Friday, February 26, 2010
Driving With a Broken Speedometer
#493
Games People Play
“Oh the games people play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean
And they wile away the hours
In their ivory towers
Till they're covered up with flowers
In the back of a black limousine”
Joe South
Before I wind up in the back of a black limousine hearse, maybe some flowers, it's time to talk about changes in the world during my lifetime. It is not the same country now as 80 years ago.
Archimedes said, “show me the fulcrum and I can move the earth”. When I was young, straight off the farm (the greatest learning university in the world) I thought that by hard work and clean living I could do anything. I thought that one man plus God could do anything but as Chesterton has said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910 .
Today and every day is a challenge, particularly when you are totally blind but I am still trying to understand what has gone wrong in my lifetime.
The 56 men who signed our Declaration of Independence were men of great faith in God, faith and country. 17 were graduates of seminaries. Two had the last name of Morris and I can trace my family roots to the Morristown, New Jersey founding with a paper trail to 1766. The oldest, at least the signer who lived the longest, was a lawyer and a Roman Catholic (Charles Carroll). In my lifetime, the church, the bedrock of this Democratic republic, has lost it's way. Most white churches today are just country clubs with steeples. Black churches are nationalistic, political centers. One of the countries leading educators told me recently, “we should just start over with our public schools”. They have become places of indoctrination and entertainment. “Little learning takes place”. Since 1963, when an innocuous 22 word prayer was stricken from the public school, prayer and bible reading removed from the school, police officers now patrol the halls.
The American home has become just another service station, where people come in, change, and fill up. In my home, my parents home, my grandparents homes, right on back, families sat down together at the table. I still remember in both of my grandparent's homes, homes that survived the civil war, chairs were so expensive, there was always a long bench where the children sat. I can still remember how “grown up” I felt when I was first placed on the bench between my two uncles in my grandfathers house. Today, with over half the children never knowing who their father is, the most basic formula for success given by God and certainly known to all men is lost. Then, the psychologists (80% Atheist) attempt to explain what has happened to the minds of children...they have all these alphabet diseases unknown during my medical training (ADHD, Diabetes, etc.). 25% of all children (one out of four) have an illness of some sort. Most childhood illnesses brought on by these inoculations hatched in hell, lack of exercise and pernicious eating habits. One of the largest cardiovascular hospitals in the country is located within 100 feet of a McDonalds. Some hospitals have fast food restaurants within the facility. Nothing is worse for the diet of a child than salty potatoes and soft drinks...especially diet drinks. Put a nail in a glass containing Coca Cola and watch the nail dissolve. Local schools keep soft drink machines in the building so students can buy soft drinks instead of their school lunch. Administration maintains that the school needs the money from the drink machines to buy supplies. Perhaps the greatest benefit of the free breakfast and lunch programs for the poor children who are bussed from the inner city to better schools in order to maintain a system of integration is the fact that these children do get nourishment, however, one academic has suggested that all nutritious foods be cultured to look like hot dogs. I have found that most nutritionists know little about nutrition just as most doctors know little about supplements. The most important thing you can do for your body is to take supplements...fish oil, magnesium, Vitamins B, C, and D etc.
I was fortunate enough, as a young practitioner, to have known some old doctors...educated at a time of good sense...who used food as a medicine. Of course in our lifetime we have seen the soil depleted of all nutrients. Without artificial fertilizer you can barely grow anything anymore. The body is nutrition starved. Over 50% of the population is obese. People stay hungry...eat almost constantly, putting on weight, in an effort to satisfy the body's hunger and need for certain basic elements.
When you go to your doctor, and he tells you that you are sick, ask, “what is the cause and what is the cure?” After you revive him from this fainting, sputtering near death experience...a question he is seldom asked...in his assembly line care, you will probably get the same answer that veterans and all people in government healthcare systems get, “deny, delay and just wait for your death”. Healthcare today consists of the three D's...drugs, defense such as stints and artificial replacements, and destruction...cutting out or radio-logically burning out anything that might cause your problem.
Instead of wasting your time watching the trash on television...getting more brainwashed by the politically correct, state controlled, news media...or, semi-porno fantasies of the gay agenda, read books and literature on how to protect your own health, your own body's needs. There is no reason for illness. The toxic chemicals contained in the 15,000 prescriptions written by doctors to make themselves and big pharma even richer are so destructive that it takes the metabolism of your body a long time just to detoxify.
In my lifetime, it has become fashionable as well as financial for restaurant to have buffets. There is nothing more dangerous than a buffet, hands at the mouth on instruments now stirring around in food. General public, God only knows what is in their nasal cavities, breathing on food, much of which is untreated by heat (high heat destroys most bacteria...importance of well cooked food). Once, my driver told me that a plastic bag of salad had been put on the buffet. I said, on the way home, stop at the grocery store and get me a bag of that salad. At home, I told him to get a magnifying glass and look at that salad. He said, “I cannot believe it, there are small pieces of crud all over the salad in that bag, especially on the stems”. I said, “think of how many people eat salad right out of a plastic bag which is never washed. They did not wash it at the buffet!”
Yesterday, there was fuming, fussing, fighting, for some strange reason, at the Blair house instead of the Capitol...over future healthcare. It makes no difference the type Communistic, controlled “care” they come up with if, like the unborn, they just want to kill you. The largest abortion clinic in the world, outside of China, (78,000 square feet) has just been built in Houston Texas in a minority neighborhood. A sign in one city states, “the most endangered species in America is black children”. The black population of America is about 13%. Of the 3,000 abortions each day, 14,000 are black babies. Last year, 350 million of your tax dollars went to Planned Parenthood for abortions. Mr. Obama wants 750 million to go to Planned Parenthood for abortions next year. Be careful what you “ask for” you may get it. You Democrats, 99% black, wanted “change”. You are getting change. With this economy, only change in your pockets, the change of death in your healthcare, the eradication of change in your race. As one black doctor, said to me recently, “the black race will disappear from abortion and AIDS”. When will the black preacher talk about “this” in the pulpit?
