Chew on James chapter 5, verse 1 thr. 6. Leave feedback:

Go to now, you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.  Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.  Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.  You have heaped treasure together [in] the last days.

Behold the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, cry; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabbath. You have lived [luxuriously] on earth and [indulged yourselves]; you have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.  You have condemned and killed the just; and he does not resist you.

As a Teacher of History, I know parents flipped out about Jazz in the Roaring 20s; and Rock and Roll in the 50s, but RAP truly is different. It is violent, it is abusive, it is against decency in society particularly where women are concerned.  It is destroying the fabric of American society where it is widespread.  Black culture has been damaged by it; and as if that were not bad enough it is spreading like wildfire to the white youth.

After the Monarchy was restored in England w/ Charles II, the dead body of Oliver Cromwell (the Puritan leader of Parliament who led the victory over King Charles I and established The English Republic) was exhumed by his enemies and beheaded. His head was placed on London Bridge.  There are days where this seems appropriate for Lincoln, Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens among others.  Pray for America…..

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain to it.  Where can I go from your spirit? where shall I flee from your presence?  If I ascend into heaven, You are ; if I make my bed in the grave , behold you are there….

…you have possessed my reins; you have covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are your works; and that my soul knows right well.

My substance was not hid from you, when I was made in secret…. Your eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in your book all my members were written….

How precious also are your thoughts to me O God! how great is the sum of them!

Havel was a counter-cultural intellectual.  His plays and essays undermined the Communist regime with a display of their dehumanizing , incompetent system based on lies.  His work w/i the Charter 77 human rights movement got him sent to prison for the 4th time in October, 1989; but the public show of support toppled the Communist govt and led to Havel becoming president of the Czechoslovak republic by New Year’s Day 1990.

Havel died recently, but his courage in the face of tyranny should be saluted.  Before he died, Havel turned his pen on prosperous nations of the west as well.  “He criticized ‘a selfish cult of material success’ and the ‘absence of faith in a higher order of things’.”  We must heed his warnings to put “morality ahead of politics” and to foster “responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success.”  Our American Founding Fathers  understood this concept of “God and Country”; its what made America different, without it we too are bound for the ash heap of History.

GOP friends, study these terms these entities– for they spell the doom of our Republic as we knew it.

Donald Trump, a little over a week ago proposed a scenario I had already pondered.  President Obama w/ MIC and neo-Con pressure could launch a war on Iran w/i a year and then win re-election.  The public will not vote out a sitting president in the midst of war.  And even if this prophecy does not come to pass, every GOP nominee besides Ron Paul supports incremental pressure on Iran up to and including bombing to stop production of a supposed nuclear weapon.  The party doesnt matter, the MIC has moved on from Iraq and is targeting Iran as the next US enemy in the crosshairs.

I am not debating whether Iran wants a weapon or not. I am completely in favor of Israel defending their integrity in the regional matter.  My goal here is to enlighten Americans on the dangers of blind interventionism.  Since 1950, the US has engaged in various conflicts which have little to do w/ our well-being, or were started on fabricated evidence.  The conflicts drag on with poor strategies to win or withdraw.  Research these entities and make informed decisions.  The day is coming when the only alternative will be a third-party ; but it must be popularly supported on a vast scale…

The ideal of liberty as an opportunity to foster public virtue was common among the Founders.

According to Samuel Adams, True religion and godly education made a people free, but tyrants souhgt to make people immoral and ignorant.

College of New Jersey (now Princeton) President and Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon “recommended certain moral duties that would bolster America’s communal health, such as industry, hard work, and frugality…”

Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, endorsed an unbreakable link betw. Christianity and republican govt…  “The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in RELIGION; without this, there can be no virtue, and w/o virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican govts.”  The most obvious instrument of govt for inculcating virtue was public education.

… more from God of Liberty, by Baylor’s Dr Thomas S Kidd

“Will men ever be free!” revivalist George Whitefield exclaimed, “They will be free no longer than while they remain virtuous.”

“To [John ] Adams, the American Rev. was not exclusively either a secular or a religious endeavor. Instead, he integrated the legacies of the Reformation and the Enlightenmt to propound a convergence of classical republicanism and Reformed Christianity… Classical antiquity supplied the political ideals of the prospective republic, incl. checks and balances, safeguards against tyranny, and the importance of civic virtue. Christianity supplied the republic with its spirit and the power to preserve itself….”

For many early Americans, “private virtue was not enough to preserve and safeguard republics… Nor was republican gov’t alone enough, because in the pre-Christian pagan republics no divine assurance engendered holiness among the people…. men could not be good enough w/o the transforming power of God working in their lives….”

Not that we should be surprised, but Sunday (Nov20) it was plain for all to hear: the so-called Congressional Supercommittee will fail to make any progress on trimming the budget toward balance by Wednesday (Nov23).

President Obama and Congress failed back in the summer to manage the deficit while increasing the Debt Ceiling.  They then organized a bi-partisan committee made up of both Sen’s and Rep’s that would come w/ a plan to balance the budget by mid-November.  It is clear now that this unconstitutional politburo will fail too.  There are “automatic” cuts that are supposed to “kick in” to do the job they could not. They are supposed to be a combination of Defense and Social Spending measures.  They will not “kick in” however til  (drum roll…….)  2014.  By then, Obama will be in a second term or there will be a new Republican Chief Executive, and Congress will be facing a new mid-term election.

Obama is a fiscal failure; the GOP-led House is a fiscal failure. The Dem-led Senate is a joke.  Greedy politicians surrounded by corporate lobbyists will not face up to the magnitude of the budget problem.  Federal revenues as a % of GDP have generally increased over the last 40 yrs. (see chart above) Bush’s tax cuts reduced revenue for a while until it increased again at the end of his term.  Revenues have been lower since the Great Recession began because so many are out of work.

The problem is not revenue; the problem is out of control spending. There hasnt been fiscal sanity in Washington since the GOP under Newt Gingrich swept into Congressional power and came to agreement w/ Pres. Clinton on welfare reform in the mid-90s.

The fedl tax code needs to be reformed:  3 or 4 FLAT rates w/ few or NO deductions on both the personal and corporate sides.  Revenue may actually increase for higher-level incomes.  But, the spending side must be dealt with.

Are fedl depts “constitutional”??

Are fedl programs “constitutional”??

NO MORE unfunded wars…

Deduct the salaries paid to the members of this congressional politburo from August to November of this year. They were assigned a duty and failed.  They should not be paid for their abject failure.

Vote the bums out of office from both sides of the aisle who fail the taxpayers. And do it now, before America becomes a Greece…