish letter C
Now an O, ignoring me

I envy all your slumber there
Effortless and lazy air
Ignorant of care or woe
No clock to punch, no row to hoe

Regal even as you doze
Inverted head your latest pose
Snaggled grin and twitching lip
Spiraled spine and tucked-in hip

Our globe would be so sweet if we
Could find such easy peace as thee
Put aside all cares and strife
That so beset a human life

If our cares could only consist
Of how to lie, which way to twist
Peace would reign o’er all the world
‘Pon which we’d lie, our bodies furled

Just a dollar or two to help me keep writing would be appreciated!

The Big Giveaway (skit)

2008-06-01T21:03:00.007-04:00

Announcer: (Rod Serling imitator) Good morning and welcome to the Apostate Zone! Consider if you will the plight of Fred. He hungers to aid his fellow man, yet he is unprepared to do so. Still, he doesn't realize his problem. So he spends his time spinning his wheels in the Apostate Zone.

Fred (behind small counter like a kid's lemonade stand): Come and get it while it lasts! It's all completely free! Free, I tell you! Completely and absolutely free!

Man enters.

Man: Pardon me, but exactly what is free?

Fred: Everything! Absolutely everything!

Man: Yes, but what do you have?

Fred: Oh, I see what you mean. Well, I can let you have this absolutely free. (Pulls out some piece of junk.)

Man: But what is it?

Fred: I don't have the slightest idea... but it's free!

Man: I can see why. Don't you have anything useful?

Fred: That depends on what you want to use it for.

Man: Well, I've got a big hole in my faith just now and I was looking for something to..

Fred: Say no more, my good man! Here's the best hole fixer I've ever seen. (Pulls out a 2 wood.)

Man: I said the hole was in my faith. How can that fix my faith?

Fred: Well, if you use it to plug up that hole, you can have faith that it's plugged. Yeah, that's the ticket! How about that, huh?

Man: No, I don't think that's going to do it.

Fred: Well, do you need anything else?

Man: Yeah! My prayers don't seem to be getting through lately. It's like the ceiling is made of brass or something.

Fred: Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Man, this is your lucky day! I've got an A-number one brass ceiling remover right here. (Pulls out a can opener.) There you go! And it's absolutely free!

Man: Yes, and once again it's absolutely useless for my problem.

Fred: But you said ...

Man: I said that it seems AS IF the ceiling is made of brass. It isn't actually made of brass.

Fred: Gosh! I don't seem to have anything you need, do I?

Man: No. By the way, where did you get all of this stuff?

Fred: Sheol Wholesale! They've got lots of stuff you can get for next to nothing. And the payments are all deferred indefinitely!

Man: I read somewhere that there's some pretty heavy interest on the contracts from that place. You'd better be careful. But I've got to get going and find someone with the things I need to get myself fixed up.

Fred: What kinds of things? I mean, I've got all kinds of things here. Surely there must be something you can use!

Man: I doubt it and don't call me Shirley!

Fred: Sorry!

Man: Anyway, if you got all that stuff from Sheol, I doubt that you have any grace or joy or encouragement back there, right?

Fred: No. But Sheol doesn't carry those things!

Man: I know. I used to be one of their best customers.

Fred: Well, I'm sorry I didn't have anything you could use.

Man: That's okay! (Exits)

Fred: Boy! I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to give this stuff away! Oh, well! Better keep trying! Free! Absolutely free!

Announcer: Poor Fred! He doesn't realize he needs to have something in order to give it away. He has a vague understanding that what he has is worthless, even though it will end up costing him everything in the end. But without Jesus, which is what he needs most, you can find him right here, in the Apostate Zone.

What Did You Expect? (Sermon)

2008-06-01T21:00:00.005-04:00

What Did You Expect? (Acts 3: 1-10)

One day I was reading from a book of American folk stories and I came across an interesting story about an old woman who lived in the mountains. She had a nice cabin near the top of a mountain and she really appreciated it except for one thing. The view from her door was obstructed by a neighboring peak that was bare and brown. The woman knew that beyond that peak lay a beautiful green valley and she longed to be able to see the lush valley rather than the old bare peak. Then, one day, she was listening to a circuit rider who preached the words of Christ when He said that anyone with so much faith as a grain of mustard seed could say to a mountain “Be thou removed” and it would come to pass. The woman knew now what she must do. That night she prayed that the mountain would remove itself from her view. The next morning she arose to find the mountain still in its place and said, “It’s just as I expected.”

What do we expect when we pray? Do we really expect a miracle? If so, then why are we usually amazed when one does occur? We’ve heard two drastically different approaches to directive prayer this morning. The old woman admits that she didn’t expect anything to happen, while Peter unflinchingly expected nothing less than a total and instantaneous healing of a horribly crippled man. Which end of the spectrum are we closest to?

I’d like to look at this issue today from several aspects. First, we will look at the attitude of the communicator. Secondly, we will look at the language used in effective covenant prayer. And last, we will consider what will happen when we get what we ask for.

When we consider the language used in the two prayers, we are somewhat hamstrung for the old woman’s exact words are not recorded. Therefore, we must concentrate on the words Peter used to heal the lame man. Consider this, there are many times in the Bible when certain words were chosen very carefully to convey specific meanings. This is why Revelation 22: 18 & 19 leaves us with a warning lest we should add or subtract. This is not to say that I believe that any modern translation or version of the scripture is to be valued over any other. I believe that the Holy Spirit faithfully guides those who intend to accurately translate God’s word, lest any passage should be corrupted. But, specific words have specific meanings and they were chosen with care.

Peter was a simple man, an uneducated man. He was a man with no use for tricks of the tongue or subtleties. He said what he meant and he meant what he said. First, he explained to the beggar that he and John had no money to give. This is probably something the beggar heard thousands of times a day, since he had positioned himself at such prime spot for begging. A major gate near the temple would see thousands passing through it almost any day. So this beggar would be able to ask alms from all of those people. But this was a major city where the maimed and infirm and crippled were more commonplace than in the outlying areas. Much as it is today, these types of people flocked to the cities where they perceived the begging prospects would be better than in the villages. Consequently, the people of the cities would be constantly bombarded by those seeking relief from their crushing poverty. So it would not be uncommon for anyone in a city to deny a request for alms. It would be commonplace. No explanation would be expected or offered. But Peter had something in mind when he was asked. It can be simply stated in one word: Jesus!

Peter knew full well that Jesus had told the disciples that they would see him in people who came to them with needs. So when he looked at the beggar, Peter saw Jesus asking him if he would help someone less fortunate. And then he acted for Jesus, to bring glory and honor to Jesus, to feed his master’s sheep as he had agreed he would. This is the first point to remember about effective covenant prayer. It begins and ends with Jesus as its focus, seeking to bring glory to Him and only to Him. This was Peter’s aim. I think we can safely say that the old woman’s motives had little if anything to do with honoring the Christ. Her desire was purely selfish. She wanted the mountain to move so she would have a better view. What she was hoping for was not anything that would actually help anyone. She only hoped to improve upon the value of her real estate. And then Peter spoke.

Peter did not hesitate. He did not equivocate. He didn’t beat about the bush. He simply invoked the name of Jesus of Nazareth and commanded the beggar to walk. Peter could have gone into a two-hour sermon about the misfortunes of life and how Jesus can overturn them all. He could have asked the beggar a thousand questions to satisfy his human hunger to know how the poor man had come to this sorry state. He didn’t do any of these things. He didn’t whoop and holler and shake his hand in the air while he prayed for the beggar. He didn’t ask for anyone else to come forth that felt they had a need. He just lifted the man up and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!” He didn’t ask the man if he believed in Jesus. He didn’t ask if he’d like to join his church or buy a commemorative figurine or a brick for the new foundation. He didn’t ask how the man had been living and if he’d promise to do right from now on. He just told that lame man to walk. And this is the second point to remember about effective covenant prayer. It is direct prayer addressing a valid need!

Peter was direct in this prayer. He was so direct that it doesn’t really sound like a prayer, but it was. He didn’t worry about whether the man deserved to be healed. He didn’t waffle around the issue and try to sandbag by saying things like, “Father, if it be thy will.” Why would it not be God’s will to help His children? Peter didn’t worry about the fact that the man was destitute and therefore unable to give a gift of gratitude to his church. He didn’t worry about anything but the fact that one of his master’s sheep was laying there crippled and he knew that the name of Jesus had more than enough power to fix the problem. How many of you know that this miracle is also a parable? I don’t mean that it’s a story about something that never happened that was told just to explain a point. This story is the point. It’s the whole point. It’s the reason we are sent into the world to bring Jesus to others. They can’t do it for themselves. The enemy has them down in total bondage. They are crippled in ways that we can’t even imagine much less see. But Jesus can heal them! The catch is that we need to do our part. But in order to do that, we need to use the language of confidence. We are told in the Bible that we will command angels. That promise is for now, not for Armegeddon! It also says that by His stripes we ARE healed. Not were. Not will be. Not someday if we say our prayers, eat all of our vegetables and always wear clean underwear. Now! Today! This very minute! We ARE healed! We need to EXPECT what we pray for to happen! And don’t stand around dusting the foyer with your jaw when it does happen! Just claim it and move on! By the way, the claiming part takes two forms. And this brings us to the last point. When you get what you prayed for, remember where the answer came from!

