Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Well that was fun
Just got back from a business trip of about 36 hours, 11 hours driving, 7 hours sleeping in a hotel and a day full of meeting clients in my old home town. I am wiped out.
The twisted logic of the Left
More people bad, less people good.
From the Wall Street Journal…
One of the more curious items in the $825 billion House "stimulus" is $87 billion to help states with Medicaid, specifically including an expansion of family-planning services. The implication is that more people mean less economic growth.
Following a White House meeting with President Obama on Friday, Republican John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, asked how spending millions of dollars on birth control will help stimulate the economy. On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos of ABC's "This Week" repeated the question to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who responded that "family planning services reduce costs."
She added: "The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now, and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help states meet their financial needs. One of those -- one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception -- will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."
Why go part way? If birth control is good, if abortion is the cornerstone of our system of government, if euthanasia is the wave of the future and the “humane” choice why stop there? Think of the money we could save on disability insurance if we just euthanized permanently disabled workers! How about forced sterilization for people with sub-par intelligence? Heck, maybe every American should be required on an annual basis to submit to testing and questioning by the government and prove that they still have worth to our society!
This is dangerous stuff, both for the moral issues raised by reducing human life to economic units as well as the looming issue of the Social Security system running out of money, too few workers paying in compared to the elderly taking out, etc. Europe is running out of people to work and to pay taxes so they are being forced to import workers from overseas, many of whom are Muslim and that is having a predictable and ominous impact on their society. So our new leadership in Washington seems bent on running us down the same road of economic ruin and societal disintegration that Europe is on.
This is the brave new world we were promised?
From the Wall Street Journal…
One of the more curious items in the $825 billion House "stimulus" is $87 billion to help states with Medicaid, specifically including an expansion of family-planning services. The implication is that more people mean less economic growth.
Following a White House meeting with President Obama on Friday, Republican John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, asked how spending millions of dollars on birth control will help stimulate the economy. On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos of ABC's "This Week" repeated the question to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who responded that "family planning services reduce costs."
She added: "The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now, and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help states meet their financial needs. One of those -- one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception -- will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."
Why go part way? If birth control is good, if abortion is the cornerstone of our system of government, if euthanasia is the wave of the future and the “humane” choice why stop there? Think of the money we could save on disability insurance if we just euthanized permanently disabled workers! How about forced sterilization for people with sub-par intelligence? Heck, maybe every American should be required on an annual basis to submit to testing and questioning by the government and prove that they still have worth to our society!
This is dangerous stuff, both for the moral issues raised by reducing human life to economic units as well as the looming issue of the Social Security system running out of money, too few workers paying in compared to the elderly taking out, etc. Europe is running out of people to work and to pay taxes so they are being forced to import workers from overseas, many of whom are Muslim and that is having a predictable and ominous impact on their society. So our new leadership in Washington seems bent on running us down the same road of economic ruin and societal disintegration that Europe is on.
This is the brave new world we were promised?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Has the world forgotten? Have we?
As we march in a seemingly inexorable fashion towards socialism, I have to wonder if people remember what life under a truly socialistic society is like? Younger people don’t because for them the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact are things of the past they probably have barely heard of (especially in a public school). I know I am going to sound really old here, but people under 30 really have never lived with the threat of totalitarianism. Sure we have terrorism, but blowing up buildings is not going to lead to a full scale war or conquest. Growing up as I did in the 80’s, the threat of the Soviets was a very real one. Movies like Red Dawn that depicted a Soviet invasion of America resonated with us. We know now that the Soviets were far less militarily adept than we gave them credit for, but they still had land based nuclear ICBMs, submarines with nuclear missiles and an enormous military that was facing our forces across Europe. It is in vogue now, especially among detractors of Ronald Reagan to pooh pooh the military capability of the Soviets, but I remember vividly the parades through Red Square, column after column of troops, tanks and trucks towing Soviet ICBMs. I went to an elementary school with nuclear fallout shelter signs on the wall, a daily reminder that there was a nation bent on world conquest with nuclear weapons. I still have a book from the 80’s on Soviet military power and overblown a bit or not, the Soviets were a formidable force and the last national power that really came close to rivaling the United States. So I remember all too well what rotten fruits come from the various branches of socialism /communism/ Marxism.To hear people today, wearing their Che Guevara t-shirts and praising Cuban health care, socialism is the way to go. But outside of the comfy confines of Hollywood and universities full of overindulged college kids, lifelong “grad students” and professors who teach because they are unable to get real jobs, people realize that socialism doesn’t work and hasn’t worked. Ever. Americans do not flee from Miami and take rickety boats to Cuba, not even the slovenly Michael Moore who thinks that Cuba is some sort of paradise but still chooses to live in luxury in New York. Nobody got shot trying to climb the Berlin Wall going from west to east. Taiwan is not threatening to retake mainland Red China by force.
