The Media’s Memorial Day

The Media’s Memorial Day
Vol: 104 Issue: 31 Monday, May 31, 2010

The memorial honoring what is now officially known as ‘the Greatest Generation’ was, fittingly enough, timed to open for this year’s Memorial Day. Those who fought World War Two aren’t known as the Greatest Generation just because they endured the challenges of war, although that by itself would qualify its members for the title.

Throughout the history of warfare, the principle; ‘to the victor go the spoils’ generally described the purpose of warfare in the first place. The Axis’ goal was world domination, and they raped every country that they conquered.

But when they were conquered in turn by the Greatest Generation, the victors turned the spoils back over to the vanquished. For the first time in the history of war, (but not the last) nations vanquished by the Greatest Generation could count on emerging from the conflict better off than they were when the entered it.

(This was famously illustrated by the hysterically funny Peter Sellers in the 1960’s movie, “The Mouse that Roared.”)

It is hard to imagine the hardships endured by the men who landed on the Normandy beacheads. The late Stephen Ambrose and WWII historian (and veteran) helped design a computer game called Medal of Honor that simulates the journey from the landing craft to the seawall at Normandy from a first person perspective. (Ambrose oversaw the historical accuracy of the simulation)

Playing it, one wonders how ANY of the flesh and blood heroes it simulates ever actually made it to the seawall alive.

It strains the limits of the imagination to contemplate what it must have been like to be one of the men climbing up the sheer faces of the cliffs at Normandy as enemy forces shot them down from above.

And having survived, imagine the prospect of facing perhaps YEARS more of the same, liberating the whole of Europe, one town at a time.

The Greatest Generation was the generation that, having endured all that they endured at the hands of a determined, sadistic and vicious enemy, left their bitterness on the battlefield and built a world in which most of their children lived out their lives having never heard a shot fired in anger.

The Greatest Generation is also so-titled because of the tenderness with which it is treated by the media. It was the Greatest Generation that built and controlled the great media empires of their time. The veterans who had seen war understood both the cost of war and the price of peace.

They didn’t come home to saturate the pubic with stories of American atrocities against the enemy. They didn’t defame the men who fought and died for freedom, or those who survived to enjoy its benefits.

America’s warriors were portrayed by John Wayne and Randolph Scott, and they weren’t cowards or baby killers. To this generation, they seem corny and almost like caricatures, but to their audiences of the time, they were believable because they reflected the character and nature of the people that they attracted to the theaters.

There were honors and parades and plenty of commentators lamenting the passing of the Greatest Generation (somebody calculated it at 1,057 a day) and there were news cameras all over the place to capture the event — before broadcasting snippets of it in between stories of military misconduct and accusations of war crimes being leveled against US troops fighting in Iraq.

Assessment:

As America honors — and deservedly so — the generation that made America the greatest nation in the history of the world, an ROTC recruit complained to the New York Post Friday, “I’ve been called a baby killer,” by her fellow students at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University.

The future military officer told the paper, “I was thinking, I took an oath to defend their right to call me that.”

The peace and safety that was won by the Greatest Generation is now being defended by troops no less committed to America than were their grandparents, but it seems unlikely they’ll get any parades.

Since none of the other efforts to discredit the administration have borne fruit, the media has decided to attack the current Commander in Chief through his troops.

Consider the efforts that have been tried so far without success;

The war against Saddam was a neoconservative conspiracy, a capitalist conspiracy, a Zionist conspiracy, a Jewish conspiracy, and, according to some, a conspiracy between all the above and the faceless ‘oil companies’, (which are not to be confused with OPEC — the liberals LOVE those guys!)

Howard Dean went so far as to claim Bush knew in advance of the September 11 attacks, but did nothing to stop it. Dean’s comments were immediately picked up by the wire services and flashed to every newspaper editor in the world.

Then there was the effort to claim there is no evidence of a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam. (Despite reams of evidence to the contrary that seldom gets mentioned outside the pages of the Washington Times).

There has been what can only be called a bizarre effort to convince America there is absolutely no evidence that Hussein ever possessed WMD’s, effectively rewriting history as it unfolds.

None of that has worked. So now the mainstream has turned on the military forces fighting in Iraq, representing them as war criminals fighting an illegal war.

Right now, as we honor the sacrifices made by our fighting men in prior wars, there are convoys of reporters scouring Iraq and Afghanistan, looking for former detainees to tell their stories of abuse and torture at American hands.

America is a nation at war. We are in a battle for our national lives, against a world filled with enemies. Even our alleged friends are suspicious of our motives, prepared to accept any story that confirms their pet suspicions, to the point that even when confronted with the evidence, still condemn us for removing Saddam Hussein and his terror machine from power.

And most of the anti-American propaganda abroad is being spread by the liberal media and American politicians so hungry for power that America’s national interests are secondary to partisan propaganda. And the idiots that support them.

The media’s Memorial Day honors those who protected America’s freedom in past wars. As we pray for America, let us remember those who are protecting us right now. May God bless and keep them safe.

Note:  Today’s Omega Letter is a republication from May 30th, 2004.  The more things change, the more they stay the same. The OL will resume its normal publication schedule tomorrow. Happy Memorial Day.

The Christian Caricature

The Christian Caricature
Vol: 104 Issue: 29 Saturday, May 29, 2010

Most of us understand the nature of the Christian character — the New Testament is abundantly clear on the subject.

When one becomes a Christian, one becomes a ‘new creature’ in Christ — the old things pass away, and are replaced by a new heart and a new mind.

The transformation is as unique as one’s relationship with Christ; it takes place in different ways at different speeds — as I noted last week, “each of us is unique — just like everybody else.”

But it is real, and every person who has ever surrendered their lives to Christ has experienced that transformation to some degree. I have been saved for more that thirty years and that transformation is still taking place. It will continue to take place, the Bible assures me, until the day I stand before the Lord:

“Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

It is that transformed, Christian character that leads us to the understanding that we are each in the process of being transformed — an understanding summed up well by the bumper-sticker slogan; “Christians Aren’t Perfect — Just Forgiven.”

Mature, born-again Christians who understand the individuality of a believer’s relationship with Christ know the difference between a believer who is struggling with the flesh and a hypocrite.

There is no hypocrisy in recognizing something as sin, even if it is a sin that one is still personally struggling with. The hypocrisy comes from pretending it is only sin when somebody else does it.

Hypocrisy comes easily to a Christian — even when on conscious guard against it — even when alone. Especially when alone:

I recall driving down the highway one day and passing a car literally slathered with Christian bumper stickers. As I pulled abreast of it, the lady driving rolled down her window and tossed out a cigarette.

Even though there is nothing in Scripture that makes smoking more a sin than being obese, the first thought that came to my mind was, “hypocrite” — and I know better!

The Lord instructed us to pray that our Father “forgive us our trespasses” as (or, ‘in the same manner’) “we forgive others.”

It is therefore our spiritual character to want to forgive others, almost to the point of being a fault. That is the Christian character. Actually doing it is another story — because Christianity is not of this world.

Jesus said that Christianity is an enemy to the world, and the world is an enemy to it. He went out of His way to remind believers that while they might be in this world, they are not of it.

Which is the reason for the constant internal battle between the character of the world we live in and the character of the Word that lives in us.

Assessment:

The opposite side of the coin is the Christian “caricature”. A ‘caricature’ is “a picture, description, or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.”

The world’s view of Christianity does not reflect its character, but instead is more of a caricature. Non-Christians have no frame of reference against which to judge Christianity except by observing its adherents.

Since, by definition, few non-Christians go to church, what they know of Christianity apart from personal observation is fed to them by the media.

Outrageous, prejudiced, and insensitive statements make for great press, so they are often reported, with the implication that these kinds of things are typical of Christians.

Here is what most non-believers know of Christianity, based on what they learn from the press about it:

Pat Robertson called for Hugo Chavez’ assassination. Jerry Falwell blamed the Christmas tsunami on an angry and vengeful God. Then Pat Robertson blamed Him for Katrina. The Catholic priesthood is shot through with pedophiles that were protected by the Vatican for decades.