This is quite possibly the reason that so few of us are effective prayer warriors over a long period of time. How many times have you heard people talk with one another about something wonderful that happens to someone they both know and one of them will say to the other something like, “I’m so happy this finally happened. I’ve been praying for them for so long now.” Why do we feel that we get to take the credit when God answers our prayers? That would be like a father giving one of his sons a new pair of shoes the child needs and the other son telling his brother, “I’m sure glad Dad gave you those. I’ve been asking him to buy them for you.” We should be giving glory and honor to our Father in heaven when we receive His blessings. We should still give Him the glory when others receive the things we’ve asked God to give them. When we start pointing out how instrumental we were in their blessing, then we’re doing two things wrong. We’re taking the focus off of God’s role as the provider, and we’re seeking the acclaim of man by pointing out in a roundabout way that they probably wouldn’t have been blessed if we hadn’t prayed. We’re kind of quietly singing our own round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.

For recipients of God’s goodness, there is only one proper course of action. The beggar went with them into the temple courts “walking and jumping and praising God”. How often do we act like this man? How often do we claim God’s gifts by identifying them as such to the whole world? By shouting from the rooftops? More often we call up Sister Gertrude to mumble about how good God is and would she pass along our thanks to the rest of the prayer chain. Walking and jumping and praising God! This guy intended to stick out! In public! In church of all places! When was the last time we stood out to bring honor and glory to our God? I think we do it so seldom because we’re so dumbfounded when prayer works. I really think we’re shocked into silence because positive answers to prayer are not what we expected.

So the question remains “What did you expect?” When we go through trials in our lives and we pray for answers or help from God, are we ready to receive what we didn’t really expect to get? And when the help arrives do we recognize that it’s from God if we didn’t really believe that would happen? There are problems that need to be dealt with that impact our ability to recognize or discern God’s benevolence. I’m not going to go into all of those today. That’s a topic for another sermon. The point is that we need to stay connected enough to God that we recognize His care for us, in all its many forms. The Bible tells us that all good gifts are from God. He is Jehovah Jireh, the Lord provider, isn’t he? He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. That brings up an interesting story.

There was a church that was very spiritually successful and it was growing by leaps and bounds. The Head Pastor was a man who was very plain spoken and loved his flock dearly. One day there was a board meeting to decide how the church could continue due to the fact that there was a need at that point for a great sum of money to continue their ministries. The board members went to prayer and the pastor simply said, “Lord, we know that you own the cattle on a thousand hills. We would greatly appreciate if you would sell some of them to help us meet this need.” At that moment there was a light knock at the door and the secretary stuck her head in and beckoned for the pastor. He excused himself and went out to find a man standing there with a check in his hand. He explained that he had driven a herd of cattle to the stockyards near that church and they had brought such a great price that he had asked God what to do with the amount that was beyond what he had calculated they would bring. He had been directed to that church and the check met that church’s need, to the penny.

How often have you heard such stories and marveled at the power of prayer or the benevolence of God? How many more times must you hear such stories before you realize that all Christians are given this tool to meet needs in their lives and the lives of others? We are kids of the kingdom. We are joint heirs with Jesus. Heirs of the one and only God and King of the Universe is what we are! So why do we bow and scrape like beggars at His gates, surviving on crumbs and spare change? Jesus said, “You have not because you ask not!” So why don’t we ask? We say, “We’re not worthy.” You’re right! But that’s what grace is all about! Don’t you remember what the Bible says about that? God commended his love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, He sent Jesus Christ, his one and only Son, to die for us, to purchase us with his precious blood, to give us a share in his birthright.

So why are we surprised when our prayers are answered? Why do we marvel so at stories like the one about the well-favored cattleman or the cripple at the gate? Don’t we know Jesus said we would do even greater miracles than he himself had done? It all comes back to that one question. What did you expect?

How To Recognize Fruit (Sermon)

2008-06-01T20:50:00.007-04:00

How to Recognize Fruit

John 9: 30 The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."
34 To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out. (New International Version)

I was listening to a pastor who was teaching about the healing of the man born blind. And, since my mind works in strange ways, I started to read on ahead in the chapter and I was struck by this passage. Did you know that in some Bibles this section starting at verse 13 is labeled “The Pharisees Investigate the Healing”? Since I have this weird little mind of mine I started to think, “Now isn’t that just like some Christians today?” I mean it.

How often do you hear about how this thing or that thing or the other thing can’t possibly be used of God because it’s too loud or too expensive or it sounds different from the way we talk when we’re in church? Why is that? Do we think we have the corner on all spiritual knowledge and God can’t do what He wants to without checking with us first? Or at least He should send us a memo about the change, right? You say Christians don’t act that way. Oh, really? In the time since I became a Christian I have heard this same story so many times it doesn’t even surprise me anymore, which is a shame.

I went with my family to a picnic held by a Christian motorcycle club a few years ago. While I was there I had occasion to meet one of their members who served as a chaplain for their group. Things were going along well until we began discussing the Bible. That’s an odd thing for Christians to have differences about, don’t you think? We couldn’t agree about what it says in THE BIBLE? The handbook of our faith? Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth? Well, it seems that I was using a sinful Bible. I had no idea. But it seems the New International Version is the spawn of hell and damnation! At least it is to hear this gent tell it. According to him, and I later found out quite a number of other Christians, it’s a work of iniquity. Why, you may ask?

Well, it seems that certain verses are translated a bit differently in the NIV than they are in the King James. Some verses have many clauses to them and some were considered by the scholars who authored the NIV to be parenthetical so they were included as footnotes to show the possible interpretations of the Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic texts. As anyone who has studied a foreign language can tell you, things don’t always translate directly from one language to another. There are shades of meaning in one language for concepts that are straightforward in another language and can’t be nuanced properly.

I can’t and don’t intend to launch into a lengthy description of all the verses in the NIV that offend the King James Only crowd. Just know that this is a major controversy for many in the church today. It has been known to split entire churches. By the way, this same gentleman tried to tell me that I needed to get written permission to use any passage from the NIV because it is copyrighted. Does anybody out there have a King James Bible with them this morning? Open it in the front. Is it copyrighted? I thought so.

Another thing that has been known to cause dissension in the church is music; not only the style, but the manner of performance. My mother-in-law goes to a church in Alabama where there is no piano, no organ, no guitars or tambourines. All the music is performed a cappella at every service. It seems that since there are no mentions of musical instruments in Leviticus, which has to do with the conduct of worship, they don’t feel there should be any musical instruments used in worship.

Another topic where Christians get into enormous disagreements is the use of modern music in worship services. This controversy, believe it or not, is as old as the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther borrowed tunes from popular drinking songs and grafted Christian lyrics onto them. This was considered heresy by his colleagues. But I kind of like “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” and “Away in A Manger” don’t you? A young boy some years later told his father that he didn’t like the hymns being used in the church because their style was so far out of date. The father replied that the youngster should write better songs if he was so smart. So Isaac Watts took him up on the offer and wrote “Behold the Glories of the Lamb” using the tune of a popular song of that day and the year was 1690.

“But” some might say, “the current modern music can’t be used, can it? I mean the kids all get so wild when they hear it. They tear up the theaters and cause riots.” Yes, we need to watch out for music that causes this kind of behavior. That’s why Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” should never be played in a church because that’s just what the audience did when it debuted in Paris in 1913. But we would never dream of saying that classical music is not worthy of our churches.

So where am I going with all this information? I should think it would be obvious. Look again at verse 33. “33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." (NIV) Again, “33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."

Do you understand? Don’t be so quick to judge whether or not something is worthy of use for God’s work. If it bears fruit, it’s sanctified, because God is blessing it! Does this mean we’re supposed to run around trying to do the Lambada for Jesus? I wouldn’t. But there are a whole lot of things that can be done for Christ that people would feel comfortable doing in this church with His eyes looking down seeing what it is you are doing.

Many people think that doing taekwondo as a ministry is nonsense. I had one guy come up to me and say, “How does that work? Do they go around fighting each other saying ‘Jesus loves you.’ whack?” He didn’t really want to know. He just wanted to prove that I was wrong and he was right.

