Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The First 100 Days

Good Afternoon

Our President has been in office now for 100 days. What have we seen in these days? We have a bail-out of billions of dollars for Banks, Autos and I guess whomever gets in line next. The funny thing is, the majority of Americans never wanted these bailouts to begin with...and to think that W started this mess...and the money seems to hae "disappeared"...we were told that the stimulus bill was so important that it must be passed before anyone in Congress (except the authors) could even read it...the irony is that when it passed, the President went on a four day vacation and said he would sign it later...real important bill huh?

We have seen the President use his executive order to send money overseas to facilitate abortion...we are still waiting on the executive order to end the right of medical care providers to refuse abortions on religious grounds...

He has appointed men and women who refused to pay their own taxes, has Homeland Security officials who claim that returning military veterans are terrorist risks along with yours truly! That's right! Since I am against abortion and same-sex marriage (abominations both!) and teach end-times prophecies, I too am a risk to becoming a "home-grown terrorist" according to our government...And this is just for starters!

Its going to be a LONG four years!

Even So, Lord Jesus Come Quickly!!!!

P.S. By the way...if you see an add by Google on this Blog that would seem to be at odds with the views stated therein, its because they put it there...NOT ME!

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Random Thoughts

Today is Wednesday, April 22, 2009 and I am sitting in my office examining some various news stories on the net...

Kudos to Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who stood true to her convictions that marriage is to be between one man and one woman...I wish that more people who claim to know Jesus Christ would have the same courage to stand and not retreat (Are you listening Rick Warren?) from the truths of God's Word...even in the firestorm that has followed, she has remained undeterred in her convictions!

Kudos to Gary Galeotti, my Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Dr. Galeotti is retiring after spending more than 30 years of teaching, the last 17 at SEBTS. He is a remarkable man of God and I am sure that the Seminary will miss him!

In a recent appearance on Keith Olbermann's program on MSNBC, Janeane Garofalo stated that the TEA parties were just racism. She said that the parties were just people who did not like a black guy in the White House. Well, we really cannot expect anything any different from those of the liberal persuasion...just because someone disagrees with the President's policies does not make them a racist. The fact is that Government, under Bush, and now under Obama, has been and is spending too much money that the country does not have. the only way to recoup this money, according to their logic, is to increase taxes....I know, I know, Obama cut taxes for 95% of Americans...however, the second shoe is about to drop...it seems that Obama wants to change our behavior by a "cap & trade" bill that estimates say, will increase your energy costs some $3,000.00 per household per year, if this bill is passed...Obama himself has said that energy bills will skyrocket for the average consumer...so whenever you drive, turn on your a/c at home, use the blowdryer, wash your clothes, etc. you will certainly pay for it with a tax that is designed to make you quit doing those things in order to "save" the earth...Change we can believe in, Change...that's all that will be left in our wallets!

We had an interesting night in Columbus the other night...it seems that just as I was preparing my coffee maker to come on the next morning for my daily cup of joe, a loud voice came from outside saying that a tornado had been spotted in Phenix City, Alabama and that we should take cover...NOW! Then the siren went off...You should have seen 7 of us, plus one feline, huddled together in the hallway of our home (a small hallway!) with laptops at the ready to track the storm. The Lord was watching over us that night as the storm passed just to our west and north...the city experienced some damage, but, thankfully, no lives were lost...

Have a Great Day!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Wanted?

After serving in Law Enforcement for 15 years and having been an observer of the political scene for...well, longer than I care to admit, I finally know what those folks on the FBI most wanted list must feel like! In case you have had your head in the sand for the last several days, the Department of Homeland Security has released a report detailing their assessment of so-called "right-wing extremists". The report states that those who are of one issue like say abortion, or same-sex marriage or even a teacher of end times prophecies are likely to be terrorists! We are said to be recruiting new members because of the economic conditions, etc. We were also lumped in with returning military vets...A group I would gladly stand with, by the way...

So my government says that I am a risk to be a terrorist because I believe in the sanctity of human life, believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, and teach end times prophecies...I believe in law and order and I believe that there is a proper way to redress our government with our grievances, certainly not through terrorism...I have written a letter to Secretary Napolitano to express my disbelief...I can hear the sound of the approaching hoof-beats!
Even so, Lord Jesus come quickly!

Dirty Politics Taints All Elections

Good Morning...I am an American! I love this land that God lead our founding fathers to start. I get very upset and angry when those running for office don't play by the rules. I also get very upset when rules change after the election to tilt the final result to one candidate or another. The following article details what has happened in Minnesota and it is a scary thing that has happened. I trust that this election will encourage all of us to be ever more vigilant each election cycle:

Minnesota's Missing Votes
Some Senate absentee ballots are more equal than others..Articlemore in Opinion ».EmailPrinter FriendlyShare:


Meanwhile, back in the Minnesota Senate recount, the three-judge panel reviewing the race has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner. Republican Norm Coleman intends to appeal to the state's Supreme Court, while Democrats and the press corps pressure him to surrender. We hope Mr. Coleman keeps fighting, because the outcome so far hangs on the fact that some votes have been counted differently from others.
AP.Even after the recount and panel-findings, the 312-vote margin separating the two men equals about .01% of the 2.9 million votes cast. Even without any irregularities, this is as close to a "tie" as it gets. And there have been plenty of irregularities. By the end of the recount, the state was awash with evidence of duplicate ballot counting, newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, illegal voting, and wildly diverse standards as to which votes were counted. Any one of these issues was enough to throw the outcome into doubt. Combined, they created a taint more worthy of New Jersey than Minnesota.
The Coleman camp pushed for resolution of these problems during the recount, but it was stymied by a state canvassing board that cared more about preserving its "Minnesota nice" reputation than about making tough calls. The state Supreme Court also punted difficult questions. The mess then landed with the three-judge panel overseeing Mr. Coleman's contest trial, a panel that seemed out of its depth.
Case in point: the panel's dismal handling of absentee ballots. Early in the recount, the Franken team howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. We warned at the time that this was dangerous territory, designed to pressure election officials into accepting rejected ballots after the fact.
Yet instead of shutting this Franken request down, or early on issuing a clear set of rules as to which absentees were valid, the state Supreme Court and the canvassing board oversaw a haphazard process by which some counties submitted new batches to be included in the tally, while other counties did not. The resulting additional 933 ballots were largely responsible for Mr. Franken's narrow lead.
During the contest trial, the Coleman team presented evidence of a further 6,500 absentees that it felt deserved to be included under the process that had produced the prior 933. The three judges then finally defined what constituted a "legal" absentee ballot. Countable ballots, for instance, had to contain the signature of the voter, complete registration information, and proper witness credentials.
But the panel only applied these standards going forward, severely reducing the universe of additional absentees that the Coleman team could hope to have included. In the end, the three judges allowed only about 350 additional absentees to be counted. The panel also did nothing about the hundreds, possibly thousands, of absentees that have already been legally included, yet are now "illegal" according to the panel's own ex-post definition.
If all this sounds familiar, think Florida 2000. In that Presidential recount, officials couldn't decide what counted as a legal vote, and so different counties used different standards. The Florida Supreme Court made things worse by changing the rules after the fact. In Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this violated Constitutional principles of equal protection and due process, which require that every vote be accorded equal weight.
This will be a basis for Mr. Coleman's appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Should that body be reluctant to publicly rebuke their judicial colleagues who sat on the contest panel, Mr. Coleman could also take his appeal to federal court. This could take months.
Another solution is to hold a special Senate election. Minnesota law does not specifically provide for such a runoff. However, the U.S. Constitution's 17th amendment does provide states with a roadmap for filling "vacancies," which might be a legal starting point for a do-over. Even before the shifting standards of the contest trial, the St. Paul Pioneer Press looked at the ballot-counting evidence and called for a revote. It could be that this is where the court case is leading in any event.
Democrats want to portray Mr. Coleman as a sore loser and make the Republican worry that he will ruin his chances for other political office. But Mr. Coleman has a legitimate grievance that not all votes have been treated equally. If the Franken standard of disparate absentee-voter treatment is allowed to stand, every close election will be settled by a legal scramble to change the vote-counting rules after Election Day. Minnesota should take the time to get this one right.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Easter

Good morning...

This week is known as "Holy Week" in Christian circles. This week as Christians, we recognize the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Many in our world today believe that Jesus is a really nice guy! He was a "good teacher", a "prophet", a "moral man". Let me state with absolute confidence that Jesus is the Son of God who died for sin and rose from the dead! Many would say that they can agree that Jesus was a good man and a prophet but this "rising from the dead thing" is taking it too far. However, to say that Jesus was a good man, a prophet, or good teacher, but deny the resurrection is contradictory. How would a good teacher, prophet or moral man teach that He would die and rise from the dead if He could not do it? By definition, he could not be those things if he was lying about rising fromt he dead. He is either God in human form or He is not, and if not, then he is not a good man, moral man, or good teacher.

Some say that he really didn't die on the cross, that he just feined his death, so he never really died and never really rose from the dead; just recovered. Well, I find it hard to believe that the Roman Government didn't kill Jesus on the cross. These were professional killers so to speak. The Romans knew how to put people to death. Not too long before Jesus' death, the Romans put down the Macabean revolt and literally lined the streets with crucified rebels. Jesus was also scouraged; a horrible punishment where a "cat-o-nine tails" was used. The whip was filled with bone fragments that would slash the skin as it struck him on the back, wrapped around him in the front and dug into the skin pulling it loose as it was pulled back. The death on the cross was real indeed. Jesus claimed that He would rise from the dead and indeed the Bible declares that Jesus rose from the dead and appearred to the disciples at various times and even to a crowd of 500 at one time. Paul stated that many of those people were still alive meaning that they were available to be interviewed in that day. Also, this as just a couple of years after the fact meaning that this was not just some legend that was being repeated. Another factor to consider: What changed the disciples? When Jesus was arrested, they ran away in fear. Peter even denied Jesus three times that night. But after the resurrection, these same disciples became bold prclaimers of his resurrection. Peter even stood in Jerusalem, the city where Jesus died, and proclaimed the gospel story. So obviously, something changed. If Jesus had not risen, would these men have risked life and limb for a lie? I don't think so! These men were martyred for their faith and again, who would give their life for a lie? Don't know of any!
Let me encourage you today: The Bible declares that if we will confess with our mouth "Jesus is Lord", believe that He is the Son of God, believe that He rose from the dead, ask Him to forgive us of our sin and repent of it, that we will be "saved", that is we will be given new life, a life that will be spent in eternity with God in Heaven. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me."
Friends there is no other way to get to God than through Jesus. We are not all on the pathway to God; we are not all headed there just on a different road. The Bible declares that there are two roads: the broad road that leads to destruction, of which many are on it, and the narrow road that leads to life. Jesus is that narrow road! Let me encourage you to invite the Savior into your heart today! If you would like to ask questions, please comment on this posting with a way for me to contact you and I will be happy to share further.