The speedometer is broken. While people in the car are eating fast food, (potato chips, diet drinks) listening to “looney tunes” music, the car is heading for a cliff as those inside just wave, clap and smile. It is a mockery of god that we do not educate ourselves about the most precious of God's creation, the human body. It is a mockery of humanity that those who teach and try to warn about healthcare are accused of malpractice because they are not members of the “herd” of doctors and politicians who are just “milking” the system for the money involved. Instead of you government spending 50,000 dollars for knee or hip replacement, why not use the intelligence given us by the body's creator to educate his creation in preventative care?
Games People Play
“Oh the games people play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean
And they wile away the hours
In their ivory towers
Till they're covered up with flowers
In the back of a black limousine”
Joe South
Before I wind up in the back of a black limousine hearse, maybe some flowers, it's time to talk about changes in the world during my lifetime. It is not the same country now as 80 years ago.
Archimedes said, “show me the fulcrum and I can move the earth”. When I was young, straight off the farm (the greatest learning university in the world) I thought that by hard work and clean living I could do anything. I thought that one man plus God could do anything but as Chesterton has said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910 .
Today and every day is a challenge, particularly when you are totally blind but I am still trying to understand what has gone wrong in my lifetime.
The 56 men who signed our Declaration of Independence were men of great faith in God, faith and country. 17 were graduates of seminaries. Two had the last name of Morris and I can trace my family roots to the Morristown, New Jersey founding with a paper trail to 1766. The oldest, at least the signer who lived the longest, was a lawyer and a Roman Catholic (Charles Carroll). In my lifetime, the church, the bedrock of this Democratic republic, has lost it's way. Most white churches today are just country clubs with steeples. Black churches are nationalistic, political centers. One of the countries leading educators told me recently, “we should just start over with our public schools”. They have become places of indoctrination and entertainment. “Little learning takes place”. Since 1963, when an innocuous 22 word prayer was stricken from the public school, prayer and bible reading removed from the school, police officers now patrol the halls.
The American home has become just another service station, where people come in, change, and fill up. In my home, my parents home, my grandparents homes, right on back, families sat down together at the table. I still remember in both of my grandparent's homes, homes that survived the civil war, chairs were so expensive, there was always a long bench where the children sat. I can still remember how “grown up” I felt when I was first placed on the bench between my two uncles in my grandfathers house. Today, with over half the children never knowing who their father is, the most basic formula for success given by God and certainly known to all men is lost. Then, the psychologists (80% Atheist) attempt to explain what has happened to the minds of children...they have all these alphabet diseases unknown during my medical training (ADHD, Diabetes, etc.). 25% of all children (one out of four) have an illness of some sort. Most childhood illnesses brought on by these inoculations hatched in hell, lack of exercise and pernicious eating habits. One of the largest cardiovascular hospitals in the country is located within 100 feet of a McDonalds. Some hospitals have fast food restaurants within the facility. Nothing is worse for the diet of a child than salty potatoes and soft drinks...especially diet drinks. Put a nail in a glass containing Coca Cola and watch the nail dissolve. Local schools keep soft drink machines in the building so students can buy soft drinks instead of their school lunch. Administration maintains that the school needs the money from the drink machines to buy supplies. Perhaps the greatest benefit of the free breakfast and lunch programs for the poor children who are bussed from the inner city to better schools in order to maintain a system of integration is the fact that these children do get nourishment, however, one academic has suggested that all nutritious foods be cultured to look like hot dogs. I have found that most nutritionists know little about nutrition just as most doctors know little about supplements. The most important thing you can do for your body is to take supplements...fish oil, magnesium, Vitamins B, C, and D etc.
I was fortunate enough, as a young practitioner, to have known some old doctors...educated at a time of good sense...who used food as a medicine. Of course in our lifetime we have seen the soil depleted of all nutrients. Without artificial fertilizer you can barely grow anything anymore. The body is nutrition starved. Over 50% of the population is obese. People stay hungry...eat almost constantly, putting on weight, in an effort to satisfy the body's hunger and need for certain basic elements.
When you go to your doctor, and he tells you that you are sick, ask, “what is the cause and what is the cure?” After you revive him from this fainting, sputtering near death experience...a question he is seldom asked...in his assembly line care, you will probably get the same answer that veterans and all people in government healthcare systems get, “deny, delay and just wait for your death”. Healthcare today consists of the three D's...drugs, defense such as stints and artificial replacements, and destruction...cutting out or radio-logically burning out anything that might cause your problem.
Instead of wasting your time watching the trash on television...getting more brainwashed by the politically correct, state controlled, news media...or, semi-porno fantasies of the gay agenda, read books and literature on how to protect your own health, your own body's needs. There is no reason for illness. The toxic chemicals contained in the 15,000 prescriptions written by doctors to make themselves and big pharma even richer are so destructive that it takes the metabolism of your body a long time just to detoxify.
In my lifetime, it has become fashionable as well as financial for restaurant to have buffets. There is nothing more dangerous than a buffet, hands at the mouth on instruments now stirring around in food. General public, God only knows what is in their nasal cavities, breathing on food, much of which is untreated by heat (high heat destroys most bacteria...importance of well cooked food). Once, my driver told me that a plastic bag of salad had been put on the buffet. I said, on the way home, stop at the grocery store and get me a bag of that salad. At home, I told him to get a magnifying glass and look at that salad. He said, “I cannot believe it, there are small pieces of crud all over the salad in that bag, especially on the stems”. I said, “think of how many people eat salad right out of a plastic bag which is never washed. They did not wash it at the buffet!”