People try to change the way I do ministry all the time. But it doesn’t work. Do you know why? Yes, I’m stubborn. But besides that, I know that the NIV bears fruit. I know that the taekwondo ministry was bearing fruit. I know that contemporary Christian music bears fruit. And if Jesus tells me to throw my net on the right side, you watch me move to starboard. I’m willing to be led. I’m willing to use anything I’ve got at my disposal to witness or lead or coach or comfort enough to bring someone into the kingdom. And I’m willing to let others or even help others with using things that relate to their talents. But that’s because I judge ministries by fruit.
Do you know what fruits I’m talking about?

Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (NIV)

When you look at something someone is doing in the name of Christ, ask yourself, “Are these people loving? Kind? Joyful? Patient? Faithful? Gentle? Self-controlled?” Is there prayer going on? Are people showing each other love? Are people coming to Christ? Are they being instructed in Christian living? These are the types of fruit to look for.

You can also look for indications of the absence of the Holy Spirit which are contained in verses 19 thru 21. If there is impurity, sexual immorality, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness and things such as that, then whatever it is cannot be from God. This isn’t rocket science. The Bible says that the knowledge of good and evil is born within each of us, so there is no excuse for not following what is good.

In his book, The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren says, “Fruitfulness is a major theme of the New Testament. Consider the following:
“We are called by Christ to bear fruit. “16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.” (John 15:16) God wants to see lasting fruit come from our ministry.
Being fruitful is the way we glorify God. “8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”(John 15:8) An unfruitful ministry does not bring glory to God.
Being fruitful pleases God. “10And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work” (Col 1:10)
Jesus reserved his severest judgment for the unfruitful tree. He cursed it because it didn’t bear fruit. “Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, ‘May you never bear fruit again!’ Immediately the tree withered” (Matt 21:19). Jesus didn’t do this to show off but to make a point: He expects fruitfulness!
The nation of Israel lost its privilege because of unfruitfulness. “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit” (Matt 21:43). ” (SEE Footnote 1)

And that brings us back to our lovely little group of Pharisees. They set out to “investigate” this healing. It wasn’t done to suit them so they had to find something wrong with the one who did it. But they couldn’t. They just kept repeating their catch phrase, “He’s a sinner.” like a bunch of over-fluffed parrots. “Awk! He’s a sinner!” Nice discernment, dude! Does Caiaphas give you a cracker if you say it fifty times or something?

What was there to investigate? They didn’t have the science in those days to analyze the mud. Even if they had, I have a suspicion that it was just that; mud. The important thing was where it came from. Didn’t they know this man had been blind from birth? Probably not. The Pharisees are chronicled as a group too busy being important to get to know the people they were supposed to be leading to God.

They questioned this man several times. They questioned his parents. You’ll notice they didn’t question any witnesses. They questioned a man who had been blind until he left Jesus’ presence to wash in the pool of Siloam and his parents who weren’t even there probably. Nice work, Kojak! You’ll never make detective at that rate.

The point is that they ignored the fruit because the method didn’t fit with their plan. (If you want to make God laugh – tell Him Your plan.) They had too much invested in being the only game in town. They had to be consulted before anything Holy went on in their district. Who did this Jesus guy think He was, coming around here healing people without their permission? And on the Sabbath, too? But Jesus knew He didn’t need their permission.

He knew that He could sanctify mud because He was the one who originally made all of its ingredients. Mud was enough. He could have called down fire from heaven and destroyed the Pharisees for questioning His authority. But He didn’t because He knew mud was enough. How do you sanctify mud? The answer is, YOU don’t, but He can.

God uses uncommon vessels to do His mightiest works. And I should know because I’m about as uncommon a vessel as has ever walked the earth! The only people who are put out by that fact are the ones who can’t recognize fruit when they see it, or they don’t care about fruit because they have another agenda.

Now how about you? Are you producing any fruit? Do people look at your life and see the way they want to live? Are you bringing people into the kingdom? Are you using all of your talents? And if you are here today and you don’t know Jesus, let me ask you this. Would you like your life to bear fruit? Would you like to be responsible for healing broken people? Would you like to bring your loved ones to the one who opens the door to heaven? Would you like to meet the Lord of Glory who gives peace for today and joy for eternity? If you’re here and you want to meet with Jesus today, then the altar is open through this next song. I’ll be happy to pray with you and so will our deacons. If you’re here today and you want more power in your walk and you want to re-dedicate yourself to the cause of Christ, then come on and we’ll pray together and ask God for that.

1. The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren, Zondervan Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI, 1995, Pg 62

Forgiveness, Grace and Justice

2008-03-16T22:23:00.008-04:00

Today I received the following from a good friend. He sent it to me in the hopes I would comment on it on my blog. I wrote him back and offered to do him one better by posting his original piece as guest posting, with his permission of course. The following is the piece Doug wrote about the mess concerning Governor Spitzer:

Over the past couple weeks we have been inundated with the scandalous reports about the Governor of NY and the prostitution ring he was using. His resignation was demanded and received by the press and people. Talk Shows made jokes and vilified him for his actions and the news has vaulted the young lady who provided the service to fame and fortune. Gossip and enchantment with the story have fueled the fires of this story. It is water-cooler culture at its best. The story even comes up in church as a topic of how this man is getting his just deserts for sinning. This mans weakness has ruined his life, hurt those around him, damaged relationships forever. Everyone says that he is getting what he deserves. This man rose to fame and power as a prosecutor meting out justice to others. Now in their eyes the chickens have come home to roost. Justice is being served. In churches we hear ministers talking about the sinful actions and how we pay the price for sin. An example of what happens when we sin. However; I want to weep for this man, his family, those who have been hurt and the thought that he may not be able to pull out of this destruction he has brought on to himself and his family. I look at him and say if I were him what would I do, how would I want to be treated? What would I do if one of my sins were on all the talk shows and in the news? What would I do if I hurt my wife and child by my actions?
This is something that you say which means something bad that has happened to someone else could have happened to you. Over the past few weeks we have been hearing about Gov Spitzer and how he lost all this money, you can't help thinking;
But for the Grace of God, There Go I.
In the mid 1500’s John Bradford was imprisoned in the Tower of London and while watching prisoners being taken out to be executed he made the utterance “There, But For the Grace of God, Go I”
I have noticed as I have gotten older and hopefully a little wiser that these things affect me differently than they used to. I guess it is because I have spiritually grown and I have been hurt in the past. I also have learned my limitations and believe that how I treat others will weigh against my heart when I meet judgment; but that is another sermon. However, what the Lord taught me there was to see people like he sees us all: guilty but beloved.

I once heard a story of a man who gave another man a ride on a rainy day. The driver’s daughter was with him and when he gave this man a ride she knew that this man had stolen from her Father’s store a few times, and she asked him why he would help a man like that. Her father replied, “Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t always give us what we deserve?”

The bible says in Hebrews 9:22 that God demands justice; his forgiveness requires the shedding of blood- and in Romans 3 he says that his demand for justice was satisfied by Christ’s death. Why did Christ die for us? Because he loves us and wanted to have mercy on us. Romans 9:16 says that our salvation does not depend on our effort or our desire, but on his mercy.

When you get what you deserve, that’s justice. When you don’t get what you deserve, it’s mercy. And when you get what you don’t deserve, that’s grace.

The Bible says in Romans 5 that even though we were sinners, Christ died for us. His demand for justice was balanced by his love and mercy for us, and our deserved punishment was made unnecessary by his grace.

The Bible says in Isaiah 30 that the Lord “rises to show us compassion,” and “longs to be gracious to us.” Think about the Governor for a moment, he has gotten what he deserves (probably more because of his prominence) but who is showing him mercy? We as Christians need to show this to the world. We need to pray for him and his family so that they may make it through this. Because of our actions he may also find grace through Christ. If we don’t do this he will look at our Christianity as everything else. He will get what he doesn’t deserve because he can be saved, because we as Christians were a good example of grace given to him.

In your life, never forget what has been done for you. Whatever it is that someone is doing to you that makes you want to demand justice, pause for a moment to reflect on the mercy and grace you’ve received and “long to be gracious” to that person.

And take a second to say “But for the Grace of God, There Go I”
It is a beautiful thing to have received the grace of our Lord’s salvation. And it is beautiful to him when we extend it to others. God gave it to you and me even though we didn’t deserve it. Who are we to withhold mercy and grace from another person?
---------------------------------------------------------

My own response to this situation seems to be a little harder to come by. I do not condone the governor’s actions that led up to this incident. I believe what he is experiencing now is justice, plain and simple. I believe it has long been a national disgrace that we prosecute prostitutes like crazy but johns hardly at all.