Socialism invariably leads to authoritarian government and history has demonstrated again and again that authoritarian government inevitably leads to totalitarianism. Look at the worst human rights violators of the past century and the present age: Nazi Germany. Stalinist Soviet Russia. Fascist Italy under Mussolini. The Khmer Rouge. Maoist China. Castro’s Cuba. These are not nations led by Jerry Falwell-esque conservative Christians. They are lead universally by totalitarian regimes, every one some version of socialism. Even Nazi Germany fits this bill. What was the full name of the Nazi Party? The National Socialist German Workers' Party. People label conservatives “Nazis” all the time, but Adolf Hitler has a lot more in common with socialists in this country than he does with Rush Limbaugh.
The more responsibility and freedom people abdicate to the government, the more it seeks. It feeds upon itself because it is an unsustainable system. As systems fail, more and more power is consolidated into the government. This causes more systems to fail as the inefficiencies of centralized governmental bureaucracies spawn more instability. Eventually the only thing holding it together is brute force and fear. For all of the talk about being a “Worker’s Paradise”, the only thing keeping Russians in the Soviet Union was the threat of the KGB, Siberian gulags and barbed wire.
The more power shifts away from the people and into the hands of the government, the less free those people become. We have apparently forgotten this in our headlong quest to abdicate as much personal freedom and responsibility as possible into the hands of our benevolent government in the hope that by doing so we can trade freedom for security. That is a false hope as those political prisoners languishing in Castro’s prisons and the women who stood for hours in bread lines in Soviet Russia can attest. Socialism doesn’t improve the financial security of all people, it drags everyone down into the same impoverished state except for the bureaucrats who run everything. Far from an egalitarian society, socialism merely replaces the middle class and the upper class with powerful bureaucrats at the top and a bunch of miserable workers at the bottom. The rich capitalist is replaced by the tin pot dictator government official.
So we find ourselves in America in 2009 facing a precarious situation: we are in a dangerous world with enemies all about seeking to overthrow our nation. We have virtually unimpeded illegal immigration at the same time that we have growing unemployment and instability in the financial markets. In our national commercial institutions, the two of the three main drivers of our economy are in serious trouble, i.e. the auto industry and our financial markets (the agricultural industry is the third). People are afraid, they are losing jobs, cars, houses. I expect a massive wave of bankruptcies, personal and business, in 2009 as job losses mount. There are far too many people looking for a quick fix and far too many power hungry politicians more than willing to give them just that. That is a recipe for protectionism and socialism and eventually totalitarianism.
Once in place, the shackles of totalitarianism are hard to throw off without bloodshed. America stands at a precipice and is in danger of falling. Don’t expect to hear voices of sanity coming out of Washington, D.C. because it is in the hands of people who have an ideology that at its intellectual core is hard to distinguish from Marxism. They may not advocate totalitarianism now but it is the inevitable end result of the policies they do advocate. At some point everyone comes to a point of resistance to authoritarianism and it is at that point that socialism enforces its ideology at the end of a gun barrel. If America falls to socialism, there is not a free nation out there to fight for us, there are no Ronald Reagan’s in China. We must make a stand, here and now, or lose the freedoms that so many men have died for forever.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Being fruitful
Last Friday Dr. Russ Moore filled in for Dr. Mohler (he is on a missions trip to Turkey) and the show, Encouraging the Blessing of Children, was just chock full of wisdom. The topic was on how the church can encourage Christian couples to embrace families, even large families with lots of children. Given my recent focus on abortion, I thought it was a very pertinent topic of conversation. How should the church approach children? Shouldn’t the church be counter-cultural and say that even as the world rejects the blessing of children, the church embraces and desires to receive that blessing as much as possible?
The evangelical church in all its forms is mighty quick to condemn homosexual marriage as sinful and reject the world’s interpretation of its normalcy, but when it comes to kids? Not so much. It could just be that it is always easier to preach against “them”. “They” are doing this or that and it is wrong, but it is harder to say things that impact those in the pews. I think that is true of lots of stuff that rarely makes it into sermons. Why not speak out about modest dress? What about headcovering? Because it makes people in the pews uncomfortable to talk about issues that reflect poorly on them instead of pointing the finger at the vague, amorphous “other”. Virtually every church is dominated by married couples and those are the people that need to hear that children are a blessing, a great wealth. When you say to people that children are usually the natural result of and one of the primary reasons for marriage, that might just prick the conscience of the couple that is “waiting for the right time” to have kids or who is limiting their family size to just a couple, a “nice little family”. It is sad that saying that children are a blessing and exhorting families to not shy away from but instead to prayerfully seek out those blessings is something of a controversy in the church. The world says wait until you accumulate financial blessings and then accept kids. The Word tells us that children are a blessing. There is nothing a married couple can do, nothing, that will truly prepare them for having children.