Among this morning’s headlines is this one: “Minister Arrested in Internet Sex Sting.” The lead paragraph informs readers that,

“a minister from a mega-church in Plano, Texas is facing charges of online solicitation of sex with a minor after being arrested in Bryan, Texas.”

(I’ll spare you the sordid details. Let me just summarize by saying it didn’t do much to dispel the Christian caricature.)

I Googled “Pastor arrested” and got 1,141 hits from the Google news aggregator just now. Here are a few from the first page:

“Sex Cult Pastor Arrested in Texas” (ABC); “Uganda: Pastor Arrested Over Stolen Car” (AllAfrica.com); “Local Pastor Arrested For Armed Robbery” (Rocktown Weekly, VA); “Pastor of Hindsdale Church Arrested” (Chicago Tribune); “Youth Pastor’s Teen Sex Charges” (Newsday) ; “Ex-Pastor Finds Little Forgiveness From Rape Victims in Court” (Philadelphia Daily News)

(These are all different cases, in different parts of the country, different pastors, different crimes — the stories had just one thing in common. They were all published within the last twenty-four hours.)

I am trying to recall the last positive portrayal of a Christian pastor or of Christianity itself by Hollywood and I am drawing a blank.

If there are any, they are crowded out by mental images of Robert DeNiro’s Scripture-quoting rapist in “Cape Fear” or Homer Simpson’s annoying Christian neighbor Ned Flanders on “the Simpsons.”

The tendency to portray Christianity as the ultimate evil disguised as good infuriates Christians — who know better — but this stuff is produced by unbelievers who don’t.

I’ve often noted that America is the world’s representative standard of Christianity. It is seen as the world’s most Christian country, whether it deserves that honorific or not.

In terms of culture, that is undeniable. Nobody (except the Palestinians) would dispute characterizing Israel as a “Jewish State.”

But according to the CIA World Fact Book, only 76.4% of the citizens of the State of Israel self-identify as Jews, 16% Muslims, 2% Christians and the remainder “other.”

The section on America breaks down as follows: Protestant 51.3%, Roman Catholic 23.9%, Mormon 1.7%, other Christian 1.6%, Jewish 1.7%, Buddhist 0.7%, Muslim 0.6%, other or unspecified 2.5%, unaffiliated 12.1%, none 4% (2007 est.)

Using the CIA definition of ‘Christian’, America is currently estimated to be 78.5% Christian, making America, demographically, more ‘Christian’ than Israel is ‘Jewish’.

It is small wonder that the popular caricature of Christianity is that of rank hypocrisy. Even less wonder that the jihadists have such success in their recruiting efforts.

During the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation, Jesus dictates seven letters to the Apostle John, addressed to each of the seven churches of Asia Minor at the time.

Hindsight being 20/20, theologians have looked back through history and discovered that the character of each of those churches corresponded to the main characteristics of the Christian church during various definable periods of its history.

1. Ephesus 33-100 (the Apostolic Age)

2. Smyrna 100-312 (the Persecuted Church)

3. Pergamos 312-590 (the Faithful Church)

4. Thyatira 590-1517 (the Worldly Church)

5. Sardis 1517-1750 (the Dead Church)

6. Philadelphia 1750-1925 (the Missionary Church)

7. Laodicea 1925-Tribulation (the Apostate Church)

Jesus addressed the following letter to the Christian church of the last days:

“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold no
r hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. (Revelation 3:14-19)

The Apostle Paul was writing to the Laodicean Church when he warned, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.”

Since God is referencing Israel (76.4% Jews) when He addresses the Jews of the last days, it seems equally reasonable that He is primarily referencing America (78.5% Christian) when He is addressing the caricature of Christianity that is the overall Laodicean Church.

And for the first time in America’s short history, it is perilous to be a Christian in America.

Particularly when one compares Paul’s description of Laodicean society to, oh . . . I dunno . . . . the headlines??

“For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” (2nd Timothy 3:1-5)

The point is this. For many unbelievers, you may be the only example of the character of Christianity they ever encounter. What they are expecting of you is the caricature of Christianity that they have come to know and consciously reject.

It is up to you to disappoint them.

In Memorial

In Memorial
Vol: 104 Issue: 28 Friday, May 28, 2010

This is the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day is a celebration of freedom and those that defend it.   We celebrate with heavy overdoses of all things American, fireworks, hot dogs, BBQs, picnics, baseball games and so on. 

The fireworks are to remind us that freedom doesn’t come without a fight and the overindulgence in Americana is to honor those that missed the party because they had to pay for it.

Memorial Day isn’t a just the official kick-off of the summer season or an excuse for a long weekend.  It is a day set aside by an Act of Congress in 1971 to honor the veterans of American wars.

Before that, it was called ‘Decoration Day’ since it was first proclaimed by the national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. 

In 1868, General John Logan ordered that the graves of the Civil War dead interred at Arlington national cemetery be decorated with flowers to commemorate their sacrifice.

His order included both Union and Confederate war dead.  No matter which side they fought on, they were all American.

In recent years, the purposes of Memorial Day have taken second place to the party aspect — it is more a celebration of summer and less a celebration of freedom and hardly at all about honoring our war dead.

Many of the graves of the fallen are ignored.   In those places in America where flying Old Glory isn’t either illegal or forbidden,  proper flag etiquette protocols call for flying the flag at half-mast until noon to symbolize a nation in mourning.

In one of the last acts and few shining moments of his presidency, Bill Clinton issued Official White House Memorandum asking all Americans to pause for one minute at 3 PM on Memorial Day to reflect on the price paid by our fellow citizens for our continued freedom.

In part, the Memorandum states:

“Memorial Day represents one day of national awareness and reverence, honoring those Americans who died while defending our Nation and its values. While we should honor these heroes every day for the profound contribution they have made to securing our Nation’s freedom, we should honor them especially on Memorial Day.”

Evidently, one day of national reverence is too much for the current White House. On Memorial Day, Vice President Joe Biden will lay the wreath at Arlington National Cemetery on the President’s behalf.

The president has a scheduling confict — he’s on vacation in Chicago.

Assessment:

The dictionary defines ‘honor’ as: “the reputation, self-perception or moral identity of an individual or of a group.”

This weekend is not just the beginning of summer. It is set aside to honor those who make the supreme sacrifice on your behalf. It is a time set aside to pray for those who protect us from harm. It is a time for us to love those who loved us with a love beyond human comprehension.

This weekend, as in past Memorial Day weekends, the networks will be re-running all those great old WWII propaganda movies.  

The ones where the Nazis and Imperial Japanese were evil personified and the American GI is depicted as a salt-of-the-earth guy forced to put down his plowshare to reluctantly pick up a gun and defend his country.

They were called ‘propaganda’ movies and they might have been, but the propaganda message was that America was worth dying for. 

They are stories from a bygone era about a nation united, strong and free.  We don’t see those kinds of stories anymore.  

Duty. Honor. Country.  These are things worth memorializing. 

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Note: Our home is blessed this weekend with the presence of children and grandchildren from near and far.  With your permission, tomorrow’s Omega Letter will be a blast from the past so that we can all celebrate the Memorial Day weekend together. 

May God bless us all.  

China’s North Korean Conundrum

China’s North Korean Conundrum
Vol: 104 Issue: 27 Thursday, May 27, 2010

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a press conference that the United States would offer additional briefings and other information to China in hopes it can convince China that North Korea was responsible for torpedoing a South Korean warship in March.

There is a LOT of information packed away in that sentence, not much of it good. (From the Western perspective, anyway.)

Clinton said a 400-page technical report on the sinking by an international team, including experts from the US, led to the “inescapable” conclusion North Korea was to blame and that action had to be taken.

Of course the conclusion was ‘inescapable’.  Torpedoes aren’t zipping around the South China Sea like porpoises. It came from somewhere.

Clinton’s task isn’t to convince China that it was a North Korean torpedo.  Beijing probably knew that before we did.    