I think it is a difficult business reconciling just punishment with forgiveness and grace. I do not think public officials should be allowed to act however they wish to act and remain in office. If a person cannot stand up to a commitment that lasts a lifetime, he or she should not be trusted to remain true to a commitment that lasts only a few years.

When a public official does something like this and people start talking about justice, punishment, forgiveness and grace, things can start getting mighty complicated. Justice would be to fire the person and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. Then people start talking about forgiveness. If we forgive, shouldn’t the person stay in office? If there is a call for ouster, can it be said that we have truly forgiven?

I believe that we are directed to forgiveness in a personal sense. If someone wrongs us, we are directed to forgiveness in several passages of the bible. In Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Jean Valjean escaped from a workhouse and in the process stole a silver candlestick from a local priest. Police Inspector Javert caught Jean and returned him to the workhouse and brought him before the priest. Javert watches carefully as Jean brings the candlestick from his pack. Javert is fairly salivating at the thought of being able to send Jean back to the prison galleys. The priest says that Jean is welcome to the candlestick and then gives him its mate. The refusal to prosecute was forgiveness and the candlesticks were grace.

The problem comes when you try to apply this type of thinking to someone in a position of public respect and trust. If you leave the person in office, it’s forgiveness but it also starts a slippery slope that will end with every office held by the biggest scoundrels in the community. If you remove the person from office you’re making sense but you’re far less forgiving. This is especially true for a career politician in these days. The political career of such a person would be over for good.

I believe that the answer lies in the position. Mr. Spitzer violated not only the law of the land and the law of God but also the public trust. Public officials must be held to a higher standard. Anything less just won’t do. I’m not saying that this man should be pilloried or run out of town on a rail. That is the part where our public forgiveness should show forth. “There, but for the grace of God, go I!” should be the watchword on personal forgiveness, but the public official who breaks the law must be removed from office, period. For any further forgiveness or grace, such a person must turn to God. That brings me to the remedy

Unless what, you say. It seems to me that there are several examples of repentance by public officials in the Bible. David danced before the Lord all the way from the gates of the city to his palace as a public sign of repentance. Jehosaphat, Job and several others rent their garments and put on sackcloth and ashes. Betrayal of the public trust has only one suitable form of repentance in Biblical terms. It must be total, abject, very public and must go far beyond standing up to a microphone and saying “I’m sorry.” Do I mean that I want to see Mr. Spitzer publicly humiliated? No. I just think that the Bible sets the precedent clearly that a violation of the public trust must be recompensed by public penance.

Homeschooling: Whose children are they anyway?

2008-03-09T15:04:00.012-04:00

I just saw a minor skirmish of opinions in the Dayton Daily News (Dayton,OH) concerning a ruling by an activist judge in California. Judge H. William Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeals has ruled that parents do not have a Constitutional right to teach their children if they are not certified to teach. There are several points that need to be considered about this ruling and its implications.

Judge Croskey is a federal judge. This ruling was passed down in the Second District Court Of Appeals, which is in the federal court system. Further, this ruling speaks to the Constitutional right of parents to decide about the education of their children. Because of these two points alone, this ruling is monumentally dangerous. This sets a precedent that can be used all across our nation to eradicate the rights of Christian homeschoolers. If the parents must be certified to teach, can licensing be far behind, and then approval of curricula? So much for separation of church and state! The Godless humanists of the public schools will soon be mandating that homosexuality is natural, that there is no God and that we all descended from slime.

I know this ruling was a question of California law. However, we must remember that it was handed down in a federal court and it was a question of constitutional rights. Since Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, (1803) it has been an established fact that federal law holds ascendancy over state law. This means that a federal precedent has now been established. If any other state departments of education care to challenge the constitutionality of a parent's right to homeschool their children, the way has now been cleared. A federal judge has decided it is not a Constitutionally-protected right.

The next thing we need to look at is the certification process. Of course, the certifications must come from the states. This means the state will mandate what knowledge and what types of information parents must learn in order to become able to teach their own children. This, in several areas, violates the Establishment Clause. It is no secret and, considering the sorry moral compass of our current school systems, no surprise that many of the parents who choose to homeschool their children do so for religious reasons.

The teachings of abortion as birth control, homosexuality as normal, promiscuity as inevitable, and evolution as fact are only some of the ways our schools have become hostile to Christian students. It has already become an acknowledged problem in academic circles that it is nearly impossible to achieve a doctorate in the physical sciences if your thesis supports creation instead of evolution. If this isn't a violation of the separation of church and state, I don't know what a violation would look like. But then the courts have historically decided against the Christian viewpoint in establishment cases almost every time.

This whole thing has been coming at us for some time, and it's accelerating. First, there was the Scopes trial. Then Madeline Murray-O'Hare, got the Pledge of Allegiance banned from our schools. Other cases came and went for years. Then, in 1988, we voted into power an administration that was solidly bent on taking away the rights of all Christians in this country. It takes a village to raise a child, they told us. Parents and God just aren't enough it seems. We all need health care the government pays for and regulates, they said. We need to remove all references to God from our government buildings, money and documents.

This last bit was their most honest proposal. The liberal socialists want God removed not only from our government but also from our daily lives and our lexicon. They want government to be our god. They want us to turn to our government for everything. Why would they want that? Because they are the government! In short, they want to be our god.

So now we will be required to jump through their hoops to be allowed to teach our own children in our own homes. We will have to teach the Godless curricula they dictate. I really question the mentality behind the recent mania to wipe out homeschooling. Is this the same country where our classrooms are so overcrowded? Is this the same country where I see news story after news story about outstanding children who used the freedom of homeschooling to excel in math, science or the arts? Take a look at the educational background of almost all of the winners of the National Spelling Bee for the past ten years! They were taught at home. Have the liberals not been paying attention, or is it that they just don't care? I guess the process of becoming a god must not involve caring. I wouldn't know. I'm not interested in being God. I've read the book that contains the job description.

______________________________________________
Update:

Since I wrote the piece above I have found that this decision is going to be directly affecting my family very soon. You see, I am a military retiree and I must file for dependency status for any of my sons over the age of eighteen if they continue to go to school. I recently did so for our middle son, citing the fact that he was finishing up high school at home. I received a denial of my claim saying that our homeschool is not "accredited" and therefore we are not allowed to keep Sam as my dependent, which will leave him without health care. Fortunately, Sam has graduated from high school now and will be attending a local community college in September, but we will have to wait until we have a paid fee bill before I can re-submit the paperwork to claim him as a dependent. Your tax dollars at work! I wonder if we'll get a similar missive from the IRS when we try to claim our sons at tax time. Probably!

Second Update: Some people have been asking me for links about this problem. The best one I can think of is for the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). They defend the Constitutional rights of parents to homeschool their children. They are affiliated with the American Center for Law and Justice and they have a very informative website at: http://www.hslda.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1 Check it out and join today!

Why patriotism is important

2008-03-08T16:37:00.011-05:00

Recently, a friend sent me a link for a news story about a group of Viet Nam veterans and other patriots who go out of their way to be at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to welcome home members of our armed forces returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They do this because of the shameful reception the Viet Nam veterans were given when they returned. Many were spat upon, called baby killers and worse.

Watching the news story reminded me of a parade we were given in Tonopah, Nevada, after returning from DESERT STORM. The whole time it was happening, I was thinking about my brother and brother-in-law returning from Viet Nam and I was saying to myself, "Where were their parades?" Every time I think about how little I went through compared to what they experienced I just want to sit down and weep for this country.

I never heard incoming rounds whipping past my head, but they did. I never saw men from a sampan that my ship destroyed eaten by sharks, but they did. I never saw friends of mine injured or killed in the ports of Viet Nam or the Philippines. I was deployed once, for four months. My brother had two cruises of over 6 months each and 5 campaign stars. I don't know about my brother-in-law. He never talks about 'Nam. That's another difference.

I have no scars, physical or mental, from my wars. My brother still has nightmares and my brother-in-law never went back home after he and my sister married because it was too painful to see all the missing faces. I've kept thinking this whole time that those parades were so wrong. I'm no hero, but they are.

I am in no way saying that the experiences of all of our fighting men and women who have served in the Middle East were as easy as mine, far from it! Our personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen experiences very similar to the ones reported by Viet Nam veterans. IEDs, ambushes, and not being able to readily tell friend from foe or non-combatant all sound pretty similar to me. I am also not saying that the pilots in our unit didn't face the realities of combat. Everyone knows what a workhorse the Stealth Fighter was during Operation DESERT STORM.