Yesterday, there was fuming, fussing, fighting, for some strange reason, at the Blair house instead of the Capitol...over future healthcare. It makes no difference the type Communistic, controlled “care” they come up with if, like the unborn, they just want to kill you. The largest abortion clinic in the world, outside of China, (78,000 square feet) has just been built in Houston Texas in a minority neighborhood. A sign in one city states, “the most endangered species in America is black children”. The black population of America is about 13%. Of the 3,000 abortions each day, 14,000 are black babies. Last year, 350 million of your tax dollars went to Planned Parenthood for abortions. Mr. Obama wants 750 million to go to Planned Parenthood for abortions next year. Be careful what you “ask for” you may get it. You Democrats, 99% black, wanted “change”. You are getting change. With this economy, only change in your pockets, the change of death in your healthcare, the eradication of change in your race. As one black doctor, said to me recently, “the black race will disappear from abortion and AIDS”. When will the black preacher talk about “this” in the pulpit?
The speedometer is broken. While people in the car are eating fast food, (potato chips, diet drinks) listening to “looney tunes” music, the car is heading for a cliff as those inside just wave, clap and smile. It is a mockery of god that we do not educate ourselves about the most precious of God's creation, the human body. It is a mockery of humanity that those who teach and try to warn about healthcare are accused of malpractice because they are not members of the “herd” of doctors and politicians who are just “milking” the system for the money involved. Instead of you government spending 50,000 dollars for knee or hip replacement, why not use the intelligence given us by the body's creator to educate his creation in preventative care?
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Ozymandias
#492
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Keats
The Obama Phenomenon is a new book by Ray Coleman, political leader from Illinois. The electoral victory has caused this Baptist, working behind the scenes, to obtain knowledge of President Barrack Hussein Obama’s political trail to victory. He pronounces him a “prophet and the chosen one”. So, as Keats in his poem Ozymandias, Obama can be proclaimed “king of kings”.
Obama thinks himself an emperor...the one without clothes...but, believe me, he is stark naked in spite of the cloak of decency given to him by Coleman and others of ilk. Most men spend the first half of their life building habits which enable them to live their second half with a degree of credibility. Obama's life, to this point, is more a mystery than mastery. Speaking fluent Farsi, reared as a Muslim, little is known of his activities in college or elsewhere. Since no one has been able to prove his place of birth and he has spent millions to protect the truth of his birthplace, he involved himself in Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago where he married Michelle Robinson in order to ensure his citizenship. The Wright church and Reverend Wright are in no manner Christian. The church is a nationalistic, political, activist center. In the vestibule of the “church” is the portrait of Harriet Tubman, early black agitator. Obama supposedly spent time at Columbia University but no one there or in the black community around Columbia remembers him. It is believed the Columbia University cover provided him CIA operative expediency in Pakistan.
With the assistance of Communist/social types, commonly called Czars, without congressional approval, he and these political newcomers have presented the country with a budget of 3.8 trillion, exactly double the budget of ten years ago. Strange beyond words to explain officials such as Secretary of the Treasury Geithner, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rangel, former Senator Daschle, and others do not pay the taxes for which they hold others responsible. Catholics such as Pelosi, Biden and Kennedy support his pro abortion policies. The country only collects 2 trillion in taxes so 1.8 trillion must be borrowed, mostly from China, Japan, and other world governments. His impetus during campaign was putting people back to work. The only jobs created to date have been government jobs. Government employees received 60% more pay for the same work than those in private jobs. When you consider the benefits, there is no way that private industry can keep up with government employment, just the reverse of what it was a few years ago. The private sector cannot pay enough tax to support this new generation of government workers. Civil service at one time was a sacrifice. Civil servants have now become civil masters. A parasite or a cancer on a host will suck out all the blood and eventually kill the host...the American tax payer.
It was the private sector which built the country...railroads, subways, the campuses on which colleges and universities stand, the holy dedicated ground first occupied by hospitals.
Obama said we dare not bless those who curse God. Was he speaking of his friends, most of whom are Atheist? Most of us cannot comprehend voters who will support a killer of babies. For a long time now, any time any person tells me he is a Democrat and a Christian I say, “you need to re-evaluate yourself”. One cannot support the Democrat party which promotes the greatest sins of our time, abortion and homosexuality, and still believe that he or she is Christian. I cannot, in good faith, support Baptists in North Carolina who outnumber all other denominations (SBC, FWB etc.) because if it were not for the votes of these Baptists supporting the Democrat party the corruption in Raleigh from over 100 years of Democrat rule, the corruption in the state alcohol beverage control system, the added corruption of the lottery, the embarrassment of such politicians as RC. Soles (longest serving NC Senator), Julia Boseman (self advertised lesbian), Black, Decker, Wright, M. Scott Phipps, and others...all Democrats, would not have been possible.
The federal government now admits that we are in a double dipped depression...that unemployment is over 20%...worse than the great depression. We know the car is heading for the cliff. Get ready, we are about to go over the cliff.
The only winning hand, any time, anywhere, is not to play the game. The Christian church has lost it's way. Smiling and comfortable on padded pews, corrupt politicians like their unconcerned neighbors, feel perfectly at home with the world inside the church. With the cloak of decency provided by Obama the church feels it is courageous enough to face the future without God. Education, like carbon tax science and the health care fiasco is a mockery. Prevention Magazine said recently, “just being positive will add seven years to your life”. I wish I could be more positive and add those years to you. But, we learn to live with our worst fears.