We hope China will take us up on our offer,” she told reporters in Seoul, where she was on a one-day visit. “I believe that the Chinese understand the seriousness of this issue and are willing to listen to the concerns expressed by both South Korea and the United States.”

The Korean War ended in a cease-fire in 1953.  A state of war still exists between South Korea and her allies and the North and her allies.  The chief belligerents were the same then as now, essentially Seoul/Washington vs. Pyongyang/Beijing.

But things are different now than they were then.   In 1953, Maoist Communist China was a natural ally of Kim il Sung’s Stalinist Communist regime.  

The modern Chinese economic powerhouse of 2010 finds little in common with North Korea — where it is still 1953.

Beijing has far more in common with Washington where trade between the two nations has fueled China’s transformation into the Next Big Thing in Western investment opportunities.  

But Beijing is still tied by treaty and regional self-interest with the crazy little North Korean dictatorship.  If nothing else, Pyongyang has kept the West slightly off-balance, giving Beijing an edge, one almost imperceptible to us but critical for them.

As long as the West’s attention is focused on Pyongyang, it isn’t focusing on Chinese issues like human rights and slave labor.  Compared to North Korea, China is paradise on earth.

When Washington gets too pushy, Beijing can use Kim Jong il to push back indirectly, thereby accomplishing its will without jeopardizing China’s massive US trade imbalance so favorable to the Chinese bottom line.

Chinese influence in North Korea could be traded for international attention and influence elsewhere. If Seoul or Washington wanted to deal with North Korea or change Pyongyang’s behavior, it must first go to Beijing.

That is why China has been the centerpiece of the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program. Still, Beijing understands what Washington does not. 

Kim is completely nuts.   

Assessment:

“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” – James 1:8

Imagine an escaped serial killer from Death Row on the run.  He is already facing execution – what does he have to lose?

Kim Jong il has the morality of the serial killer.  Out of power, he’d have the life expectancy of Saddam Hussein. 

He has nothing to lose — if warranted, he would think no more nuking Seoul’s 22 million inhabitants than he does starving his own people to support his own lavish lifestyle.

This is what Beijing understands that the Western world — and especially somebody like Hillary Clinton — cannot. Kim Jong il is Osama bin Laden with nukes — but Kim’s ’cause’ is Kim Jong il.

That’s part of the reason why Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun yesterday repeated a call for “restraint” by both sides and said China had no “firsthand information” on the sinking.

“China wants to avoid a conflict on the Korean peninsula, and is concerned that taking South Korea’s side may provoke North Korea into further escalations and even lead to war,” said Shen Dingli, vice dean of the Institute of International Affairs at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

“China is doing the thing that best suits China’s interests and everyone’s interest,” Shen said. “China is not pushing the envelope either on the North Korean side to be aggressive or on the South Korean to punish North Korea with warfare.”

North Korea this week said it will cut all ties to the South in response to the findings of the panel.

According to a report in Bloomberg’s Financial Times, Kim ordered his military to be combat-ready sending the Korean won down 3 percent against the dollar on May 25, the biggest one-day drop since March 30, 2009.

“North Korea is dying, and we can make things worse,” Shen said. “We have assumed North Korea is not a rational actor.”

That’s a diplomatic way of saying that the North Korean leadership is just as nuts as is Kim Jong il. 

China’s intervention in the Korean War was as much (if not more) about keeping the U.S. military from setting up bases along the Yalu River, the border between China and North Korea, as it was about helping out a Communist ally.

The traditional Chinese phrase “as close as lips and teeth,” which it uses to describe the relationship with North Korea, has a second line: “When the lips are gone, the teeth get cold.”

What China is really attempting to do is force Washington to accept a deal that will keep China’s teeth warm.  China doesn’t want war with Washington over Kim Jong il — but when push comes to shove, it won’t give up its buffer zone along the Yalu River, either.

In the event Kim’s government is on the verge of collapse, or if war does break out,  Beijing stands ready to topple Kim from within and install its own Korean leadership in Pyongyang.

That lets China keep its buffer state.  It takes Kim Jong il’s finger off the nuclear button.  The US gets to avoid a conflict and everybody is happy.  

But for Beijing, that is the worst-case scenario.  Right now, everything is under control and everything favors China.  If China supports the US on sanctions, it risks reducing China’s influence over the North, which is bad for everybody.

But if China underestimates either its control over Kim or just how crazy Kim really is, the cost could be thirty thousand US troops stationed outside Seoul and Seoul’s 22 million native inhabitants.

So China is either our best friend.  Or our worst enemy.   AND it is neither — or both — at the same time. 

Tick . . .Tick . . .Tick

Who Squashed the Moderates?

Who Squashed the Moderates?
Vol: 104 Issue: 26 Wednesday, May 26, 2010

A New York City community board voted to approve the construction of an Islamic mosque and cultural center within steps of Ground Zero.

Conservative tea party activist Mark Williams has called the proposed center a monument to the terror attacks. So have many of the family members of the 9/11 victims.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer defended the decision and denounced what he calls “offensive” speech directed at the plan or at Muslims. 

“What I want people to do is to take a look at the totality of what they are proposing,” Stringer said. “What we’re rejecting here is outright bigotry and hatred.”

In Stringer’s eyes, I would be a bigot and a hater because I oppose constructing a mosque near Ground Zero. 

I’ve noticed that those who routinely use words like ‘bigot’ and ‘racist’ almost always do so in the context of defending their own hatred, racism or bigotry.  Only a bigot would automatically assume that opposition to the mosque was prompted by hatred. 

My opposition doesn’t arise from bigotry, but out of respect for America’s war dead.  It isn’t born out of hatred for Islam, but out of love for the families of their victims.

I cannot imagine how I would feel if Gayle or one of my kids had been murdered in the Twin Towers and the first monument to be constructed was an Islamic cultural center. 

But I am pretty sure my first feeling would be pain.  Serious, agonizing, screaming-out-loud pain.   There is no hatred in empathizing with that pain.  There is no bigotry in asking that the mosque be built somewhere else. 

Anywhere else. 

I don’t hate Germans.  But I would object to Germany constructing a monument to Germany on the grounds of a former death camp.    I don’t hate Japanese.  I would object to Japan building a monument to Japan along the road to Bataan.

Somebody has to say it, if for no other reason but to restore balance to the universe.   Let me.

Borough president Stringer is an idiot of the first order.  It makes me a little sick at my stomach to think that somebody this hateful, clueless and condescending has authority over his own children, let alone being a Borough president.

Some might think my calling him an ‘idiot’ is hateful.  Allow me to offer some evidence in support of my contention.

Stringer said he understood the sensitivities of the families of 9/11 victims. If so, he is more than just a bigoted jerk.  Stringer stands as a living testimony to the blind cruelty of the self-righteous Left and the platitudes they cloak themselves with.

“I don’t think anybody wants to do anything to disrespect those families. They made the ultimate sacrifice,” he said.   

But if you think it is disrespectful, you are a hater and a bigot.  You know, like the 9/11 families are.   Have you ever heard such idiocy?  How the heck is being MURDERED a ‘sacrifice’ — as if the families had offered up their loved ones to some greater good.

This is what frightens me about America’s future.  Idiots like this guy actually holding positions of authority.

“At the same time, we have to balance diversity and look for opportunities to bring different groups together.”

Balance diversity?  The ENTIRE US Islamic population LESS than 2% — or about equal to the number of Americans that believe they have been abducted by UFO’s. 

But Stringer is by no means the only idiot involved here.  Just the most obvious.  But there are others.  The AP quoted some guy named Bruce Wallace who said he lost a nephew on 9/11. 

“The moderate Muslim voice has been squashed in America,” says Wallace. 

 I’m not sure what bothers me most about that last statement.  His blind faith in the existence of a moderate Muslim voice?

Or his contention that somehow it was ‘squashed’ by someone.  WHO ‘squashed’ the moderate Muslim voice?   When Muslims worldwide stood up to cheer the attacks on September 11^th, where were the moderate voices?  Where have they been since then? 

So who squashed the Islamic moderates?