What gets me is the disingenuous way the American public treats its war veterans. At the outset of this current conflict, public support seemed to be solidly behind our troops. Then the media worked away to undermine support for the war by undermining support for our Commander-in-Chief. If you don't think the two things are connected, take a look back at the the archived articles and see if the fall-offs in welcomes for returning troops didn't mirror the decreases in public confidence for President Bush. There is no way to support the troops if you don't support the war, people! Your opinions about the one will always affect or infect the way you feel about the other, and the stronger opinion will always prevail.

I think the way DESERT STORM veterans were welcomed had a lot to do with how people felt about the way that war worked out. Twenty-eight days is a lot more popular for a war's duration than six years. DESERT STORM was a media event. Every night there were new videos of targets being blasted to bits by guided bombs or missiles. The briefings from the Joint Operations Center were mostly entertaining, especially those done by the British officers and by General Schwartzkopf. These broadcasts all drew great ratings and were covered in a positive tone by our news media.

By contrast, after the initial few months of the latest foray into Iraq, most of the media coverage has focused on casualties. It's easy to bring a country to have nothing but distaste for a military action when all the news is about the latest IED or ambush. Strangely, this was the same tone the media adopted during the Viet Nam conflict. Very rarely were there any positive stories on the news concerning Viet Nam.

Maybe we should take another look at this whole thing. Maybe we will finally learn that our armed forces fight better when they know we're all behind them! A really great way to tell them that is by showing our support for the ones returning. (If you don't think the troops still in the danger zone are hearing about the type of welcome troops coming home are experiencing, you are sadly mistaken. In this internet age, they know within minutes.) Let's all see what we can do to show support for our returning troops! You don't have to go out to the airport. You can buy a soldier a cup of coffee or just make sure you tell them welcome home when you find out they have been to war. It doesn't matter which war. All veterans deserve at least that much!

MSgt Kenneth A Davy, USAF (Ret)

A Choice To Make

2008-03-04T20:49:00.008-05:00

Today, we Ohioans had a choice to make. Actually we had a choice to make before we could vote. We had to choose one of the two major political parties. For people like my wife, who prefers to remain an independent, this is a cruel choice. She had to choose to declare herself as belonging to a party she does not feel aligned with and would never claim in any other situation. What was her only other choice, to stay home, not vote, voluntarily forfeit her franchise?

So, there were no independent candidates. Whose fault is that? When did it become necessary for a candidate to raise a certain amount of money to appear on the ballot? When did this become Constitutional? According to what I learned in school, anyone who meets the Constitutional requirements to serve as president is supposed to be allowed to run for president. The requirements for becoming president are clearly spelled out in the Constitution. There aren't supposed to be any other requirements. The Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land, governing the requirements for all three branches of our government.

Why have we allowed the politicos to corrupt our election process in this way? Can it be that we no longer care how the process works, or is it that we have come to believe the process doesn't work? Did it ever work? I'm doubtful. As much as the founding fathers strove to bring the franchise of the vote to the people, they may have underestimated the apathy of the electorate or the level of mistrust in the process.

Here's an idea! Why don't we all get busy and do our homework and start holding our lawmakers accountable? Why can't we all start paying attention to what our government is doing? Do we really need the media to tell us what to think? Our American media is the epitome of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, endlessly affecting events through the process of "observing" them. How else could a reporter have his foot run over by Britney Spears? Anyone who has ever watched a White House press conference should be able to discern the media's role in affecting our political processes.

Now that we have the internet and numerous ways to find out which lawmakers voted in what directions, who proposed which bills and numerous other metrics pertaining to our Legislative Branch, why don't we simply do our own homework and let the media cover the sensational stuff, which is what they seem to prefer anyway? The reason is simple and it is one I already talked about, apathy! Maybe we forgot that Heisenberg Principle. The way to affect something is to observe it and we the people are the ones who are supposed to be affecting this process. We need to get busy and start affecting it before we have no part in it at all.

Hannah Montana

2008-02-27T11:10:00.000-05:00

I just saw some posts on the group site of our homeschooling organization concerning Miley Cyrus and her TV show Hannah Montana on Disney. It seems people in our group became concerned because MS Cyrus espoused her "Christian faith" during an interview and now it seems that this is cause for greater scrutiny of MS Cyrus and her show. There are those who are asking if she openly promotes Christianity on the show. Duh! It's on Disney and they'd never allow that.

Others are wondering, in print, if Miley is serious about her faith and if there are non-Christian behaviors that may come to light later. I have a different suggestion. Why don't we let Miley, her parents and God worry about all that and just be happy she openly acknowledged her Christianity and pray for her to stay strong? There have been no photos of Haley out clubbing, being arrested for intoxication, driving under the influence or climbing slowly out of cars sans undergarments. Can't we just be happy for all these things that haven't happened?

My prayer is not just that Miley becomes an example for other girls in our homes across the country, but also that her life and witness will become an influence on the others who went before her, some espousing Christian beliefs. Britney claimed at one time to be a Southern Baptist. Honestly! Pastor Mike is right again! Here's the mighty Army of God sitting around polishing its armour and picking fights with one another! Don't forget the Bible says that Satan is the accuser of the brethren! We are to lift one another up, not to whisper to our neighbor how dubious we are about a sister's sincerity!

One other thing we need to do is to quit looking at everything an actor or actress does as if it is supposed to be a sermon. They are playing a role. They usually don't write the scripts and someone as young as Miley is not even going to have much input in the process. Be glad that Haley is who she is, that she has strong Christian parents who aren't out to ride her gravy train and who are keeping her grounded and humble! It would be far better if the church as whole would be a better example and then we could stop relying on celebrities to spread the faith.

By the way, as a father attempting to raise Christian young men in this goofy world, my hat is off to Billy Ray and his wife! It's hard enough to raise children to respect the things of God outside of the glare of Hollyweird. To do so in a constant media spotlight must be some kind of torture and I'm glad you felt called to this challenge.

Unchurched

2008-02-24T11:19:00.001-05:00

Okay, so here I am at home on another Sunday morning. The weather is cold but not snowy or icy. My family and I are home for other reasons. We have had numerous unpleasant experiences with churches. We have been chastised because our sons wore shorts to church one hot, July morning. We have seen churches split with bad feelings on both sides. We have seen people openly gossiping, in loud voices, during main church services. Other churches were so wrapped up in their rapture over the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues that they practically ignored every other facet of Christian life. Then there are the churches I like to call Sunday Clubs. These are the churches where the parishioners come together once a week and never see each other at any other time, except maybe during Easter or Christmas.

You may think I am someone who does not believe in the spirit of Christian togetherness, or koinonia as the Greeks called it. This is not true. I just think that we modern Christians have lost the ability to live together peaceably. The book of Acts tells us that the First Century church lived in one community holding all things in common. For the past 30 years news reports have surfaced sporadically about modern groups that have tried to emulate the First Century model, failing miserably and sometimes tragically.

Is it that the times have changed or that we have? I think we have changed more than the times have and, if it is true that the times have changed, then we were the ones who changed them. We, as humans, shape our cultures and are shaped by them. We cannot blame the culture since we are partly responsible for its creation.

I believe we still have it within ourselves to live in community as the early Christians did, but we need to leave our modern culture and its acquisitive ways behind. I would like to ask you to think about something.

Whether you call yourself a Christian, a Buddhist or anything else, how many of your neighbors do you know? Start with the basics. How many of them do you know by name? Now, do you know what they do for a living, where they come from or anything else about them?

I think the modern church is failing in its mission also because of our modern penchant for quick fixes. Because of this, we pick and choose which scriptures we find most important and elevate them until nothing else seems to have any importance at all. This can manifest in numerous ways. There are churches that focus on nothing besides salvation and evangelism, to the complete exclusion of teaching any Christian life principles or spiritual growth. Other churches, like the Sunday Clubs, concentrate on "doing church". They preach a gospel of benevolence and pie in the sky. They may make sporadic overtures toward evangelism or spiritual growth, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.

There are also churches who preach a gospel of prosperity. To them the keys to the Christian life are church attendance, tithing and giving as much as you can in order get as much as God can give you. These churches do a little better in evangelism, spiritual growth and koinonia. Still, there seems to always be one more sermon series on DVD, one more book or one more figurine to acquire, for a nominal donation, of course. Also, these are the types of churches that tend to grow enormous congregations until a scandal surfaces. Pastors or officials of these churches end up accused of sexual or fiscal improprieties and thus thousands of parishioners wonder how they can personally have a chance to live a Christian life if this highly-revered spiritual leader everyone quoted was unable to stay the course.

I think you can understand by now why experiencing all of these deficient churches has soured myself and my family on the entire modern church experience. But what is the alternative? There doesn't seem to be one. At least not one that we have found, so far. Have we completely given up looking? I don't know. I think we may have one or two more attempts left in us, but no more than that.