One of the most important things we can do is raise our children up to view having children as a great blessing. I worry that we are doing a poor job of this in our home. The last thing I want is for our kids to see us viewing a large family as being a burden and not wanting to have a large family of their own. So we are trying to do more as a family. Our new home will help, we are unable to all fit around the table in our current place because the dining area is so small, so we are looking forward to breaking out the big table that seats 12, putting in all of the leaves and all sitting down for meals again. We are also working out a pretty hard and fast weekly schedule so that we have more of a plan instead of letting the week happen to us. We are looking to schedule time for dad and daughter, mom and son, mom and daughter, dad and son time. That will mean that I will have to set aside doing some of the things that I do to unwind, but since I am driving all of 2 minutes to work starting next week I hardly have an excuse to need time to “unwind”. The incredible importance of family is something is that is Scriptural but is also passed on generationally. If your parents discouraged you from having kids, you are probably less inclined to have them. If you don’t encourage your children to have children and show them from the Word of God that children are a blessing, not a burden and that waiting for the “right time” to have kids in your marriage is kind of missing one of the key components of marriage, you can expect your children to emulate the world’s view that children are a necessary evil, an expense to have but not until as late in life as possible.
One of the things that the mormon church does very well is encouraging marriage in their young people. Show me a mormon missionary and I will show you a 20 year old guy who values marriage and is eager to get home, get married and start a family. Now the theological reasons behind that are seriously flawed and heretical, but what mormons have created is a marriage and family culture within their church. I am not recommending we emulate the mormon church, but we can and should do a better job in teaching our children to value marriage. Not just don’t have sex until you get married, but to value marriage, to seek it out, to have a culture of marriage that has as an integral component having and raising children. If we treat marriage and children as separate components, I think we are doing a disservice to our children. Just as I would strenuously reject my child marrying an unbeliever, I would be very hesitant to see my children marry someone who does not share their views of children. Once you are married, it is a pretty poor time to figure out what your spouse thinks or desires regarding children. That is not to say that there are not circumstances of infertility (an issue I want to discuss in the near future and the proper Christian response to it) or couples that for a variety of reasons get married later than usual. But for an average couple getting married in their twenties, the priority should not be vacations to Europe now and putting off children until later.
As Dr. Moore’s guests demonstrate vividly, this is where the older Christians should be discipling the younger. That is such a vital part of a healthy church and has clear Scriptural mandates (Titus 2: 2-8), but what do we do? In many churches we segregate the young couples from the old, the married from the single. What a shame that is! Where should young Christian couples learn about marriage? From other young couples or from older, more experienced couples? Where should Christian singles learn about and see demonstrated the blessings of a Christian marriage? From other singles or from married couples? Let’s look at it from a secular source. Where do you want your doctor to learn to perform heart surgery, from an experienced heart surgeon or another medical school student? Older saints with forty, fifty or more years of marriage are a treasure trove of wisdom, but instead we let younger couples just stumble along and figure it out on their own.
The church must take the Scriptural teachings on the blessings of children seriously. Not just in passing but as a core value of its doctrine. If we are going to sponsor Dave Ramsey seminars, which are fine, we ought to be spending far more time on encouraging the blessing of children among Christian couples than we do about making budgets. We should teach on money so that it doesn’t become an impediment to Christian families, but we should teach on the blessing of children because that is one of the main points of having a family and an integral part of the church and of God’s plan for humanity. What good is a family with a great financial plan that rejects the blessing of children in their home? We are not commanded to leave our mother and father and cleave to a financial plan, we are to cleave to our spouse and become one flesh and be fruitful and multiply.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
The evangelical church in all its forms is mighty quick to condemn homosexual marriage as sinful and reject the world’s interpretation of its normalcy, but when it comes to kids? Not so much. It could just be that it is always easier to preach against “them”. “They” are doing this or that and it is wrong, but it is harder to say things that impact those in the pews. I think that is true of lots of stuff that rarely makes it into sermons. Why not speak out about modest dress? What about headcovering? Because it makes people in the pews uncomfortable to talk about issues that reflect poorly on them instead of pointing the finger at the vague, amorphous “other”. Virtually every church is dominated by married couples and those are the people that need to hear that children are a blessing, a great wealth. When you say to people that children are usually the natural result of and one of the primary reasons for marriage, that might just prick the conscience of the couple that is “waiting for the right time” to have kids or who is limiting their family size to just a couple, a “nice little family”. It is sad that saying that children are a blessing and exhorting families to not shy away from but instead to prayerfully seek out those blessings is something of a controversy in the church. The world says wait until you accumulate financial blessings and then accept kids. The Word tells us that children are a blessing. There is nothing a married couple can do, nothing, that will truly prepare them for having children.