Assessment:

Honestly — I want to scream in fury.  I am almost beside myself with rage.  But my anger isn’t directed at Islam.  

It is at the idiotic arguments being offered and even more so at hearing them picked up and amplified by other idiots thinking that they are taking the higher moral ground.   

Am I a bigot?  Or are these guys monumentally stupid?   I wasn’t sure so I typed “moderate Islam” into Google to see which side of the question I am on.

I didn’t read all the hits.  But in order, the first one was from Foreign Policy Magazine.   It was titled, “The Myth of Moderate Islam.”

The next was a piece by Daniel Pipes entitled, “Identifying Moderate Muslims.”  This was the only ‘positive’ return on the first page, in that Pipes says he believes in the existence of moderate Islam.  And he has the proof.

Pipes believes that because a handful of Muslim clerics and other Islamic groups “found their voices” since September 11.  Pipes was able to find SIX individuals he thought might be moderate and TWO ‘organizations.’ (Out of 1.6 billion Muslims)

The next was from Europe News.  The title says it all; “Moderate Islam?”

According to Islamfortoday.com, the only ones who believe in moderate Islam are idiots like the Manhattan Borough president and dhimmis like Wallace.

“Muslims in general do not like using the term, understanding it to indicate an individual who has politically sold out to the “other” side. In some internal intellectual debates, the term moderate Muslim is used pejoratively to indicate a Muslim who is more secular and less Islamic than the norm, which varies across communities.”

They don’t like using the term because ‘moderate Muslim’ is the functional equivalent to ‘apostate Christian.’

“Both, Western media and Muslims, do a disservice by branding some Muslims as moderate on the basis of their politics. These people should general be understood as opportunists and self-serving. Most of the moderate regimes in the Muslim World are neither democratic nor manifest the softer side of Islam. That leaves intellectual positions as the criteria for determining who is a moderate Muslim, and especially in comparison to whom, since moderate is a relative term.”  Muqtedar Khan, PhD.

Remember where we began.  We started by looking for ‘moderate Islam’.  

The next return to my search was from Frontpagemagazine asking the question: “Is There a Moderate Islam?”

Next is one called “Moderate Islam Does Not Exist” followed by “Beheading Moderate Islam” followed by “Four Faces of Islam”  and only THEN do we find yet another idiot claiming that the voices of moderate Islam have been “silenced” by American “bigotry.”

So, maybe I am a bigot because I can’t find any evidence suggesting the existence of a moderate Islamic center.  There is nothing in the Koran that permits moderation.  

According to the Koran, Osama bin-Laden is a good Muslim.  Moderate Islam is a synonym for ‘apostate Islam’ according to Islamic authorities.   But what do they know?

The best authority is clearly a Manhattan Borough president who, without any evidence in hand apart from his own ignorance, just knows that Islam is a religion of peace and love and worthy of more respect than the victims of September 11^th.

And since Wallace ‘lost a nephew’ on 9/11 he is obviously in the best position to unsquash moderate Islam’s voice by building a monument to the ideology responsible.

And anybody who doesn’t agree with them is a hateful bigot.   Except actual members of Islam who take offense at the label ‘moderate’.

They aren’t hateful bigots.  They are the ‘real’ 9/11 victims.   And if you disagree, you’re a hateful, bigoted jerk.  

No offense intended. 

Car 54, Where Are You?

Car 54, Where Are You?
Vol: 104 Issue: 25 Tuesday, May 25, 2010

I am a child of the 1950’s and 1960’s.  I grew up with television — I don’t remember a time before television, but I recall being aware that TV was as new to the world as I was.  

I can recall when TV Guide magazine was just a few pages long and a whole night’s prime-time listings could fit on two sides of one page.  

The TV was much more than entertainment.  It also served me as a time piece and a calendar — if it was “The Lone Ranger” it was 7:00 — if it was “Bonanza” it was Sunday.

But everything was entertaining, from the Mr. Clean animated commercials to the Mr. Ed theme song.   

The commercial jingles and the early TV theme songs found plenty of unoccupied space in my brain, burrowing in deep where they didn’t have to worry about competition.  Back then, I had room for permanent storage.  Now, new data has to compete for temporary rental space.

At least a few of you share my recollection of 1950’s-era sitcom that starred Joe E. Ross as Gunther Toody and Fred Gwynne as Officer Muldoon.  

“Car 54, Where Are You?” was eventually remade into a movie, but like most similar efforts, it flopped badly.

It was a good idea in concept, but not so great on film.  A 90-second Joe E. Ross impersonation would have been fun.  Ninety-minutes was eighty-eight too many.  

It wasn’t even my favorite show as a kid — for almost the same reason.   Thirty minutes was twenty too many.  Like the Three Stooges, the original Joe E Ross was only funny for about ten minutes. Much more than that got slightly annoying.

Even when I was a kid it was hard to believe anybody quite that stupid could get a job involving more than two moving parts, let alone one carrying a loaded gun.

But there’s a point to all this.   Wait for it. . .

As I was reading over the top stories of the day on this morning’s Drudge Report, the theme song from one the original TV series popped unbidden and unexpectedly into my brain. 

I could hear it as plain as if there was a TV playing in the background . . . I even recalled all the words:

“There’s a hold-up in the Bronx, Brooklyn’s broken out in fights;
There’s a traffic jam in Harlem that’s backed up to Jackson Heights;
There’s a Scout troop short a child; Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild…
Car 54 – Where Are You?”

Assessment:

The Ballad of Car 54 is a painting of catastrophe and confusion writ large on New York’s relatively small canvas.   It was intended to create the exact image that my young mind instinctively rejected as implausible. 

They were so incompetent that (to me) it wasn’t funny.    If Toody and Muldoon were real cops, then instead of laughing at them, people would be horrified.   

Reading the headlines on today’s Drudge Report prompted all that recollection because it feels like the second half of the program.  

It’s a dream sequence where Gunther Toody is the President of the United States and Officer Muldoon holds all the positions in his cabinet.   

“There’s a holdup in the Bronx . . .” 

Oil is flooding up from the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico, causing catastrophic damage.  The government left BP in charge for six weeks, rather than stepping up early and risking the political damage that would come with each failed attempt.  

Now that BP has been indelibly associated with the failures, any government effort will be an improvement.

But not until after catastrophe becomes crisis.  There is blame that can be assigned to catastrophe.  But now that it’s been allowed to become a crisis, the government becomes the solution. 

From Obama’s perspective, the spill afforded a political opportunity, provided it was handled properly.  And it was. They just waited it out until the public saw BP as the only responsible face for the catastrophe — Obama can then ride in as the solution.  

The solution will be a moratorium on oil exploration and “a renewed commitment to finding alternative forms of energy” etc, etc., and some kind of ‘international effort’ that will give the UN more power over US sovereignty. 

One linked headline on Drudge this morning reads:  “Congress preparing to quadruple the tax on oil.” Surprise! 

Another reads: “US Plays Down European Crisis But China Worried.”  China is worried but we’re not?

“Brooklyn’s broken out in fights . . .”   

Obama’s latest approval ratings hit a new low of 42% according to one Drudge link.    

Below that is a link to a story calling Obama’s financial reform package “a disaster”  — as the Dow plummets 200 points in the first two minutes of this morning’s trading.

“There’s a traffic jam in Harlem that’s backed up to Jackson Heights . . .”

After six weeks of silence from Washington and Seoul, a multinational UN investigation concluded that North Korea torpedoed and sank a South Korean naval vessel in international waters, killing 44 South Korean sailors.

The US promptly threatened sanctions made the usual scary threats.  But China is backing North Korea.  If China stops lending us money, the Obama ‘spend us into prosperity’ plan will be exposed as the Ponzi scheme that it is.  

America will do nothing. 

Seoul’s bluster was more subdued, given that it is home to 22 million South Koreans living within artillery range of the DMZ.  

Remember when Joe Biden promised that Obama would be ‘tested’?  Kim Jong il is grading his paper right now.