I have given thought to beginning a church online. I'm still thinking and praying over this one. I somehow feel that I misread what I thought was a calling in my previous foray into ministry. But then I get the opportunity to preach and I can feel the anointing upon me. This is more noticeable when I am preaching extemporaneously. The Scriptures say that if we will speak, the Holy Spirit will give us the words to say. I have to say that I have found this to be true. I prefer preaching off the cuff rather than from a prepared script. I think one of the biggest mistakes I made when I was in a formal ministry position was in using too many scripted sermons.

Anyway, I wonder sometimes if there is any viable alternative to the difficulties in our modern churches. I would love to do ministry again but it's a very painful process. I know that sounds like whining considering what Jesus, John the Baptist and the Old Testament prophets went through, and maybe it is. I'm just wondering if I'm up to the task. Only time will tell if we will remain unchurched as we are now, but one thing is certain; we cannot remain as we are.

Wanted: Rich Men Willing To Lower Their Standards

2008-02-17T11:33:00.000-05:00

Wanted: Rich Men Willing To Lower Their Standards

I just saw a piece on CBS News Sunday Morning that shows a disturbing new trend, women dating specifically to ensnare rich men. It reminded me of an old joke. A beautiful young woman finds herself alone with an older man at a party. She knows the man is very rich. The man asks, “Would you sleep with me for ten million dollars?” The young woman blushes but also responds excitedly, “Ten Million Dollars? Why, sure I’d sleep with you for ten million dollars!” The man replies, “How about for ten dollars?” The young woman is suddenly indignant and says, “For ten dollars? Certainly not! What kind of girl do you think I am?” The rich man says, “We’ve established that. Now we’re haggling over price.”

Certainly, there have always been people of both sexes willing to do anything for money, there is a reason that offering companionship, and sex in return for some sort of compensation is referred to as the world’s oldest profession. The problem, I believe, is with the mindset behind the people on either side of these relationships. Neither group seems to think they are worth the type of total commitment necessary to find, woo and retain a mate. They bravely attempt to justify their “positions” by rationalizing.

The women point out how men are unreliable philanderers, and only after sex and, after all, if we don’t take care of ourselves, who will? Everybody knows you need to have a certain amount of money to be able live and be happy. The men point out that women are all unreliable sluts, only after money, and who can spare the time away from acquiring wealth and trinkets to properly meet, woo and retain a mate.

I believe both camps are simply saying that the process is too much trouble and, therefore, not worth the bother. They are also saying the same thing about themselves. They are all saying. “I must not be not worth loving.”. They have given up on themselves and they are lowering their standards to reflect their perception of the sorry state of love and matrimony in the modern world.

Mind you, I’m not saying there are no problems with the way we stupid humans pursue and attempt to relate to the opposite sex. There certainly are. But I believe I am worth fighting my way through those problems and seeking, wooing and remaining committed to a spouse. Consequently, Sally and I have been married for over 27 years now. Sally must think she is worth some personal sacrifice as well or we would not have lasted this long.

You see I think we humans have this whole situation backwards, as usual. We think those other people aren’t worth our time. But what are you worth to yourself? Aren’t your worth the time and the trial and error? You say it’s too hard and too painful. Oh, please! The same women who are seeking these rich men have often undergone diets and exercise classes and plastic surgery and nameless other investments just to bag a millionaire. For what? Summer in the Hamptons? A new pair of Blahniks whenever you want them? To those of you who still think you aren’t enduring pain to bag rich guys I have two words to say; bikini wax!

This is all without mentioning the pain of knowing the entire time that you are not actually loved, but rather possessed. You have become a thing, an object, no more of a companion than a pet. What happens when you become last year’s model? Oh, yes! I forgot about the divorce settlement. I think what you forgot is that little thing rich guys came up with some years ago to protect themselves from women like you. It’s called a pre-nuptial agreement.

Lest anyone should say that I am unfairly picking on these women, I have a thing or two to say to the men involved as well. Are you really so fulfilled with your money and your cars and your yachts? And who will inherit all of this wealth you have amassed? What’s it all for, Ebenezer? So you give to charities! Poor people do so also and probably give a much bigger percentage of their total incomes. If you really want to do something to give back to society, get married, have a child and teach him or her to do what you do and continue your work.

The entire thing boils down to one basic truth. The people engaged in these sugar daddy dating services are seeking the same thing they have always sought; instant gratification. They all think that life is all about this moment. What do you have? Whom do you know? Where do you live? How banal! Do you not realize that life is about more than just this moment? What is your future? What is your legacy? Andrew Carnegie was one of the richest men who ever lived and yet he managed to find time to woo and marry the former Louise Whitfield, a woman who became his partner for the rest of his life, and who was reportedly responsible for influencing much of the philanthropy her husband is so well remembered for today. How about it, boys? Do you want to be another Andrew Carnegie? It takes more than just money. You have to be aware you are worth more than companions you have to pay.

Annex Mexico

2008-01-27T22:15:00.002-05:00

Annex Mexico!

A radical statement? Colonialism? Maybe it’s both of these but please read on and see what you think about my reasoning.

One of the most pressing issues in the United States right now is illegal immigration. Actually, there is a plethora of issues that stem from this one. An email that is circulating now details the costs of many of the issues associated with illegal immigration; such as 11 to 22 billion dollars spent in welfare to illegal aliens yearly, 2.2 billion dollars spent on food assistance programs for illegal aliens and 200 billion dollars in suppressed wages caused by workers who illegal immigrated. The total annual expenditure caused by illegal immigration this email claims is 338.3 billion dollars.

Three of my four grandparents were legal immigrants and they told us all the time what a struggle it was to come here and start over again. Still they preferred it to the situations they left in Lithuania and the UK. Nobody gave them free medical care or any other handouts. Why aren't our lawmakers looking at improving the process of immigration?

Why don't we just annex Mexico and have done with it? Then everyone there would automatically be living in the United States and there'd be no reason to pay coyotes to smuggle them across the border. Our Southern border would shrink to 1,212 km instead of the current 3,141 km and we would gain some much-needed natural resources including under-developed oil reserves. Annexation would allow us to solve some problems besides the illegal immigration problem.

The extradition problem would go away immediately and it would be much easier to deal with the drug smugglers who bring their poison into the U.S. and then run back into Mexico to hide from the just punishments they deserve. Of course, we'd need to change our flag to reflect 31 more states and we'd need more than double our Coast Guard with 9.33 more kilometers of shoreline to patrol, but those would be minor considerations compared to what we would save and what we would gain.

Green card applications and the number of workers necessary to administer them would be greatly decreased. Our country would start garnering tax revenues from the billions of dollars spent by snowbirds who fly to Cozumel and Acapulco every winter. Of course, annexation would mean that we would only immediately save $245 billion of the $338.3 billion outlined below, but when you consider that all $245 billion saved would be taxable; the loss would be negligible compared to the gains.

Then there are the concerns of colonialism or downright imperialism. Of course, I’m not advocating annexation in the Nazi manner of just moving in militarily and then calling it an annexation of kindred peoples. Any annexation of Mexico by the United States would need to be a lawful and peaceful process requiring the full cooperation of both countries. The question I have is this: Has anyone even brought this up as a solution to the problems that exist between our country and Mexico? Why would that be so hard to do?
Would it be any stranger or more difficult than proposing a union of thirteen independent states that would eventually grow to 50? This union was formed to “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” according to the Preamble to the Constitution. Why would it be difficult to bring up the idea of forming such a union with one of our neighbors?

The United States of America is the original home of outside-the-box thinking about government; what it is, how it should affect the lives of the citizens it governs and how the opinions of those citizens should affect the government. Wouldn’t it be a shame if we missed one of the most earth-shattering opportunities in history to apply that type of thinking?

Candid Camera - Who Cares

2007-10-10T08:56:00.001-04:00

I don't understand the big furor about the surveillance cameras now being used in high crime areas in Chicago. There have been cameras on us for many years now and people are only starting to grouse because the cameras are in public areas and run by the government.

First of all, there is not and should not be any expectation of privacy in a public area. If you're in public, you're not in private, and vice versa. If you want to be in private, get a limo with tinted windows or, better yet, pull a Howard Hughes and stay in your room.

Second, the Constitution guarantees you a right to privacy, not anonymity. That means you have a right to keep whatever things you choose to in private. When you bring them out in public, they're no longer in private, since you chose to bring them out. Ask someone who is openly homosexual about the significance of the word "out" some time. They'll probably tell you that, if you are proud of who you are, you live your life openly. Though I don't condone their lifestyle, I applaud their courage and honesty. Everyone is encouraged to live their lives openly in our society today, with the three exceptions of criminals, celebrities and Christians.