Your “king of kings” is thought to be bi-sexual, we know he speaks from both sides of his mouth, will say anything to get elected, will do anything to stay in power.
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Keats
The Obama Phenomenon is a new book by Ray Coleman, political leader from Illinois. The electoral victory has caused this Baptist, working behind the scenes, to obtain knowledge of President Barrack Hussein Obama’s political trail to victory. He pronounces him a “prophet and the chosen one”. So, as Keats in his poem Ozymandias, Obama can be proclaimed “king of kings”.
Obama thinks himself an emperor...the one without clothes...but, believe me, he is stark naked in spite of the cloak of decency given to him by Coleman and others of ilk. Most men spend the first half of their life building habits which enable them to live their second half with a degree of credibility. Obama's life, to this point, is more a mystery than mastery. Speaking fluent Farsi, reared as a Muslim, little is known of his activities in college or elsewhere. Since no one has been able to prove his place of birth and he has spent millions to protect the truth of his birthplace, he involved himself in Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago where he married Michelle Robinson in order to ensure his citizenship. The Wright church and Reverend Wright are in no manner Christian. The church is a nationalistic, political, activist center. In the vestibule of the “church” is the portrait of Harriet Tubman, early black agitator. Obama supposedly spent time at Columbia University but no one there or in the black community around Columbia remembers him. It is believed the Columbia University cover provided him CIA operative expediency in Pakistan.
With the assistance of Communist/social types, commonly called Czars, without congressional approval, he and these political newcomers have presented the country with a budget of 3.8 trillion, exactly double the budget of ten years ago. Strange beyond words to explain officials such as Secretary of the Treasury Geithner, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rangel, former Senator Daschle, and others do not pay the taxes for which they hold others responsible. Catholics such as Pelosi, Biden and Kennedy support his pro abortion policies. The country only collects 2 trillion in taxes so 1.8 trillion must be borrowed, mostly from China, Japan, and other world governments. His impetus during campaign was putting people back to work. The only jobs created to date have been government jobs. Government employees received 60% more pay for the same work than those in private jobs. When you consider the benefits, there is no way that private industry can keep up with government employment, just the reverse of what it was a few years ago. The private sector cannot pay enough tax to support this new generation of government workers. Civil service at one time was a sacrifice. Civil servants have now become civil masters. A parasite or a cancer on a host will suck out all the blood and eventually kill the host...the American tax payer.
It was the private sector which built the country...railroads, subways, the campuses on which colleges and universities stand, the holy dedicated ground first occupied by hospitals.
Obama said we dare not bless those who curse God. Was he speaking of his friends, most of whom are Atheist? Most of us cannot comprehend voters who will support a killer of babies. For a long time now, any time any person tells me he is a Democrat and a Christian I say, “you need to re-evaluate yourself”. One cannot support the Democrat party which promotes the greatest sins of our time, abortion and homosexuality, and still believe that he or she is Christian. I cannot, in good faith, support Baptists in North Carolina who outnumber all other denominations (SBC, FWB etc.) because if it were not for the votes of these Baptists supporting the Democrat party the corruption in Raleigh from over 100 years of Democrat rule, the corruption in the state alcohol beverage control system, the added corruption of the lottery, the embarrassment of such politicians as RC. Soles (longest serving NC Senator), Julia Boseman (self advertised lesbian), Black, Decker, Wright, M. Scott Phipps, and others...all Democrats, would not have been possible.
The federal government now admits that we are in a double dipped depression...that unemployment is over 20%...worse than the great depression. We know the car is heading for the cliff. Get ready, we are about to go over the cliff.
The only winning hand, any time, anywhere, is not to play the game. The Christian church has lost it's way. Smiling and comfortable on padded pews, corrupt politicians like their unconcerned neighbors, feel perfectly at home with the world inside the church. With the cloak of decency provided by Obama the church feels it is courageous enough to face the future without God. Education, like carbon tax science and the health care fiasco is a mockery. Prevention Magazine said recently, “just being positive will add seven years to your life”. I wish I could be more positive and add those years to you. But, we learn to live with our worst fears.
Your “king of kings” is thought to be bi-sexual, we know he speaks from both sides of his mouth, will say anything to get elected, will do anything to stay in power.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Imprisonment
#491
February 22nd 1932 was the 200th anniversary of the birthday of George Washington, first president of the United States “father of our country”. On February 22nd 1777 Revolutionary soldiers had started celebrating his birthday. On February 22nd Paul von Hindenburg, new president of Germany, congratulated the United States of America on the birth of Washington. The very next day he appointed Adolph Hitler as chancellor of Germany. Justice David Davis of the Supreme Court said America would not always have such a remarkable man as George Washington but that eventually “evil men would take over”. At one time in our history, a portrait of George Washington hung in every classroom in America. It was Stuart's portrait of Washington which Dolly Madison saved when the British burned the White House. In 1971 President Nixon declared the third Monday in February as Presidents Day replacing the celebration of the birthday of Washington. Now, most school children know nothing of the heroism and honor of this first president.
The greatest attribute of Washington's presidency and his leadership of the Revolutionary Army was the esprit de corps felt by his troops. This rag tag militia, often hungry and shoeless, out fought their better shorn British cousins by the simple indescribable magnitude of belonging, sharing, having a deep seeded meaning of their mission and their life which some men have never known. The most powerful force in any Army involves the esprit de corps and closeness of it's fellows. It is an indescribable characteristic which you find between true friends, real families.