One of the most important things we can do is raise our children up to view having children as a great blessing. I worry that we are doing a poor job of this in our home. The last thing I want is for our kids to see us viewing a large family as being a burden and not wanting to have a large family of their own. So we are trying to do more as a family. Our new home will help, we are unable to all fit around the table in our current place because the dining area is so small, so we are looking forward to breaking out the big table that seats 12, putting in all of the leaves and all sitting down for meals again. We are also working out a pretty hard and fast weekly schedule so that we have more of a plan instead of letting the week happen to us. We are looking to schedule time for dad and daughter, mom and son, mom and daughter, dad and son time. That will mean that I will have to set aside doing some of the things that I do to unwind, but since I am driving all of 2 minutes to work starting next week I hardly have an excuse to need time to “unwind”. The incredible importance of family is something is that is Scriptural but is also passed on generationally. If your parents discouraged you from having kids, you are probably less inclined to have them. If you don’t encourage your children to have children and show them from the Word of God that children are a blessing, not a burden and that waiting for the “right time” to have kids in your marriage is kind of missing one of the key components of marriage, you can expect your children to emulate the world’s view that children are a necessary evil, an expense to have but not until as late in life as possible.
One of the things that the mormon church does very well is encouraging marriage in their young people. Show me a mormon missionary and I will show you a 20 year old guy who values marriage and is eager to get home, get married and start a family. Now the theological reasons behind that are seriously flawed and heretical, but what mormons have created is a marriage and family culture within their church. I am not recommending we emulate the mormon church, but we can and should do a better job in teaching our children to value marriage. Not just don’t have sex until you get married, but to value marriage, to seek it out, to have a culture of marriage that has as an integral component having and raising children. If we treat marriage and children as separate components, I think we are doing a disservice to our children. Just as I would strenuously reject my child marrying an unbeliever, I would be very hesitant to see my children marry someone who does not share their views of children. Once you are married, it is a pretty poor time to figure out what your spouse thinks or desires regarding children. That is not to say that there are not circumstances of infertility (an issue I want to discuss in the near future and the proper Christian response to it) or couples that for a variety of reasons get married later than usual. But for an average couple getting married in their twenties, the priority should not be vacations to Europe now and putting off children until later.
As Dr. Moore’s guests demonstrate vividly, this is where the older Christians should be discipling the younger. That is such a vital part of a healthy church and has clear Scriptural mandates (Titus 2: 2-8), but what do we do? In many churches we segregate the young couples from the old, the married from the single. What a shame that is! Where should young Christian couples learn about marriage? From other young couples or from older, more experienced couples? Where should Christian singles learn about and see demonstrated the blessings of a Christian marriage? From other singles or from married couples? Let’s look at it from a secular source. Where do you want your doctor to learn to perform heart surgery, from an experienced heart surgeon or another medical school student? Older saints with forty, fifty or more years of marriage are a treasure trove of wisdom, but instead we let younger couples just stumble along and figure it out on their own.
The church must take the Scriptural teachings on the blessings of children seriously. Not just in passing but as a core value of its doctrine. If we are going to sponsor Dave Ramsey seminars, which are fine, we ought to be spending far more time on encouraging the blessing of children among Christian couples than we do about making budgets. We should teach on money so that it doesn’t become an impediment to Christian families, but we should teach on the blessing of children because that is one of the main points of having a family and an integral part of the church and of God’s plan for humanity. What good is a family with a great financial plan that rejects the blessing of children in their home? We are not commanded to leave our mother and father and cleave to a financial plan, we are to cleave to our spouse and become one flesh and be fruitful and multiply.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
The abortion – daycare connection
I have been giving some thought to this whole issue as it relates to President Obama’s “Zero to Five” plan for families. That name is not accidental; the Zero to Five initiative really seeks to widen the influence of the government over families and especially children at an ever earlier age. The logical end result of this initiative is to reduce women to baby incubators just long enough to give birth and then get back to work.
Some people in the abortion debate are advocating a “Third Way”, where we recognize that abortion is the law of the land even though it is not pleasant so our focus should be on reducing the number and need for abortions instead of seeking to ban abortion outright or at least overturning Roe v. Wade.
I hope that Christians do not embrace this idea.
This is a false choice fostered by a socialist mindset. So the trade off is either more abortions or more kids in government sponsored daycare? While murder is certainly the less palatable option, neither of these options should be seen as appealing. The carrot being dangled here is that if you decide to go ahead and have children instead of aborting them, the government will take care of that child in subsidized daycare. Abortion and government daycare/ universal preschool are two sides of the same socialist coin. Christians should support women who get pregnant, either in marriage or out of wedlock. Pregnancy resource centers around the country do a wonderful work in helping frightened moms-to-be to prepare for successful motherhood. But there is a world of difference between helping expectant moms so that they keep and raise their children and buying into a worldview that sees women as units of production and pregnancy as a barrier to productivity.
Either way, abortion or state subsidized and controlled daycare, the cause of socialism is advanced. Either women abort their children and stay in the workforce or they have their children, get government mandated time off and then ship their kids into government subsidized daycare and go back to work. How about this option? Woman gets pregnant, woman keeps child, woman stays home and cares for child while husband works? Now that is a novel and radical idea if I have ever heard one!
April asked a very pertinent question in a previous comment:
Seriously...moral debate over abortion aside, why are we funding it IN OTHER COUNTRIES when our own country is on the brink of economic collapse?