Third, we have been on camera for decades now. There is at least one camera in every store you visit. That means you have been on camera at the grocer, the gas station, the camera store (ironically), discount outlets, restaurants and many other places. There are cameras at the airport, the bus station and in all of our government buildings. And now that cities are using cameras to help deter or solve crimes it's some great violation of our civil rights? Wake up! You had no problem with private businesses having your image for over thirty years but you now have a problem with law enforcement having it? What have you got to hide?

Personally, I think it is an enormous attack of egotism to believe that the addition of several cameras in downtown Chicago will suddenly have you in the crosshairs of the government. As I said before, you've been on camera constantly for decades now. Has the CIA whisked you away? Been stopped by the FBI lately? Do you know why that hasn't happened? They haven't been looking for you. You're not really that important. Get over yourself and go have a hot dog!

I must say one thing about these cameras. I severely doubt that they do anything to deter crime. Once they become an accepted part of the landscape, people start to forget they are there. That's what keeps people like Maury Povich in business, showing you criminals who are "Caught In The Act" on video cameras. And then there are the criminals who just don't care if they are seen. I have a son who was like that when he was a baby. We would tell him not to touch something and he would look at us and smile as he slowly reached for it again, as if trying to show us he could do what he wanted to do anyway. Some folks are just going to do what they know is wrong, regardless. In years past, before everyone became so respectful of the sensitive nature of lawbreakers, we called those people criminals, but I digress.

The footage from these cameras can and has been used to identify the criminals and make sure they pay for what they did wrong. That is the true value of these cameras. The ACLU can say whatever they want, but the first time one of their lawyers gets robbed or assaulted in view of one of these cameras, you watch him subpoena the tape as evidence of the crime to win his case. If they should be successful in having these cameras removed and one of their members suffers from a crime in one of the areas that would have been covered, they'll have only themselves to thank. I'll be down at my favorite fishing tackle store, waving at the surveillance cameras.

How Things Used To Be

2007-08-18T19:21:00.002-04:00

How Things Used to Be

You hear people say it all the time. "Those were the days", they say. When you're young you don't think you'll ever say it. That's probably because, when you're young, you don't understand what the phrase means. I recently started saying, "Those were the days". I also recently turned fifty, so I guess the phrase means more to me now than it might have some years ago. I think of the phrase when I think of how different things used to be.

There were days I remember when I was in school. The teachers had no problem keeping order and discipline in our classrooms. Kids who misbehaved were disciplined by sitting in the corner, or if the infraction was serious enough, they were sent to the Principal for a firm application of his fraternity paddle. Kids didn't continue to act up in schools and parents didn't sue the schools for disciplining their children. This took place in a rural society where little boys were not expelled for trying to kiss little girls and almost all of the boys carried pocket knives because both of those things were pretty much expected. Teacher strikes were things that happened in the big cities. My academic career was never interrupted for a teacher's strike until after I finished junior college. The biggest difference is that back then actual learning was possible for the kids who cared to apply themselves. Those were the days.

I start to think of those days when I look at our churches. There were very few churches of over 1,000 members then. Even the least popular churches were at least forty percent filled on an average Sunday, but that still only represented about 100 to 250 parishioners in the bigger churches. The most common question about religion back then was, "Where do you go to church?" Today the question is, "Do you go to church?" Were we more devout back then? I don't think so, but there seemed to be more consciousness of morality then and more of a sense of propriety. Those were the days.

I think of those days when I go into the outdoors, as well. Then, rivers were safe to wade in cutoffs and tennis shoes. Now the same rivers we used to wade and fish in Northeastern Illinois are polluted to the point that they smell like a container of floor stripper. Then, you could go fishing in a park and people would generally have the courtesy to keep their voices down when they walked by the place where you were fishing. Now, children are taught that they have an inside voice and an outside voice and that the outside voice is allowed to be as loud as they can make it, which they do whenever and wherever they get outside. Maybe our wildlife isn't really disappearing as quickly as we think. Maybe they just don't like our outside voices. Fishing was also a different sport then. People went fishing as a pastime or to put food on the table then. There was no thought of making tens of thousands of dollars for catching more fish than somebody else over a couple of days. Fishing was fun, not a job. Those were the days!

I think of those days when I try to take my family camping. Back then, with a tent, a car and few bucks a night, you could camp your way to just about anywhere. Try finding a tent spot now in most campgrounds in America. They are almost non-existent. Camping doesn't mean camping anymore. It means parking. Campgrounds have become RV parking lots, the tent spots replaced with gravel, cement or asphalt pads to keep the air conditioned mobile cabins from becoming mired if it should rain. On one particular trip, our family got our routine of pitching camp honed to the point where we could set up the tent, put the bedding in place and have supper cooked within twenty minutes. Then we would drift off to sleep with only our sleeping bags and the floor of the tent between us and the ground. Dawn would usually find us awake, enjoying the cool and peaceful surroundings as bacon and eggs sizzled over our campfire. Nothing has ever tasted better than those breakfasts. Those were the days!

Do I mean to say that I think we should return to those days? I don't think it's possible . First of all, America isn't the same now as it was then. There was more of a sense of innocence then. I think people were more courteous then. I think our society considered right and wrong less ambiguous concepts then. But then again, as I have been saying, those were the days!

If you like this posting then check out Candid Camera- Who Cares?

A Job or A Snow Job?

2007-08-05T18:09:00.002-04:00

There is a big problem confronting job seekers today. Many of the advertisements in job sections do not actually lead to someone interested in hiring workers. A growing percentage of them lead to a "business opportunity". What is meant by the term business opportunity is a company that sells franchises or kits or access to information so that the gullible can supposedly make a six-digit salary by working 10 hours or less per week. There are many who will say that we should know that these offers are too good to be true. They are easy enough to figure out once you start to get the actual information. However, these companies are getting more and more secretive with the information one would need to find out that the job in the ad is actually a come on for multilevel marketing or an outright scam.

There are some certain signs that a business engages in ripping off people they are supposedly trying to "hire". Do they have an infomercial on TV constantly? Do they promise six-digit salaries or ridiculously low investments of time or effort? Does the person leading the program claim to have become a millionaire by using this "system" that they now wish to share with you, for a fee of course?

Of course, if we look at the cause and effect of these signs, these programs start to fall apart strictly on the basis of logic. Infomercials have to pay for air time, which is not cheap. Somebody has to be bringing in an awful lot of money to keep these programs on TV. Nobody is going to pay anyone over $100,000 per year for working part time at something they just learned how to do. It may work that way one time in five billion in Hollywood or Wall Street, but almost any millionaire you research will turn out to be somebody who worked long and hard to learn their craft and they continue to work long and hard at it. Furthermore, real millionaires who make their money through their knowledge and hard work don't need your money, and they aren't about to tell anyone outside their own organizations how they did it, either.

One company advertises constantly for people to sell their products. Claims are made of tremendous incomes and work schedules that should represent the maximum number of hours a person watches TV in a day, not the number of hours they work in a week. Along with the initial fees for signing up for their opportunity, you will need to pay them $39 per month for a website that is exactly like the website they provide to every one of their other salespeople.

There is a way to fix this problem. Newspapers and internet job boards could start posting the business opportunities separately from the actual jobs. The dividing line should be simple. Does a job seeker have to pay a fee of any kind to work at the position you are advertising? If so, then it is a business opportunity, not a job and the ad is for something you are trying to sell, not for a person you need to hire. Of course this would require integrity on the part of our nation's newspapers and the people who run internet job boards.

By the way, there is one procedure that is very effective in the internet age for sniffing out scams and rip offs masquerading as viable jobs. Simply put the name of the company into a Google search along with the term rip off or scam. You can usually gauge by the quality and quantity of hits that come up whether or not you would want to be associated with a particular company. This becomes somewhat more complicated when some these companies go to great lengths to mask their company names or to change their names when they stop getting enough people signing up. That makes it even easier in one way. Never sign up or even continue to talk about signing up with a company that won't even tell you their name. Is there no indication of the company name on the website they sent you to so you could get "more information"? If you're still on such a site after more than three minutes, you're late for the door.

Anyway, it's doubtful that these practices will change anytime soon. Companies such as these are responsible for a major portion of the advertising income for televisions stations and newspapers. It would probably require some sort of legislation to get these practices stopped but that would require legislators to pass laws curtailing advertising which brings income to media outlets they depend upon to get properly quoted and hopefully elected. Here we go requiring integrity of people again when there is money involved. If only the people who ran these ads would show some integrity, maybe we could answer ads in the job section with some hope of finding an actual job.