There’s a Scout troop short a child;

Eight people have been charged with separately trying to access President Obama’s student loan records, both during his candidacy and after his election.  Each of them faces a year in prison and a maximum one hundred thousand dollars in fines.  

In 2004, Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger stole top secret documents from the National Archives in an effort to mislead the 9/11 Commission’s investigation concerning an act of war against the United States!

On conviction, Berger’s national security clearance was suspended for three years and he was fined ten thousand dollars.  No jail time.

Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild…

As US forces in Afghanistan prepare for the largest battle of the war so far,  Drudge reports that Obama is planning to skip the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington to go on vacation in Chicago.

Syria’s Bashar Assad gave Obama a public dressing down saying America has “lost its influence in the Middle East” in advance of Obama’s scheduled visit with Lebanese leader Saad al-Hariri.  

Lebanon’s ‘government’ includes Hezbollah officials in both the administration and its parliament and is a largely a puppet government controlled from Damascus.   

The visit is the brainchild of Obama’s counter terrorism czar John Brennan, who advises the US to reach out to ‘moderate elements’ within Hezbollah as a way of opening relations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.   

The White House has declared war on Arizona for passing a law they haven’t read that mirrors a federal law that the head of Immigration Enforcement has decided to refuse to enforce.

Ooh! Ooh!  Drudge just posted today’s lead story . . . “Obama’s Redistribution Victory;  Private Pay Plummets, Handouts Soar”

 Car 54, Where Are You . . ?

”So Easy Even a Cave Man Can Do It”

”So Easy Even a Cave Man Can Do It”
Vol: 104 Issue: 24 Monday, May 24, 2010

In a research project that lasted close to three years, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute created cells that were able to grow naturally, by inserting artificially created genetic material which was chemically printed and assembled in forced conditions into a cell.

Put another way, the Venter Institute claims that it created life.  Well, sort of.  It would be more accurate to say that they restored life.   The Venter team used the ‘corpse’ of a bacteria, mycoplama mycoides (more about that later) which they reprogrammed at the genetic level.

(Think Gene Wilder in “Young Frankenstein”.  The Frankenstein monster was made out of body parts stitched together and reanimated.  Their duet, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” keeps replaying in my head.)

But I digress . . . Peter  Boyle’s Frankenstein Monster wasn’t a ‘new’ life or even a ‘new’ creature — how would you portray the creation of new life from scratch in a movie?  The answer is, you really can’t. 

Such a movie would have no frame of reference for the audience.  How does a human mind conceive of something that cannot exist?    The answer remains the same.  It can’t.

It was the father of godless Communism, Vladimir Ilyanovich Lenin, who accidently offered the most startlingly obvious proof of the existence of God.   Lenin theorized that all man could learn about the universe is that which is physical — there is no immaterial or spiritual existence.

To prove his argument, Lenin challenged doubters to try and imagine a new prime color for the rainbow.  Try and visualize a color no one has ever seen before.  

Lenin’s argument was since nothing can be conceived which does not exist, nothing can exist outside the material universe.

The concept of God is that of an immaterial Being that exists outside of space and time.  His existence had no beginning and it has no end.  He is everywhere at once, yet He resides in Heaven.  He is all-knowing, all-seeing and all powerful.   

He created everything out of nothing, yet He exists above and distinct from all creation. Before anything was, He is.

What is the human frame of reference for an immaterial Spirit-Being that fits that description?   This is a big universe filled with everything imaginable. If God didn’t exist, could we have imagined Him? 

Can we imagine a new prime color for the rainbow?   Poor Vladimir Lenin!  He’s gone on to his ‘reward’ — so to speak. 

If Lenin went where his doctrine dictated, he is now explaining to Satan how he formulated the most iron-clad philosophical proof for the existence of God ever conceived.  

I hope that Heaven has instant replay.  Now, that would be entertainment! But once again, I digress.  

Back to the Frankencritter. . .

Assessment:

Venter’s Frankencritter is constructed from ‘body parts’ on the frame of the mycoplasma gentitalium, the tiniest known free-living bacterium.   The mycoplasma gentitalium has just 485 genes, fifteen of which Venter’s team deleted as superfluous.

Venter’s team took parts from mycoplasma gentitalium and combined it at the genetic level with parts from its cousin, mycoplama mycoides.

In the process, Venter deleted some 14 genes from mycoplama mycoides, writing new code to go with existing genes, (and even adding a watermark signature cipher that contains the URL of a website and three quotations — that Venter hopes to patent as a copyright)

The genome was inserted into genome-free bacteria, and the resulting bacteria colonies ALL contained the synthetic genomes, including the copyright watermark. The Frankencritter was able to reproduce itself!  That makes it the very first living creature since creation that had no ancestor.   

The reaction from the secular humanist community was immediate and unsurprising.  At the heart of almost all debates about the existence of God is the question of creation vs. evolution.  And the argument from evolution exists on the shifting sand of new discoveries resulting in evolving facts.

So the argument from Creationism always had the upper hand in one regard.  The existence of life.  Life has always been the one unassailable argument in favor of Divine Creation.  The spark of life that animates what is otherwise a collection of chemicals — that is what was always the major chink evolution’s armor.  

“Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.”   (Take that humanist!)

“Well, maybe a tree.  But Craig Venter can make a bacterium that reproduces itself!”   (Take that, Christian!)

Lost in the debate about whether or not Venter’s team created life or merely engineered a genetic Frankenstein bug, is the fact that Venter’s team was responsible for the existence of a living creature that had no ancestor! 

That is an established fact.  But what is fascinating is any suggestion that it disproves the notion of a Creator God.   Back things up with me for a second and look at what this really proves.

Dr Venter’s team wrote new programming code based on the machine language already encoded into all existing DNA.  Venter’s programming instructed the bacteria to divide and reproduce spontaneously, which is the basic definition of life.  

Rocks can’t reproduce.  They are not alive.  Plants reproduce.  They are alive.  So are bacteria — because they reproduce.  They reproduce because of their genetic programming. 

Taken to its most extreme meaning, Venter’s ability to code a brand-new genetic creature proves only that the primordial ooze theory could have brought forth the first living organism.  But it falls far short of disproving a Creator — it DEMANDS one. 

Venter put a copyright on his gene to ‘prove’ life is possible without a Creator God.  But it couldn’t have happened WITHOUT Venter.  And what’s more, Venter had to use existing, intelligent, logical and humanly- readable language already there to make any of it happen. 

Here’s what it really proves.  Life is so simple even a caveman can do it.  But first the caveman had to find out where God wrote down the instructions. To argue otherwise is akin to following a recipe for baking a cake and then claiming the resulting cake disproves the recipe had an author.  

“I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” (Psalms 139:4)

Spiritual Schizophrenia

Spiritual Schizophrenia
Vol: 104 Issue: 22 Saturday, May 22, 2010

Most people, when they think of schizophrenia, associate it with a mental condition called Multiple Personality Disorder.  In reality, schizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personalities. 

The dictionary provides two definitions for schizophrenia.  The first is that of a severe mental disorder technically known as dementia praecox.  Dementia praecox is the severest condition, where the victim becomes delusional; hallucinations, voices, that kind of thing.

The second definition is a mental state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements.   That’s the working definition I had in mind when I titled today’s briefing “Spiritual Schizophrenia.” 

Every Christian understands what I mean by ‘spiritual schizophrenia’ by experience. 

There is a TV commercial running currently for an allergy medicine in which the main character, an allergy sufferer trying to decide which allergy medicine to take, talks with two tiny representations of himself, one on his left hand, the other on his right.  

The one on the left side of the screen is the competitor, the one on the right is the Their Brand.  When Their Brand’s little guy announces that they last twelve hours and the competitor only six, the little guy on the left stamps his foot angrily and disappears in a puff of smoke.

That is Madison Avenue playing off the instinctive and experiential acknowledgement of the twin natures of man.   They don’t need to explain any of it — the symbolism is instantly recognizable to any culture.

In the old cartoons, it was a little winged angel with a halo on the right hand and a little red devil on the left, each whispering contradictory messages into the main character’s head. 