I believe the reason is simple and chilling. Abortion at its core is not a health care issue or a women’s issue or any of that other garbage. It is a socialism issue. By giving people a sense of control over reproduction and child rearing, the socialist agenda achieves its goal of controlling human behavior to benefit the state. Ironically the state controls people while making them think they are enjoying new found freedoms. There is little fundamental difference between the abortion clinics in America and the killing fields of Cambodia or the gulags of the Soviet Union. In all of these cases, the lives of people who are a threat to the state are destroyed, sacrificed in a misguided and twisted desire to serve the common good. In essence these human lives are being snuffed out, one by one, by the millions to further a cause that at its heart is not about health care but is about rejecting God’s pattern for humanity and replacing it with the idol of the state where we will all be called one day to bow down and worship. When that day comes, where will you stand? Where do you stand today?
Some people in the abortion debate are advocating a “Third Way”, where we recognize that abortion is the law of the land even though it is not pleasant so our focus should be on reducing the number and need for abortions instead of seeking to ban abortion outright or at least overturning Roe v. Wade.
I hope that Christians do not embrace this idea.
This is a false choice fostered by a socialist mindset. So the trade off is either more abortions or more kids in government sponsored daycare? While murder is certainly the less palatable option, neither of these options should be seen as appealing. The carrot being dangled here is that if you decide to go ahead and have children instead of aborting them, the government will take care of that child in subsidized daycare. Abortion and government daycare/ universal preschool are two sides of the same socialist coin. Christians should support women who get pregnant, either in marriage or out of wedlock. Pregnancy resource centers around the country do a wonderful work in helping frightened moms-to-be to prepare for successful motherhood. But there is a world of difference between helping expectant moms so that they keep and raise their children and buying into a worldview that sees women as units of production and pregnancy as a barrier to productivity.
Either way, abortion or state subsidized and controlled daycare, the cause of socialism is advanced. Either women abort their children and stay in the workforce or they have their children, get government mandated time off and then ship their kids into government subsidized daycare and go back to work. How about this option? Woman gets pregnant, woman keeps child, woman stays home and cares for child while husband works? Now that is a novel and radical idea if I have ever heard one!
April asked a very pertinent question in a previous comment:
Seriously...moral debate over abortion aside, why are we funding it IN OTHER COUNTRIES when our own country is on the brink of economic collapse?
I believe the reason is simple and chilling. Abortion at its core is not a health care issue or a women’s issue or any of that other garbage. It is a socialism issue. By giving people a sense of control over reproduction and child rearing, the socialist agenda achieves its goal of controlling human behavior to benefit the state. Ironically the state controls people while making them think they are enjoying new found freedoms. There is little fundamental difference between the abortion clinics in America and the killing fields of Cambodia or the gulags of the Soviet Union. In all of these cases, the lives of people who are a threat to the state are destroyed, sacrificed in a misguided and twisted desire to serve the common good. In essence these human lives are being snuffed out, one by one, by the millions to further a cause that at its heart is not about health care but is about rejecting God’s pattern for humanity and replacing it with the idol of the state where we will all be called one day to bow down and worship. When that day comes, where will you stand? Where do you stand today?
Leadership we can believe in!
Yessiree Bob! When America needs leadership, we have Barack Obama at the helm. We are fighting a war on two major fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan against an enemy that is spreading throughout the world. Our economy is in shambles with daily reports of new layoffs (today it is Caterpillar laying of 20,000 and Sprint Nextel eliminating 8,000). America is teetering on the brink. So what are some of the first few acts of our new leader, the man who is bringing us “change”? Sweeping economic reforms? A renewed emphasis on fighting the war on terror?
Well, no.
What we got in the first week was a kneejerk declaration that we were going to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center and a reversal of rules that prevent U.S. tax dollars from funding abortions overseas. So let’s break that down…
Closing down Gitmo means that we will have a bunch of men, some of the most dangerous men in the world, men captured in combat operations against U.S. forces, men who are not welcome in their home countries, men who will almost certainly take up arms and seek to spill American blood as soon as they get loose, given the due process of law guaranteed to American citizens and quite likely set free. It has been argued, with a straight face, that closing Gitmo will make America safer. Safer how?! That is like saying that duct taping a t-bone steak to a baby in front of a pack of ravenous pit bulls will make that baby safer. That is not leadership, that is capitulation to the far left fringe of the Democrat party that doesn’t seem to realize that we are at war and Islamic terrorists don’t care about civil rights.
Then we have the changes to the so-called Mexico City policy . So in a time when we are struggling with our own economy, President Obama sees fit to make it easier for us to send money overseas to promote abortion. Well, we are planning on a trillion dollars in new “stimulus” spending, so in order to build the American economy we will fund abortions overseas. Brilliant! You can hear the sputtering engine of the American economy gaining new life with every Brazilian or Nigerian kid that is aborted.
Obama said in a statement that family planning aid has been used as a "political wedge issue," adding that he had "no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate."
I guess those babies being aborted may question whether or not this is a stale or fruitless debate. Or maybe this whole thing is just “above his paygrade” as President. Luckily, President Obama is being praised by some groups for this move.