During Vietnam the prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton POW camp who survived, were those who had a deep love for one another and a willingness to forgive their captors to fill their heart of anger with God's love for them and their captors. Those who did not have this self discipline of forgiveness and love were so imprisoned by hatred that they just gave up and died.
Someone has said a friend is someone you can go to and ask for 20 dollars, they pull the money out and give it to you without asking a question. Most of us are fortunate if we have five friends...many acquaintances...but few friends. It was said that Washington was a friend to his troops and that they were willing to die for him. My WWII friends in the military told me that when General Patton rode up to the front lines, unlike most Generals, who did not want to be identified, Patton would always stand in his Jeep, his Jeep always identified with much chrome, smiling and waving every mile of the way to those foot soldiers he was leading in battle.
I could always tell my mother's real friends. There was a look in their eyes as they greeted one another. None of the unmistakeable hypocrisy with which “just” acquaintances greet us. I can tell when a relative or friend takes my hand, since I cannot see them if they are really happy to see me. Satan's greatest tool in his arsenal is the tool of discouragement. Fortunate is the person who has someone to encourage him or her. I can honestly say that in my long life of struggle with education, the military, blindness, I have never had one word of encouragement from anyone. It takes so little time, as Mark Twain has said, and it costs so little to say I appreciate you. With all the speaking I have done, all the writing over many years in many magazines, all the money I have given to various causes, one would be shocked at the small number of times I have been thanked. I said to a minister recently, “who received the two 2500 dollar awards which I give to two ministers each year?” One was a school teacher who is also a pastor. Now, 2500 dollars is probably not much money anymore, but one would think that it would have been worth a short note or call. Even the president of the University of North Carolina, which will get most of my estate, sent me a hand written letter that he would like to walk me around the University campus again. I gave many scholarships to Mt Olive college before I ever set foot on that campus, the first time simply because my family for many generations, had been a member of that denomination and I felt it my opportunity to support it. “If gold rusts, what do you expect iron to do?”
My father always sang an old hymn, “I'll take my vacation in heaven”. I'm willing to wait for recognition but how people cheat themselves by not bringing into their little group a sense of sharing, belonging and meaning effecting every life.
Eighty percent of the effectiveness of all healthcare is directly influenced by your rapport with your doctor. There are 4,000 medical and surgical procedures which every doctor studies. There are about 15,000 prescriptions that can be written for various sicknesses. It is so important to recognize a disease, a healthcare disability. You get a second opinion in case the first opinion is not correct. We have become socially engineered earth inhabitants. Life is very uncertain and the mortality rate is still 100%. It takes just a small speck of dust to disable a large machine. Just one disgruntled misplaced cell, not easily recognized by any medical instrument can start a series of problems baffling specialists of every degree. Recognizing the unpredictable failures of machines (vehicles, planes etc.) as well as horrible events which can happen to good people (earthquakes, tornadoes etc.) it behooves each of us to share ourselves with others who surround us and the one who created us. General Booth of the Salvation Army, when young, walked around London with a sandwich sign on his body which said, “I'm a fool for Jesus” and on the other side it said, “who's fool are you?”
February 22nd 1932 was the 200th anniversary of the birthday of George Washington, first president of the United States “father of our country”. On February 22nd 1777 Revolutionary soldiers had started celebrating his birthday. On February 22nd Paul von Hindenburg, new president of Germany, congratulated the United States of America on the birth of Washington. The very next day he appointed Adolph Hitler as chancellor of Germany. Justice David Davis of the Supreme Court said America would not always have such a remarkable man as George Washington but that eventually “evil men would take over”. At one time in our history, a portrait of George Washington hung in every classroom in America. It was Stuart's portrait of Washington which Dolly Madison saved when the British burned the White House. In 1971 President Nixon declared the third Monday in February as Presidents Day replacing the celebration of the birthday of Washington. Now, most school children know nothing of the heroism and honor of this first president.
The greatest attribute of Washington's presidency and his leadership of the Revolutionary Army was the esprit de corps felt by his troops. This rag tag militia, often hungry and shoeless, out fought their better shorn British cousins by the simple indescribable magnitude of belonging, sharing, having a deep seeded meaning of their mission and their life which some men have never known. The most powerful force in any Army involves the esprit de corps and closeness of it's fellows. It is an indescribable characteristic which you find between true friends, real families.
During Vietnam the prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton POW camp who survived, were those who had a deep love for one another and a willingness to forgive their captors to fill their heart of anger with God's love for them and their captors. Those who did not have this self discipline of forgiveness and love were so imprisoned by hatred that they just gave up and died.
Someone has said a friend is someone you can go to and ask for 20 dollars, they pull the money out and give it to you without asking a question. Most of us are fortunate if we have five friends...many acquaintances...but few friends. It was said that Washington was a friend to his troops and that they were willing to die for him. My WWII friends in the military told me that when General Patton rode up to the front lines, unlike most Generals, who did not want to be identified, Patton would always stand in his Jeep, his Jeep always identified with much chrome, smiling and waving every mile of the way to those foot soldiers he was leading in battle.
I could always tell my mother's real friends. There was a look in their eyes as they greeted one another. None of the unmistakeable hypocrisy with which “just” acquaintances greet us. I can tell when a relative or friend takes my hand, since I cannot see them if they are really happy to see me. Satan's greatest tool in his arsenal is the tool of discouragement. Fortunate is the person who has someone to encourage him or her. I can honestly say that in my long life of struggle with education, the military, blindness, I have never had one word of encouragement from anyone. It takes so little time, as Mark Twain has said, and it costs so little to say I appreciate you. With all the speaking I have done, all the writing over many years in many magazines, all the money I have given to various causes, one would be shocked at the small number of times I have been thanked. I said to a minister recently, “who received the two 2500 dollar awards which I give to two ministers each year?” One was a school teacher who is also a pastor. Now, 2500 dollars is probably not much money anymore, but one would think that it would have been worth a short note or call. Even the president of the University of North Carolina, which will get most of my estate, sent me a hand written letter that he would like to walk me around the University campus again. I gave many scholarships to Mt Olive college before I ever set foot on that campus, the first time simply because my family for many generations, had been a member of that denomination and I felt it my opportunity to support it. “If gold rusts, what do you expect iron to do?”