It is so universally-recognized as a symbol of the spiritual schizophrenia that afflicts us all that little kids watching cartoons grasp the concept instantly.   They’ve experienced the two natures long before anybody told them about it.

But experiencing it without being able to account for it is much like suffering undiagnosed schizophrenia.  It brings much sorrow and discouragement until you know what it is and how to treat it. 

Christians who fail to understand how spiritual schizophrenia afflicts them suffer the most discouragement. 

Here you are, rejoicing in your newfound relationship with Christ.  You have turned your back on the world, the flesh and the enemy.  You are walking on air.

Jesus has taken possession of your life and opened the door to a fresh, new existence.  You are cleaner than you’ve ever felt.  The old man is crucified with Christ, the old way of sin is gone forever.  The pathway to God seems a perfect pathway to peace.

Your desire for that ‘besetting’ sin, that one habit you never seemed to be able to kick, seemingly falls away by itself.

Then, BANG! The old forces of sin come back as strong, if not stronger than before.  That besetting sin, once merely a habit, becomes almost a necessity of existence.

Your spiritual tendencies are suddenly paralyzed. You want to move in the direction of the Spirit, but you are overwhelmed by the needs of the flesh. 

You are at first amazed at the power of the flesh, then distressed by your spiritual weakness, and finally discouraged and wondering if you were ever really saved in the first place.

This is where, for many Christians, there is a departure into that half-and-half existence, concluding that having been tempted and fallen, they are back in bondage to sin. 

They no longer have any confidence in themselves or hope of winning anyone else to Christ.

Some conclude that they must not have been saved in the first place, wondering if there really even is such a thing as conversion. 

Their “brethren” reach the same conclusion, teaching that salvation without growth and change is faux salvation — they couldn’t have been saved in the first place.   

The Bible teaches that salvation is by grace through faith.  But faith in what?  Faith that Jesus existed?  Faith that Jesus died?  Faith that Jesus rose again? 

How does faith that Jesus did all that translate into saving faith?  The answer might surprise you.  It can’t. Knowing the Gospel story doesn’t impart salvation.  The Apostle James writes:

“Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” (James 2:19)

Believing that Jesus died and rose again — by itself — is simply an acknowledgment of fact.  Satan knows that Jesus died and he certainly knows that Jesus rose again.  And he just as certainly isn’t saved by that knowledge.

Neither is anybody else.

Assessment:

I knew ALL that when I was a kid growing up in Catholic school. I had Catholic cathechism class every single school day.   I knew a ton about Jesus and the Cross and the Apostles and the Gospels.   

But I wasn’t saved.  And I already had lots of experience with spiritual schizophrenia — long before I came to Christ. 

Once I knew the difference between right and wrong and discovered that no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t keep myself out of trouble, that cartoon devil kept kicking the angel right off my other shoulder.

Saving faith isn’t faith that Jesus rose again, saving faith is found in knowing why. 

Jesus was the only One qualified to pay the penalty for my sin.  He paid my penalty at the Cross.  His resurrection is proof that the payment was all-sufficient and my faith, and my salvation, rests in that truth.

Spiritual schizophrenia is not just part of the human condition; it is a bedrock doctrine of Christianity.  The Book of Romans has long been recognized as the blueprint for salvation; most missionary tracts contain all or some of “Romans Road.”

The message of the Book of Romans is salvation, what it means, and how it works in the Christian experience.  In Chapter Seven, Paul outlines the doctrine that both diagnoses and treats spiritual schizophrenia.

Paul begins by explaining the Law of Moses as understood by the Jewish authorities of the time.

“Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?”  

An observant Jew had to keep the Ten Commandments — plus some 615 other rabbinical commandments derived from the Torah by the sages and religious authorities.

“For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.”

“Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law by the Body of Christ; that you should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.”

We are dead to the Law by the Body of Christ.   That explains how.  I want you to see why.  “That we should bring forth fruit unto God.”  

Recall those unfortunates discussed above who, having been tempted and fallen, have no confidence in their own salvation.  They question whether they were ever really saved themselves — and they certainly have no testimony to share with others.  No fruit unto God.

That is why we are dead to the Law.  Because of our dual nature.  Otherwise, salvation would be impossible, as Paul testifies:

“For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.”

 “But now we are delivered from the law, being dead to that in which we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.”

‘The work of The Law was to bring fruit unto death.’ Is that right? 

“What shall we say then? is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, you shall not covet.”

Nobody ever kept the whole Law.  The purpose of the Law was to demonstrate the need for a Savior and only He that was without sin could deliver them from that bondage.

What caused the Fall of Adam was the Law.  Adam had but one law to obey. It was too much for him.  Sin operates on the Principle of the Forbidden Fruit.

“For I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.”

Something isn’t sin until it is forbidden. But once it is forbidden, the flesh can’t keep away from it.  That is the essence of the sin nature.  

Babies can’t grasp sin, so they are “alive” spiritually.  They don’t need to be ‘born again’.   Babies who die don’t go to hell, they are innocent of personal sin.

 “And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.  For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.”  

But when the “commandment comes” (they understand right from wrong) the Principle of the Forbidden Fruit kicks in, sin revives and they die spiritually.

There is no doubt that the Apostle Paul was both saved and Personally indwelt by the Holy Spirit.   But Paul also suffers from spiritual schizophrenia. 

“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwells no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”

“For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

Sounds a lot like the guy who, having once been enlightened and had tasted the gifts of the Spirit, was tempted, fell, got up, fell again, and finally concluded that he couldn’t perform as a Christian.  

“I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.”

If we were stop right here, what we would have is Paul confessing that he is discouraged by his sinfulness and looked forward to a pretty fruitless Christian testimony, if he were really saved at all.  

Here we have the diagnosis of spiritual schizophrenia laid out in plain and simple terms.

“For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”

Paul’s diagnosis is followed up with the lament of the defeated and discouraged Christian still struggling to come to grips with his disorder:

“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

But then Dr. Paul outlines the treatment.  It isn’t a cure — spiritual schizophrenia is a life-long incurable condition.  But there is good news. 

Properly understood, it can be treated and its sufferers can enjoy a full and fruitful life in Christ.  

“I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”

Is Paul saying that from now on, he can sin all he wants to and just serve the law of God in his mind?  No.

And neither am I.  Recognition of a condition is not justification for not treating it.  It is merely recognition that it exists.   

But since it exists, and since it is an incurable condition in this life, saved, Blood-bought believing Christians do sin after salvation.  

Some sinners seem to sin more than others, but if there is a line drawn in the sand somewhere that Christians cannot cross, the Bible doesn’t reveal where it is.  

The Bible says only that all sin is equal in God’s eyes and that all of our best efforts at good works are as ‘filthy rags’ before the Lord.

Our spiritual schizophrenia is well-known to God.   That is why our justification had to be complete — we are as incapable of maintaining it as we were of obtaining it in the first place.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”  (Jeremiah 17:9)

Because all our good works are as filthy rags before the Lord, there is only one way we can bear fruit unto the Spirit.  A full understanding of our condition demands a total reliance on faith that by His blood we are justified forever.

Our condition is not Life-threatening and we needn’t be ashamed of being in treatment. It  is a lifelong condition we were ALL born with.  

You aren’t unique.  And you aren’t hopeless.  But you are desperately needed on the battlefield.  You don’t need to go find it.  Just get up and stop nursing your wounds. The battle will find you.

“And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (2^nd Corinthians 12:9)

That is — by itself — a testimony worth sharing. 

Controlling the Agenda

Controlling the Agenda
Vol: 104 Issue: 21 Friday, May 21, 2010

I am trying to think of a single policy decision made at the federal level over the past fourteen months that benefitted America, rather than hurting her. 

I’m drawing a blank.  How about you?   It would seem that whenever there is a choice of two ways to go, the administration always takes the path that does the country the most damage.

We now embrace our enemies and repel our allies. I don’t have to rehash the number of times Obama has already either apologized or bowed to our enemies or how many times he has sabotaged relations with our friends.

It seems like each day provides a fresh example.