The group Population Action International praised Obama's move, saying in a statement that it will "save women's lives around the world."
Um, it will save women’s lives? I guess they only abort males overseas because abortion is almost never about saving lives, it is about taking lives. Candidate Obama made a big fuss about reducing the number of abortions during the campaign, but one of his first acts will result in more abortions, abortions paid for in part with U.S. taxpayer dollars. I guess complete reversals of campaign promises is not “above his paygrade”.
There is no change here. It is the same old liberalism, the same old Democrat party cronyism. The only “change” is that we have a new face and a new name. The politics are the same, the paybacks are the same. Wake up America, you got sold a bill of goods and now we have a far left puppet in the White House for the next four years getting his strings pulled by the most liberal factions in America. Is that really “change” you can believe in?
Well, no.
What we got in the first week was a kneejerk declaration that we were going to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center and a reversal of rules that prevent U.S. tax dollars from funding abortions overseas. So let’s break that down…
Closing down Gitmo means that we will have a bunch of men, some of the most dangerous men in the world, men captured in combat operations against U.S. forces, men who are not welcome in their home countries, men who will almost certainly take up arms and seek to spill American blood as soon as they get loose, given the due process of law guaranteed to American citizens and quite likely set free. It has been argued, with a straight face, that closing Gitmo will make America safer. Safer how?! That is like saying that duct taping a t-bone steak to a baby in front of a pack of ravenous pit bulls will make that baby safer. That is not leadership, that is capitulation to the far left fringe of the Democrat party that doesn’t seem to realize that we are at war and Islamic terrorists don’t care about civil rights.
Then we have the changes to the so-called Mexico City policy . So in a time when we are struggling with our own economy, President Obama sees fit to make it easier for us to send money overseas to promote abortion. Well, we are planning on a trillion dollars in new “stimulus” spending, so in order to build the American economy we will fund abortions overseas. Brilliant! You can hear the sputtering engine of the American economy gaining new life with every Brazilian or Nigerian kid that is aborted.
Obama said in a statement that family planning aid has been used as a "political wedge issue," adding that he had "no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate."
I guess those babies being aborted may question whether or not this is a stale or fruitless debate. Or maybe this whole thing is just “above his paygrade” as President. Luckily, President Obama is being praised by some groups for this move.
The group Population Action International praised Obama's move, saying in a statement that it will "save women's lives around the world."
Um, it will save women’s lives? I guess they only abort males overseas because abortion is almost never about saving lives, it is about taking lives. Candidate Obama made a big fuss about reducing the number of abortions during the campaign, but one of his first acts will result in more abortions, abortions paid for in part with U.S. taxpayer dollars. I guess complete reversals of campaign promises is not “above his paygrade”.
There is no change here. It is the same old liberalism, the same old Democrat party cronyism. The only “change” is that we have a new face and a new name. The politics are the same, the paybacks are the same. Wake up America, you got sold a bill of goods and now we have a far left puppet in the White House for the next four years getting his strings pulled by the most liberal factions in America. Is that really “change” you can believe in?
Sunday, January 25, 2009
BAM! John MacArthur laying it out!
CAMPONTHIS: IMPUTATION, SUBSTITUTION, JUSTIFICATION - THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL<br>...must view YouTube - John MacArthur on 2 Cor. 5:21
You simply are not going to get a much better, more direct presentation of the core of the Gospel than in John MacArthur laying it out fro 2 Cor 5:21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
This is just great stuff, presented like only MacArthur does.
You simply are not going to get a much better, more direct presentation of the core of the Gospel than in John MacArthur laying it out fro 2 Cor 5:21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
This is just great stuff, presented like only MacArthur does.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Another reason to not like goats
Apparently they steal cars...
Newspaper claims suspect transformed into a goat
LAGOS, Nigeria – One of Nigeria's biggest daily newspapers reported that police implicated a goat in an attempted automobile theft. In a front-page article on Friday, the Vanguard newspaper said that two men tried to steal a Mazda car two days earlier in Kwara State, with one suspect transforming himself into a goat as vigilantes cornered him.
The paper quoted police spokesman Tunde Mohammed as saying that while one suspect escaped, the other transformed into a goat as he was about to be apprehended.
The newspaper reported that police paraded the goat before journalists, and published a picture of the animal.
Police in the state couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Belief in black magic is widespread in Nigeria, particularly in far-flung rural areas.
You don't read about sheep stealing cars. I am just sayin'.
Newspaper claims suspect transformed into a goat
LAGOS, Nigeria – One of Nigeria's biggest daily newspapers reported that police implicated a goat in an attempted automobile theft. In a front-page article on Friday, the Vanguard newspaper said that two men tried to steal a Mazda car two days earlier in Kwara State, with one suspect transforming himself into a goat as vigilantes cornered him.
The paper quoted police spokesman Tunde Mohammed as saying that while one suspect escaped, the other transformed into a goat as he was about to be apprehended.