My father always sang an old hymn, “I'll take my vacation in heaven”. I'm willing to wait for recognition but how people cheat themselves by not bringing into their little group a sense of sharing, belonging and meaning effecting every life.
Eighty percent of the effectiveness of all healthcare is directly influenced by your rapport with your doctor. There are 4,000 medical and surgical procedures which every doctor studies. There are about 15,000 prescriptions that can be written for various sicknesses. It is so important to recognize a disease, a healthcare disability. You get a second opinion in case the first opinion is not correct. We have become socially engineered earth inhabitants. Life is very uncertain and the mortality rate is still 100%. It takes just a small speck of dust to disable a large machine. Just one disgruntled misplaced cell, not easily recognized by any medical instrument can start a series of problems baffling specialists of every degree. Recognizing the unpredictable failures of machines (vehicles, planes etc.) as well as horrible events which can happen to good people (earthquakes, tornadoes etc.) it behooves each of us to share ourselves with others who surround us and the one who created us. General Booth of the Salvation Army, when young, walked around London with a sandwich sign on his body which said, “I'm a fool for Jesus” and on the other side it said, “who's fool are you?”
Connect The Dots
#490
“Singing old church hymns and nursery rhymes
From the days way back before my time.
With a little child upon my knee
Singing every sweet word back to me.
Look how far I had to come
To get back where I started from.”
Waylon Jennings
Thank God, we are not stuck where we start. Old age is not for sissies. I don't have many enemies because I have outlived them all. I'm not afraid of anything anymore because “I have been there and done that”. When people call me eccentric or silly, or when people steal from me, I just think of the greatest promise in the Old Testament, Jeremiah 9:12. I realize that there are 8,887 promises in the bible and that each one has been fulfilled. I realize that 27 times in the psalms we find these words, “the mercies of the Lord endure forever”. Jesus endured it all and remained righteous, from his birth until his cruel death on the cross. The youngest disciple, John, along with his mother were at the foot of the cross when he died. Lucky is the man, even God, who can have your best friend and your mother with you at the end. I stopped long ago, trying to explain God to unbelievers. Without God, you cannot understand God. To the chosen, to those who know God, no explanation is necessary. To those who do not know God, no explanation is possible.
The best explanation I can give of this involves the one man who wrote 13 of the books in the New Testament, Saul, who became the apostle Paul. He, like David, of the Old Testament, was a murderer but God had a very special mission for both. In the dirt of the road as Saul traveled to Damascus, God talked to him, man to man. I have walked down the street called straight in Damascus. Even Ananias was afraid to encounter Saul as he sat blinded but at God's command, he went to him and the blindness left...as does spiritual blindness leave everyone who has an encounter with God...and Paul, perhaps the most educated man of his age in the world, became the stalwart disciple of Christ. From Romans to Philemon, and certainly the letter to the Hebrews, the church finds everything it needs to know about God's mission for the church. Once, in Jerusalem, the great American comedienne Totie Fields said to me, “Dr. Morris, what is wrong with these Arabs and Jews that they must be in conflict all the time?” Frank Sinatra was in the same hotel at that time (both now dead, she was already in a wheel chair at that time).
In a few years, India will be the world's greatest power. I saw the conflicts between India and Pakistan while I was in Kashmir...this too involving religions. Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, perhaps the worlds two most outspoken Atheists, blamed the world's problems on religion. Dawkins attacked from a biological standpoint and Hitchens from a historical standpoint. On the first of my three trips to Communist China since it's reopening, my Chinese guide asked me about American religion. Of course, in China, Mao who killed 70,000,000 Chinese in order to wipe out all traces of foreign influence and religion, even beat up “all tombstones” in cemeteries to build roads, destroyed all monuments and churches. Still, there are more Christians in Communist China than the population of the United States...over 300,000,000 though there as in North Korea and other Godless, collectivist, totalitarian, state controlled countries religion is defiled.
My Chinese guide told me that he was taken form his village commune early in life because the officials appraised him as being bright, easily controlled and he was given every advantage so far as education and had learned several languages. He said, “I have some memory of my mother and a sister whom I loved very much”. He was about 30 years of age and had had no family contact in over 25 years. He said, “my life consists of listening to Western classical music which I have smuggled in and reading all the books I can obtain. Of course, in the forced abortion, Communist regime, there are very few girls, no one for a young man to marry and if he is not gay has little contact with anyone.
China, so anxious to build up a large Army and civilian workforce disposed of all female babies and now has the tremendous problem of a large frustrated male population. Most, like my Chinese guide, just puppet slaves of the state. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, all agreed “no amount of political freedom will satisfy the masses”. The beautifully decorated subway stations of Russia, with their gleaming chandeliers, their marching uniformed factory workers, their great military exploits, even their “free” health care system did not bring joy to the masses. Only after the Russian system was exposed and expelled did Russia develop (now a real economic force). Churches and spirituality regained their prominence.