Verbal Camouflage

2007-08-03T22:10:00.001-04:00

Aren't you amazed that we, as a country, have continued to allow our lawmakers to engage in a horribly manipulative practice while they supposedly work at making law and administering the country's budgets. A lot of you are asking yourselves just exactly which of the many shady practices found on Capitol Hill might be the focus of this piece. Might it be lobbying?

No, lobbying is a much more blatant abuse than the one I am thinking about. Franking? That is also very open greed and not as clandestine as the practice that currently concerns me. No, probably the worst practice we allow our lawmakers to engage in is the practice of attaching riders to bills that have nothing to do with the purpose of the bill to which they are attached. This practice is responsible for more pork than all the slaughterhouses in this country combined. Pork is not the worst of it!

There are lawmakers who use the rider as a political weapon. Suppose you are a member of Congress and your constituents back home really want you to get a law passed making it illegal for school bus drivers to use cell phones while the bus is under way. This seems like a good idea, so you draft a bill and you get some support and you get your turn to speak and you present your bill. Now the problems begin. The bill must go through committees. This is where the riders start to show up.

Some other members of Congress see every bill as a vehicle that may get their pet projects approved, so they start attaching riders to your bill. This is especially pronounced if the original bill represents a good idea or at least something that has a good chance of being voted through because nobody would want to be seen voting against it. This last concept is what makes the rider such an effective political weapon.

Suppose there is a situation in which you would want to embarrass your political opponents. You know, a situation like it's a day that ends in Y. Perhaps you might look at a bill such as the one I proposed above and you think up a rider that you know is so odious to the opponent's party that they will all vote against it, even at the cost of losing the original bill. Once the votes are recorded, you can smugly point across the aisle and claim that the other party wants school children to ride in buses driven by people madly text messaging away. This is called the Two-Party System. It is also the reason that so little gets accomplished in the chambers of our government.

The problem that should be glaringly apparent to those of us who vote these people into Congress is this; this system can only be used in this way by someone who doesn't care at all if sound legislation gets passed, as long as they get their way!

What can we do about this problem? Would a line-item veto do the job? I don't think so. There are two big problems with the line-item veto. The most obvious one, with all due respect to our current Commander-in-Chief, is that he, as well as those who came before and those who will follow him, are creatures of their parties. By the time they achieve our nation's highest post, the in-fighting is completely inculcated and the responses are so automatic as to be nearly involuntary, like a knee jerk reflex.

The other problem is that the line-item veto leaves all the responsibility on the President. The Checks and Balances system is supposed to leave the responsibility on the President to stop bad laws with the veto. It was not set up for the President to spend inordinate time cleaning up sloppy laws. Giving the President a line-item veto would be like saying that a bunch of boat builders should feel free to deliver boats with barnacles all over their hulls, which the CEO of the boat company is then expected to scrape away. Obviously no business would ever seek to operate in such a way, so why expect it of our government?

Shouldn't we expect our lawmakers to start crafting quality laws without all the barnacles, er, riders, on them? Maybe the problem is that they have to work so hard. With only about 200 working days per year, at least ten of which are usually taken up by voting themselves a raise, how can they possibly give good hearings to all the bills that are proposed every year? The answer is, they can't!

Maybe the answer is in two laws. Only two laws are needed to put the whole mess right. I know there are lots of ideas for laws. A law to bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Project Administration has gotten a lot of discussion in circles I have been part of. There would be a lot fewer homeless people on the streets and the government would be getting some worth for its money. A lot of the people currently on food stamps and SSI could be put to work. Some folks in Minneapolis might like a new bridge.

No, the two laws necessary to fix Congress would have to do with the lawmaking process. First, we need an end to riders. Riders have never accomplished anything but injecting pork into our budget and unnecessary legislation adding to our already over-regulated society. We have laws for all kinds of garbage that the Framers would never have begun to try to regulate. That brings us to law number two for keeping the lawmaking process under control. We need a law that limits the number of laws each member of Congress can propose per year. This would do a number of good things.

First, bills would get more discussion, both in the chamber and in committee, before coming up for a vote. Additionally, there would be less need for riders because all the members would get an equal chance to propose bills. Of course one bill would need to be added to the quiver of the Speaker of the House, this being the budget for the following year. That might just about do it. A lot of people will say that this is an idealistic, naive solution. History says that there were leaders of many other countries who said the same kinds of things about the founding of the United States and the leaders who brought it about. Maybe these are the kinds of ideas we need more of today.

Two For Flinching

2007-07-27T21:15:00.001-04:00

I think that there are many people who fail to remember the lessons of their childhood. Remember that big kid who used to prowl aggressively around the playground, suddenly thrusting himself toward some unprepared kid who would then flinch away from the faked rush? The bully would then claim his prize by proclaiming “two for flinching” as he pounded two punches into the shoulder of his victim. This process was repeated day after day during our youth until most of us learned that flinching is undesirable and inevitably leads to more pain than one seeks to avoid by flinching. I say that most of us learn this lesson, not all. Some of the ones who don't learn this lesson find another solution. They get elected to Congress.

What happens when a country flinches? What happens when we back away from a course of military action we pursued to topple a brutal dictator and his regime in order to close down the terrorist training and support that has been going on there for decades? The answer is that the bully returns to prowling the playground, seeking new victims to harass, intimidate and attack. The problem with this is that bullies are never satisfied and they continue to expand the amount of territory they patrol in search of victims. In the Middle East, we are dealing with bullies with a global reach.

The bullies are preparing. They are gearing up. But they are doing it quietly. You see, the playground monitor, the United States, has said that she may go inside as of a certain time and that the children must play nicely after she leaves. The bullies are waiting. They would be foolish to attack when they can simply wait a very short time to be the dominant force on the playground. If anyone believes these bullies will be satisfied with controlling their little corner of the world, they are in serious denial.

It has been said that the only thing that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Now our Congress proposes that our good men and women change from doing something to doing nothing. Senator John McCain said that this looks familiar. I quite agree. I remember the backlash of our last highly unpopular war.

I remember being concerned for the safety of my brother and brother-in-law as they served on the USS Newport News, often within range of small arms fire from the shores of Viet Nam. I also remember the protests here in the States. They started the same way as these protests. The protesters were opposed to the war, not the troops. But little by little, the protests came to be directed at the troops. In the end, people on the street were openly spitting on our own troops home on leave. Many of the people running our government today were among those in the colleges at that time. I think it is easy to correlate their behavior during either period by examining their behavior in the other period. Those opposed to that war want us out of this war, and vice versa. And even back then there were portions of the population who hadn't learned from our country's history.

In 1945, about the time our Marines invaded a little place called Iwo Jima, the citizens of our country had grown tired of war. They were tired of the rationing, the casualty lists, the appearance of the telegrams heralding the injury or death of countless young men. Incidentally, I find it ridiculous that the American media continue to report the death toll from Iraq as if it were monstrously immense. The death toll from the first day of the battle for Iwo Jima was far larger than the total for the entire time we have been engaged in Iraq, including Desert Storm.

Anyway, the American population of 1945 was ready to curtail World War II and bring our troops home. The arguments were the same then. Detractors of the war pointed to the cost, the casualties and the victory in Europe as reasons to stop the fighting. After all, the Italians and Nazis were whipped and the Japanese were back within their own island group, right?

Thank God that generation didn't flinch! Can you imagine how different the world would be now if Japan had been allowed to retreat with its military might still intact, it's phony, bastardized Samurai code still in force and Hirohito still in power? The Pacific might still be closed to gaijin.
Desert Storm had its detractors as well. There were the usual doves. There were also those claiming an outbreak of “US Imperialism” with their slogan “No Blood For Oil”. Fortunately there were enough Viet Nam veterans like my brother still around to build support for us. Due to their influence and the overwhelming success of our air campaign coupled with General Schwartzkopf's lightning strike offensive, things changed rapidly at home near the end of the war.

By the time we got home, there were parades everywhere in our honor. Television shows and specials became ubiquitous. During all this adulation, I kept wondering where all of this glory and celebration had been when the Viet Nam veterans came home. Where was my brother's parade? Why did my brother-in-law not appear on TV? However, there was a problem that nobody seems to talk about. We flinched.

That's right! We are in Iraq now because we flinched at the Euphrates . We wanted to court world opinion and we flinched. We could have been much more successful on the heels of our air campaign and that infantry blitz. The Republican Guards were surrendering to our news crews, and we wasted that momentum. The reason given was that there was no viable successor to Saddam Hussein. In World War II, did we have successors lined up for Mussolini, Hitler and Hirohito?

I guess I just answered my own question. What happens when a whole country flinches is something like Iraq. Oh, look at your reaction! Two for flinching!