The newspaper reported that police paraded the goat before journalists, and published a picture of the animal.
Police in the state couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Belief in black magic is widespread in Nigeria, particularly in far-flung rural areas.
You don't read about sheep stealing cars. I am just sayin'.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Magnifying God: The Legacy of John Calvin - East Lansing, MI Feb 20-21
Just in time for us moving in there is a pretty cool sounding conference that will be all of 3 ½ miles from our new home. The speakers should be good, somewhat different from some of the, ahem, older speakers you normally get at conferences…
Conference Speakers
Collin Hansen, Keynote Speaker
An editor at large for Christianity Today, Hansen is the author of the book, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists, which was published in March, 2008.
Adam Barr
A graduate of Hope College, Adam earned a ThM from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and did PhD work at Westminster Theological Seminary. Adam is currently a pastor at Corinth Reformed Church (Grand Rapids) and president of Borderlands.
Kevin DeYoung
A graduate of Hope College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Kevin is the co-author of Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be and is the senior pastor of University Reformed Church (East Lansing).
Jason Helopoulos
A graduate of Eastern Illinois University, Jason earned a ThM in Historical Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. Currently he is the founding pastor of Providence Presbyterian Church (East Lansing).
Doug Phillips
A graduate of Cedarville University and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, Doug currently serves as executive pastor for ministries at South Church (Lansing).
The downside is that day two of the conference is my wedding anniversary, I am sure my wife won’t mind me going to a conference that day though…
Magnifying God: The Legacy of John Calvin - East Lansing, MI Feb 20-21
Conference Speakers
Collin Hansen, Keynote Speaker
An editor at large for Christianity Today, Hansen is the author of the book, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists, which was published in March, 2008.
Adam Barr
A graduate of Hope College, Adam earned a ThM from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and did PhD work at Westminster Theological Seminary. Adam is currently a pastor at Corinth Reformed Church (Grand Rapids) and president of Borderlands.
Kevin DeYoung
A graduate of Hope College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Kevin is the co-author of Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be and is the senior pastor of University Reformed Church (East Lansing).
Jason Helopoulos
A graduate of Eastern Illinois University, Jason earned a ThM in Historical Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. Currently he is the founding pastor of Providence Presbyterian Church (East Lansing).
Doug Phillips
A graduate of Cedarville University and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, Doug currently serves as executive pastor for ministries at South Church (Lansing).
The downside is that day two of the conference is my wedding anniversary, I am sure my wife won’t mind me going to a conference that day though…
Magnifying God: The Legacy of John Calvin - East Lansing, MI Feb 20-21
Time to wake up!
I liked this quote from Peggy Noonan in today’s Wall Street Journal…
As for Mr. Obama, some thoughts that start with a hunch. He has the kind of self-confidence that will serve him well or undo him. He has to be careful about what he wants, because he's going to get it, at least at the beginning. He claimed a lot of moderate territory in his Inaugural Address (deepen and expand our alliances, put aside debates on size of government and aim for government that is competent and constructive), but no one is certain, still, what governing philosophy guides him. He would be most unwise to rouse the sleeping giant that is American conservatism. One thing that would rouse it, and begin to bring its broken pieces back together, would be radical movement on abortion, such as pushing the so-called Freedom of Choice Act.
We can only hope that Ms. Noonan is correct, and that in his hubris and his “messiah complex”, President Obama will arrogantly overreach and waken the majority of Americans who are socially conservative.
We have grown lazy on the Right in America, especially among Christians. We were comfortable because “one of our own” was in the White House, and because “our guy” was President we began to lose cohesion and focus, our will was sapped, our strength atrophied. In large part, that lapse has led to where we are today with an unqualified, rabidly pro-abortion President and congress. We became concerned about our pocketbooks, 401k balances, mortgages and the other cares of life and forgot about defending life. The huge numbers of professing Christians who voted for Obama must face the fact that in doing so and helping to elect Obama they are complicit in his actions which will inevitably and tragically lead to more abortions in America.
Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II, is famously (perhaps apocryphally) quoted after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor as saying: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”. I pray fervently that like the sleeping giant we will awaken from our slumber, be filled with resolve and zeal and drive the stain of abortion from our nation.
As for Mr. Obama, some thoughts that start with a hunch. He has the kind of self-confidence that will serve him well or undo him. He has to be careful about what he wants, because he's going to get it, at least at the beginning. He claimed a lot of moderate territory in his Inaugural Address (deepen and expand our alliances, put aside debates on size of government and aim for government that is competent and constructive), but no one is certain, still, what governing philosophy guides him. He would be most unwise to rouse the sleeping giant that is American conservatism. One thing that would rouse it, and begin to bring its broken pieces back together, would be radical movement on abortion, such as pushing the so-called Freedom of Choice Act.
We can only hope that Ms. Noonan is correct, and that in his hubris and his “messiah complex”, President Obama will arrogantly overreach and waken the majority of Americans who are socially conservative.