The Left gave Mexican President Felipe Calderon a standing ovation when he both criticized openly mischaracterized (lied about) Arizona’s immigration law.

Every federal official that stood to applaud Calderon offered a direct slap in the face to every Arizona law enforcement officer, not to mention every Arizona voter. 

Arizona’s law mirrors federal law and forbids racial profiling.

The assumption that law enforcement officers can’t be trusted to obey the laws they are charged with enforcing betrays each federal official that applauded that assumption.  They don’t obey their own laws unless it suits them, so they assume that the police don’t either. 

I don’t think that is a partisan assessment — since it is shared by a significant plurality of Democrats.   According to Real Clear Politics, the president’s job approval rating is split almost down the middle, with 48% approving and 46% disapproving.

When you look at RCP’s stats, be sure and notice how the polls break down.  CBS has Obama’s approval at 51% and disapproval at 39%.  ABC NewsWashington Post’s last poll has Obama at 54% approve, 44% disapprove.  NBC shows it 50% to 44%.

FoxNews’ polling data shows 45% for and 46% against.  

Neither CBS nor ABC bothered to poll presidential approval ratings for May.  They’ve invested all of their journalistic integrity and credibility in Barack Obama being the nation’s last, best hope. 

It will take a lot for them to admit not only that they have been had, but that they are primarily responsible for his election.   Obama has seemingly made so many rookie mistakes that it gives pause to wonder if he has a clue about what he is doing, so the mainstream media is extending him the benefit of the doubt.

I am beginning to believe that is a disguise — Obama knows exactly what he is doing.  It is the mainstream media that is clueless. 

The liberal media still refuses to look too closely at the Obama administration — it simply can’t afford to.   But it ignores Obama at its own peril — what they don’t realize is that they are standing in front of Obama’s bulls-eye. 

They are assisting in their own involuntary suicide, but they are too heavily invested in The Legend to acknowledge the reality.   But every time Obama goes off-script, he lets a bit more of his real agenda slip out.  

Like at Hampton University where he complained that the American people were being exposed to “all kinds of arguments” that according to Obama, “don’t rank that high on the truth meter.” 

Obama’s ‘Diversity Czar’ is a fellow named Mark Lloyd.  First off, let’s examine what a “Diversity Czar” actually is.   Lloyd is in charge of enforcing ‘diversity’.  I looked up ‘diversity’ in my thesaurus and discovered diversity’s antonym. 

The thesaurus says the opposite of ‘diversity’ is ‘unity’ as in the United States of America.  The Diverse States of America would be Canada, the US, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, etc. 

America needs a Diversity Czar like Moscow needs more Communists. If anything, America needs something to unify it.  Which is why Obama is taking us the other way.

Lloyd’s vision of ‘diversity’ includes reviving the woefully misnamed ‘Fairness Doctrine’ that would require equal time for opposing points of view on virtually every subject.  

That sounds fine on paper.  But what it means is two things.  The first is that Christian networks will have to present opposing (anti-Christian) points of view.  Secular networks will have to either drop Christian programming or find and broadcast opposing programming, whether they want to or not.

The administration denies it, but it is impossible to imagine that Mark Lloyd would issue an exemption to Christianity, which leads to the second point. 

From the media producer’s point of view, it is easier to drop opinion and religious programming than it is to meet Fairness Doctrine standards.  That’s why Obama wants the Fairness Doctrine reinstated.  His guy gets to pick what’s ‘fair’.

Elena Kagan, Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, is on record complaining about an “overabundance of ideas” — allow that concept to sink in for a second.   Moreover, Kagan believes it is up to the government to ‘unskew’ certain ideas. 

The administration’s ‘Net Neutrality’ plan sounds as innocuous as the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ does, but in reality, it is an effort to control content on the internet. 

There are a lot of things are broken and need fixing; illegal immigration, the economy, Afghanistan, Iran, foreign relations with Israel and the UK, the list is long and the threats they pose are manifest.

The internet, however, works exactly as advertised.  It is truly neutral in that every point of view is represented.   The internet needs a Net Neutrality Act like a butterfly needs a Harley.  Any effort to regulate internet neutrality will necessarily accomplish the opposite.

The administration has also declared total war on Fox News, singling out both the network and individual commentators from the presidential podium, an unheard-of practice for a country founded on the principle of freedom of speech as the only way to keep the government honest.

President Obama’s open contempt for the Tea Party movement is more than a little baffling.  The Tea Party consists primarily of independent and conservative swing voters — and they are the ones that decide elections.

Partisan Republican voters vote the straight-Republican ticket.  Partisan Democrats vote the straight Democrat ticket.  To these voters, it doesn’t matter who the candidate is. All that matters is that he belongs to the right party.

So the Democrats needn’t worry about their own voters and they know they aren’t going to get any from the other side.  And neither party commands a majority of the voters.  The electorate breaks down to about a third for each party and a third conservative-leaning independents.

So for either party’s candidate to win in national elections they need the swing vote. Obama’s contemptuous dismissal the 20% of independents that identify with the Tea Party should be political suicide in November. 

In a normal world and a normal electoral year, Obama should have put the rest of his controversial agenda on hold while he went to work on charming the Tea Party.

Instead, he mocks the very voters he needs to prevent losing the Congress and spending the last two years of his presidency as a lame duck.

It’s like he knows something that the rest of us don’t.

Assessment:

The very first step on the road toward totalitarian government is controlling the agenda by controlling the media.  Obama has managed to maintain total control over the mainstream media, excepting talk radio and some programs on Fox. 

I find the O’Reilly and Glenn Beck segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” is growing increasingly bizarre in that O’Reilly simply dismisses Beck’s horrifying conclusions out of hand, without offering a shred of contradictory evidence.

Beck says that Obama is deliberately leading the country down the road to ruin as part of a globalist agenda to control the world.  And Beck fills an hour each day providing evidence to support that view. O’Reilly laughs at him.

If Beck is nuts — and O’Reilly clearly thinks that he is — then why not question Beck’s evidence?  Or provide evidence that counters Beck’s charges?

And if Beck isn’t nuts, then why isn’t O’Reilly taking up the cause?  After all, if Beck is right, the cause is America’s continued existence.

O’Reilly can’t afford to — even if he agrees with him.  Even if O’Reilly believed it was all true, O’Reilly wouldn’t dare admit it.  The administration and the media have made Glenn Beck so radioactive even O’Reilly has to maintain some distance.

I picked on the O’Reilly/Beck segment because it demonstrates the level of media control the administration already enjoys.  The first step in controlling the agenda, remember, is to stifle the opposition.

If Beck is right, nothing less than the survival of the United States as we know it is at stake — yet O’Reilly dare not exhibit anything more than bemusement at his demented friend.  

Beck can get away with it because Beck is already marginalized as a screwball.  O’Reilly can’t afford to take the risk.  Even if his country is at stake.

A totalitarian scheme can’t work without the willful ignorance of the public.  The public must be conditioned to accept the unacceptable without admitting that they accept it.  That is how political correctness works. 

“Undocumented worker” is PC for “illegal alien.” Undocumented worker describes a guy who goes to work and forgets his wallet.  Illegal alien describes a foreign-born national illegally in the United States.

One must be willfully ignorant to believe they mean the same thing.  

It is not ‘racist’ to enforce immigration laws. What race are Canadians? They are subject to the same US immigration laws.  It takes willful ignorance, bordering on the delusional, to believe that US immigration laws are racist with a mixed-race immigrant sitting in the Oval Office.

Indeed, I believe it is as politically incorrect to observe that Obama is of mixed-race as it is to mention his middle name or question his undocumented background, is it not?   

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:” (2^nd Thessalonians 2:11)

Casa Blanca

Casa Blanca
Vol: 104 Issue: 20 Thursday, May 20, 2010

According to a report on PBS, Mexican drug violence has claimed 22,700 lives since December 2006.  That is more than the total deaths on both sides so far in the Afghan War.  It is just under half that of US losses in Vietnam.

I did the math, rounding up to four years, and it was pretty scary.   It works out to a murder every two hours!  And that is an underestimate since it doesn’t include the murders that will occur between now and December.