Western civilization would never have prospered if not for the Christian church. Whittaker Chambers, American writer, Communist, Soviet spy, left Communism and became a believer after studying his child's ear. It has been a mystery of my life that anyone can be an unbeliever who has studied God's chief creation, the human body. Chambers knew that it was a magnificent sovereign design system, only possible through a divine omnipotent, omniscient creator who could design such a phenomenal feature. Even more so would have been his study of the human eye (the chemistry of tears of joy are different from the tears of grief from the same lacrimal gland of the human eye). The clotting of blood in which every chemical component must react in just an exact manner, the DNA of every cell of the trillions of cells in the human body (every cell possessing enough information of the 23,000 genome characteristics that would fill thousands of pages). I thought when Watson and Crick announced the discovery of DNA in 1953 that the myth of evolution would be wiped clean from the school books of America but, academics, because of sin, are so anxious for young people to love the creature instead of the creator. The incredibly fallacious myth of Darwin's discredited philosophy is still being taught. It is only in a Godless, Communist, tyranny that, because of the advantages to the state and, the political correctness which is part of Satan's agenda, that this idiocy is still being introduced to young minds who do not have the courage of faith.
There are many absolutes in the world, the absolute of right and wrong, the absolutes of the laws of motion, the absolutes of the periodic table, the absolutes of the notes on a sheet of music. I want my pilot to be absolute about his knowledge of flying a plane, my surgeon to be absolute of his knowledge about where to cut on my body, my politician to be absolute in the integrity of government. I want my pastor to be absolute in his belief in sins ruin and Christ's redemption. I am an absolutest, a conservative, a defender of the right, an enemy of the wrong. It takes courage to have faith in the grace of God but that connects all the dots and gives you the encouragement to keep living.
“Singing old church hymns and nursery rhymes
From the days way back before my time.
With a little child upon my knee
Singing every sweet word back to me.
Look how far I had to come
To get back where I started from.”
Waylon Jennings
Thank God, we are not stuck where we start. Old age is not for sissies. I don't have many enemies because I have outlived them all. I'm not afraid of anything anymore because “I have been there and done that”. When people call me eccentric or silly, or when people steal from me, I just think of the greatest promise in the Old Testament, Jeremiah 9:12. I realize that there are 8,887 promises in the bible and that each one has been fulfilled. I realize that 27 times in the psalms we find these words, “the mercies of the Lord endure forever”. Jesus endured it all and remained righteous, from his birth until his cruel death on the cross. The youngest disciple, John, along with his mother were at the foot of the cross when he died. Lucky is the man, even God, who can have your best friend and your mother with you at the end. I stopped long ago, trying to explain God to unbelievers. Without God, you cannot understand God. To the chosen, to those who know God, no explanation is necessary. To those who do not know God, no explanation is possible.
The best explanation I can give of this involves the one man who wrote 13 of the books in the New Testament, Saul, who became the apostle Paul. He, like David, of the Old Testament, was a murderer but God had a very special mission for both. In the dirt of the road as Saul traveled to Damascus, God talked to him, man to man. I have walked down the street called straight in Damascus. Even Ananias was afraid to encounter Saul as he sat blinded but at God's command, he went to him and the blindness left...as does spiritual blindness leave everyone who has an encounter with God...and Paul, perhaps the most educated man of his age in the world, became the stalwart disciple of Christ. From Romans to Philemon, and certainly the letter to the Hebrews, the church finds everything it needs to know about God's mission for the church. Once, in Jerusalem, the great American comedienne Totie Fields said to me, “Dr. Morris, what is wrong with these Arabs and Jews that they must be in conflict all the time?” Frank Sinatra was in the same hotel at that time (both now dead, she was already in a wheel chair at that time).
In a few years, India will be the world's greatest power. I saw the conflicts between India and Pakistan while I was in Kashmir...this too involving religions. Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, perhaps the worlds two most outspoken Atheists, blamed the world's problems on religion. Dawkins attacked from a biological standpoint and Hitchens from a historical standpoint. On the first of my three trips to Communist China since it's reopening, my Chinese guide asked me about American religion. Of course, in China, Mao who killed 70,000,000 Chinese in order to wipe out all traces of foreign influence and religion, even beat up “all tombstones” in cemeteries to build roads, destroyed all monuments and churches. Still, there are more Christians in Communist China than the population of the United States...over 300,000,000 though there as in North Korea and other Godless, collectivist, totalitarian, state controlled countries religion is defiled.
My Chinese guide told me that he was taken form his village commune early in life because the officials appraised him as being bright, easily controlled and he was given every advantage so far as education and had learned several languages. He said, “I have some memory of my mother and a sister whom I loved very much”. He was about 30 years of age and had had no family contact in over 25 years. He said, “my life consists of listening to Western classical music which I have smuggled in and reading all the books I can obtain. Of course, in the forced abortion, Communist regime, there are very few girls, no one for a young man to marry and if he is not gay has little contact with anyone.
China, so anxious to build up a large Army and civilian workforce disposed of all female babies and now has the tremendous problem of a large frustrated male population. Most, like my Chinese guide, just puppet slaves of the state. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, all agreed “no amount of political freedom will satisfy the masses”. The beautifully decorated subway stations of Russia, with their gleaming chandeliers, their marching uniformed factory workers, their great military exploits, even their “free” health care system did not bring joy to the masses. Only after the Russian system was exposed and expelled did Russia develop (now a real economic force). Churches and spirituality regained their prominence.