We have grown lazy on the Right in America, especially among Christians. We were comfortable because “one of our own” was in the White House, and because “our guy” was President we began to lose cohesion and focus, our will was sapped, our strength atrophied. In large part, that lapse has led to where we are today with an unqualified, rabidly pro-abortion President and congress. We became concerned about our pocketbooks, 401k balances, mortgages and the other cares of life and forgot about defending life. The huge numbers of professing Christians who voted for Obama must face the fact that in doing so and helping to elect Obama they are complicit in his actions which will inevitably and tragically lead to more abortions in America.
Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II, is famously (perhaps apocryphally) quoted after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor as saying: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”. I pray fervently that like the sleeping giant we will awaken from our slumber, be filled with resolve and zeal and drive the stain of abortion from our nation.
The Obama education plan: Control over people from cradle to grave
Voddie Baucham is speaking the truth yet again.
Voddie Baucham doesn’t post anything on his blog very often, but when he does it is always “must read” material. The latest post is no exception. You should read his post And So It Begins and get a quick synopsis of the Obama agenda. Here is a clue, it is not pretty.
One of the scariest points Voddie brings up is the Obama Zero to Five plan to expand daycare, Head Start and other programs. From the White House webpage:
Early Childhood Education
• Zero to Five Plan: The Obama-Biden comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents. Unlike other early childhood education plans, the Obama-Biden plan places key emphasis at early care and education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten. Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state Zero to Five efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.
• Expand Early Head Start and Head Start: Obama and Biden will quadruple Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding, and improve quality for both.
• Provide affordable, High-Quality Child Care: Obama and Biden will also increase access to affordable and high-quality child care to ease the burden on working families.
Even the name of the program is creepy, Zero to Five Plan. As Voddie points out, that really amounts to this: “that’s right, the government not only wants to indoctrinate your children, they want to start the moment they are born”. Maybe even earlier, it might be a good idea for the state to grab them while they are still in the fetal stage. That way the very best genetic material will be allowed to develop to birth, and the others can be experimented on or just destroyed. Who wants people running around that limp, or have poor eyesight, or maybe are not as smart as other people? The best thing they can do for our society is to be used for experiments to improve life for the more worthy, productive members of society.
Oddly one of the biggest drivers to this blog are people who do a Google search on "Obama universal preschool" and the end up at my post Obama and universal preschool. But that is not surprising, the Obama vision for universal preschool really one of the dreams of the secularist movement, to get their hands on our children at a younger and younger age to begin to instill in them their worldview and to counteract the pernicious influence of their parents. Many parents are willing participants in this because they have bought into the idea of preschool being a valuable and necessary part of a child’s education. After all it is just an extension of modern American parenting. Have a kid, put them in daycare so mom can go back to work, get them to preschool and then public school and finally send them away to college. The net result of this system of “education” is that the state will watch our children and mold them into productive units in society until they finally get old enough to move out on their own and join the workforce.
Welcome to Obamanation!
Voddie Baucham doesn’t post anything on his blog very often, but when he does it is always “must read” material. The latest post is no exception. You should read his post And So It Begins and get a quick synopsis of the Obama agenda. Here is a clue, it is not pretty.
One of the scariest points Voddie brings up is the Obama Zero to Five plan to expand daycare, Head Start and other programs. From the White House webpage:
Early Childhood Education
• Zero to Five Plan: The Obama-Biden comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents. Unlike other early childhood education plans, the Obama-Biden plan places key emphasis at early care and education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten. Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state Zero to Five efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.
• Expand Early Head Start and Head Start: Obama and Biden will quadruple Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding, and improve quality for both.
• Provide affordable, High-Quality Child Care: Obama and Biden will also increase access to affordable and high-quality child care to ease the burden on working families.
Even the name of the program is creepy, Zero to Five Plan. As Voddie points out, that really amounts to this: “that’s right, the government not only wants to indoctrinate your children, they want to start the moment they are born”. Maybe even earlier, it might be a good idea for the state to grab them while they are still in the fetal stage. That way the very best genetic material will be allowed to develop to birth, and the others can be experimented on or just destroyed. Who wants people running around that limp, or have poor eyesight, or maybe are not as smart as other people? The best thing they can do for our society is to be used for experiments to improve life for the more worthy, productive members of society.
Oddly one of the biggest drivers to this blog are people who do a Google search on "Obama universal preschool" and the end up at my post Obama and universal preschool. But that is not surprising, the Obama vision for universal preschool really one of the dreams of the secularist movement, to get their hands on our children at a younger and younger age to begin to instill in them their worldview and to counteract the pernicious influence of their parents. Many parents are willing participants in this because they have bought into the idea of preschool being a valuable and necessary part of a child’s education. After all it is just an extension of modern American parenting. Have a kid, put them in daycare so mom can go back to work, get them to preschool and then public school and finally send them away to college. The net result of this system of “education” is that the state will watch our children and mold them into productive units in society until they finally get old enough to move out on their own and join the workforce.
Welcome to Obamanation!
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