A total of 18 people were killed and 15 wounded in a twelve-hour period in the northern Mexican states of Durango and Coahuila.   Four of them had been decapitated. I found this gruesomely revealing line in the Latin American Herald report:

“The authorities said the heads had not been placed in refrigerators, as has occurred on other occasions.”

 Mexico is a failed narco-state where the police are either in the pockets of the drug lords or they end up like Police Chief Martin Castro.  Castro’s head was found in an ice chest together with the bodies of six of his men. 

The bulk of the police force of the Mexican town of La Union resigned enmasse following a drug-cartel ambush that wounded two of their officers.   

Residents on the outskirts of Mexico City, recognizing that they are on their own, are taking justice into their own hands. Two thugs mugged a young couple using a knife and a toy gun, robbing them of 200 pesos and a cell phone.

About 300 people pursued the two men, caught one and beat him so badly with sticks and fists that he died in an ambulance, officials said.

Human Rights Watch reported a jump in military abuses of civilians including charges of murder, rape and torture, which were ‘handled’ by secret military tribunal rather than open court.

Mexico is a horror show bigger than its borders can contain. From 2000 to 2008 the number of illegal aliens in Arizona skyrocketed by 70 percent.

Arizon’s a population of 6.6 million includes an estimated illegal alien population of 500,000 and a prison population that includes nearly 6,000 Mexican nationals (14 percent of the inmate population). 

(In California, where many cities have ‘sanctuary’ laws, passed in defiance of federal immigration law, 36% of prison inmates are Latino).

Phoenix has earned a reputation as the kidnap-for-ransom capital, second only to that of Mexico City.   There were 370 reported kidnappings in Phoenix in just the past year. 

In March, an Arizona rancher named Robert Krentz was fatally shot on his own ranch by an illegal alien.   Krentz had lived on the Arizona border all his life. But Google warns that if you try to read all about it from the Guadalajara Reporter, it might ‘harm your computer’.

Google does not warn people away from the sites that claim Krentz’ murder was really an American — there are about seven sites, all liberals, including the Huffington Post, making that claim. 

How do they know he was an American?  They don’t. They just made it up.

Krentz’ killer is still unknown.   

Assessment:

No other nation on earth permits this kind of foreign disrespect for either its borders or its citizens.  The estimated 12 to 30 million illegals living in America threaten to overwhelm the system. 

One in seven children in public schools is a direct or indirect product of illegal immigration.  The same number applies to hospital emergency room visits.

The federal government continues to drone on about ‘immigration reform’ with the word ‘reform’ used as a euphemism for ‘amnesty’ — while claiming the exact opposite.  

The Congress authorized the construction of a border fence, but it was never completed.  Despite the new Arizona law, illegal immigration is up by 6% according to the Border Patrol, (who doesn’t really know anyway). 

They base it on how many they stop — not how many get by them.

The liberals argue amnesty on the grounds we can’t round up and deport every illegal. Walter Williams of George Mason University published this brilliant response that argument:

“That argument differs little from one that says since we can’t catch every burglar, we should grant burglars amnesty. Catching and imprisoning some burglars sends a message to would-be burglars that there might be a price to pay. Similarly, imprisoning some illegal immigrants and then deporting them after their sentences were served would send a signal to others who are here illegally or who are contemplating illegal entry that there’s a price to pay.”

Williams offers this ridiculously simple solution.  Start strict enforcement of immigration law.   Enforce border security and laws against hiring illegal aliens. More than 70% of Americans agree with Williams, according to a recent Rasmussen Poll. 

But the Obama administration rolled out the red carpet for Mexico’s Felipe Calderon as if Calderon was an important ally of the United States, rather than an important ally of the Obama agenda, which I am now convinced is to bring about the collapse of Western civilization in order to replace it with something new.

Calderon’s government is facilitating an illegal, secret invasion — directly funding groups that aids migrants of any origin heading north to cross illegally.   The first thing Calderon did when he arrived in Washington was to complain about the Arizona law mandating the enforcement of existing federal immigration law.

And the first thing Obama did in reply was apologize for Arizona’s action as if he were explaining away a hyperactive problem child.

The law in question mirrors federal law, but evidently, nobody in federal government read it before pronouncing it discriminatory or racist.  

The reason they don’t have to read it to know it is a bad, racist law is because Arizona police are apparently so corrupt and racist that they will harrass people taking their kids out for an ice cream cone. 

(Who knew?)

Actually, the law prohibits police from questioning someone’s immigration status unless they are already under arrest for some other crime. But President Obama thinks that Arizona police will routinely violate that provision of the law.

But Obama did everything but declare Arizona police to be as corrupt as he declared Cambridge police “stupid” last year.

“I think a fair reading of the language in the statute indicates that it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants being harassed or arrested,” he said. 

There is that possiblity with ANY law.  But only if the police charged with law enforcement are corrupt.

For his part, Calderon had nothing but praise for Obama for distrusting his own police as much as Calderon distrusts his.

Mexico will “continue being respectful of the internal policies of the United States,” Calderon said, but he rejected the idea that “people that work and provide things to this nation will be treated as criminals.”

One thing Obama said during the press conference I found particularly striking. 

“I have confidence I can get the majority of Democrats — both in the House and Senate — to support a piece of legislation. . . But I don’t have 60 votes in the Senate. I’ve got to have the support of Republicans.”

What I found striking wasn’t what he said so much as the way he said it. In every major piece of legislation so far in his administration, the only thing bi-partisan has been the opposition.  It’s as if he lives in an alternate reality.

A reality where corrupt police eagerly await a chance to show they have as much contempt for human rights as Obama has for those charged with protecting them.  Where anyone who disagrees with his views is racist, ignorant, misinformed, deliberately dishonest or just downright hateful. 

Obama’s “reform” means amnesty for those already here, after they jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops that they bypassed or they wouldn’t be in the country illegally in the first place. 

If they didn’t do it then, what makes Obama think they will now?

This is really a deliberate recipe for further fiscal catastrophe, since they would then be eligible for low-income wage-earner benefits calculated to cost taxpayers some $19,900 per immigrant worker.  It isn’t popular with the public.  It isn’t popular in either House of Congress. 

AND this is an election year in which he is likely to lose both — yet he continues to ignore public opinion as if the November elections will be irrelevant to his agenda.

The pattern continues without deviation.  Whenever there are two possible choices, one which favors the United States and one which does not,  Obama consistently chooses the latter.  

Economy collapsing?  Spend more money.  Unemployment too high?  Grant amnesty to 30 million illegal workers. Losing the war in Afghanistan?  Tell the Taliban what date we’ll pull out. 

During the Tribulation, the Bible identifies four spheres of global power by compass point; revived Rome to the West, the Kings of the South, the Kings of the East and Gog-Magog to the north.

There is no fifth, separate power resembling the United States to be found anywhere in Scripture except for one.  The Apostle Paul warned of perilous times in the last days. 

But Paul isn’t speaking of the Tribulation,  he is addressing the Church during the Laodicean era just before the Rapture.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

That he is addressing Christians is evident from his warning to them to ‘turn away’.  That he is addressing the US as the visible representative of the Laodicean Church is something I believe to be self evident.

“But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

Until the turn of the 20th century, the Bible was the most commonly used textbook in America. America’s reputation as the world’s most ‘Christian’ country dates to its founding.   The following passage is rather lengthy, but necessary to my point. 

It was written by Alexis de Tocqueville, a French researcher and historian who was explaining the United States to his European countryment in the 1830’s.

Religion in America.. .must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion-for who can search the human heart?-But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.
The sects that exist in the United States are innumerable. They all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Creator; but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God…. Moreover, all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same.
In the United States the sovereign authority is religious,… there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect [denomination], this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together [Christianity], every one abandons him and he remains alone.

De Tocqueville was describing America in her early days.  Paul’s letter to Timothy is a letter-perfect description of American politics in these days.

The Apostle Paul called them “the last days” — and the times are as perilous as one can imagine.