Western civilization would never have prospered if not for the Christian church. Whittaker Chambers, American writer, Communist, Soviet spy, left Communism and became a believer after studying his child's ear. It has been a mystery of my life that anyone can be an unbeliever who has studied God's chief creation, the human body. Chambers knew that it was a magnificent sovereign design system, only possible through a divine omnipotent, omniscient creator who could design such a phenomenal feature. Even more so would have been his study of the human eye (the chemistry of tears of joy are different from the tears of grief from the same lacrimal gland of the human eye). The clotting of blood in which every chemical component must react in just an exact manner, the DNA of every cell of the trillions of cells in the human body (every cell possessing enough information of the 23,000 genome characteristics that would fill thousands of pages). I thought when Watson and Crick announced the discovery of DNA in 1953 that the myth of evolution would be wiped clean from the school books of America but, academics, because of sin, are so anxious for young people to love the creature instead of the creator. The incredibly fallacious myth of Darwin's discredited philosophy is still being taught. It is only in a Godless, Communist, tyranny that, because of the advantages to the state and, the political correctness which is part of Satan's agenda, that this idiocy is still being introduced to young minds who do not have the courage of faith.
There are many absolutes in the world, the absolute of right and wrong, the absolutes of the laws of motion, the absolutes of the periodic table, the absolutes of the notes on a sheet of music. I want my pilot to be absolute about his knowledge of flying a plane, my surgeon to be absolute of his knowledge about where to cut on my body, my politician to be absolute in the integrity of government. I want my pastor to be absolute in his belief in sins ruin and Christ's redemption. I am an absolutest, a conservative, a defender of the right, an enemy of the wrong. It takes courage to have faith in the grace of God but that connects all the dots and gives you the encouragement to keep living.
Shad
#489
I was on the island of Tonga in the South Pacific. A family wanted me to eat lunch with them. In a pit in the yard, with hot coals, on strange looking leaves, they cooked fish using herbs known only to them. It was delicious beyond compare. Then as now, it brought back the memory of a sons devotion to his aged father.
In the community in which I was reared the old three room school house had been given to a local lodge. The rooms were large but it had been accommodated to care for an elderly couple who, during the depression, had lost everything. Devoted to the church and the community this old couple had several daughters living around but their great joy was their only son, Robert, who, after they had sacrificed everything, he had graduated from the University. This man, exceptional in every way, became a well known government parks authority. Having been superintendent of Hyde park (FDR's home and burial place) and others. He had told my cousin who owned the country store nearby, supply my parents every need and you know you will get paid. The main thing, each week when the fish man comes by, make sure my father gets a shad, the fish which he loves so well. And so it was, week after week, year after year, the fish man always made sure a nice shad was delivered to the home.
Robert left a large estate and among his bequest the building of a Baptistry in the Church in which we were all raised, built in 1874. Until then, we had all been Baptized in a local fish pond. Robert had a great love for his parents, his family, his friends, his community. I was working across the road one day when his parents, sitting on the front porch, both very old, both disabled, both walking with canes, spotted his car arriving. As old as they were, like children, they were waving and dancing. This is what parenting used to be like.
In the same community, another poor white family, educated one daughter, their only child. After college, she became very successful as a Boston lawyer. She wrote me a letter and told me how much her father was enjoying his new spectacles...he could finally read the bible. She said, “you know my mother is bedridden and I would so appreciate you going by the house and seeing if there is anything you can do for her eyes, she so enjoyed embroidery and quilting.”
I was speaking in the community and I sent word that I would be at their house at a certain time. He had her all propped up in a chair. She was afraid that since she was illiterate I could not examine her eyes. I had my opthalmoscope and retina scope which enabled me to check on the health of her eyes in case of cataracts and I could determine her prescription very accurately with the retina scope. I had the prescription made up and sent it to her via my mother. My mother said, all she could do was cry because she could see how to thread a needle and sew. Of course I had told her that the new glasses were a gift from my mother but the wonderful daughter insisted on sending me a check. This is what parenting used to be like.
Since those days, I have been totally blind. My drivers often tell me that the world has totally changed during the past 50 years. They say, “Doc, you would not believe what the world is like now...most girls with tattoos and piercings, young men wearing baggy pants, drivers making obscene gestures at one another.” A friend told me recently about going to an athletic event. One of the prominent couples in the city were seated in the stadium below him. He said they were dressed in finery befitting a global event but, he said, each time the opposing team came near their side of the stadium they would yell out obscenities and make obscene gestures. As their team was losing, they decided to leave but he said, I felt even worse when I noticed, as they passed by, he had a Christian cross in his lapel and she was wearing a Christian cross around her neck. This couple, wealthy, educated, country club members, too, have children but they are known to have addictive problems, have not done very well. This is today's parents, in today's world.
The first time I was in Russia, I stayed at the large hotel at the Kremlin directly across from St. Basil's Cathedral. Of course in Russia, large means better. The dining room, a dormitory type structure, seated 2,000 people at long, crude tables. Each hotel room had a peep hole where staunch, ugly women working the halls could keep an eye on everything going on in your room. A friend, traveling with me, a commentator on WOR radio, New York City, used the old fashioned, hard contact lenses. In his bathroom, he put some paper in the lavatory to hold some water so he could wet his lenses. This “hall woman” immediately came in shaking her finger at him. In my own bathroom, I was using a used towel to wipe off my shoes. A hall woman came in shaking her fingers at me. Big brother has not stopped at your front door either. Every day, in every way, we are losing all the freedoms for which our ancestors paid a tremendous price.
At a recent prom, when the young people arrived for this night of enjoyment, before they could enter the building, police searched their cars, searched the pocket books of the girls and the pockets of the boys to make sure they were not taking anything illegal inside. There was a time when young girls in evening gowns, young boys in tuxedos, looked upon their high school prom as the zenith of their high school accomplishment. When will today's parents realize that their children are now puppets of the state?
Without God, you cannot understand God. To the believer, no explanation of God is necessary. To the unbeliever, any explanation of God is impossible.
Those of us who knew America when parents, children, churches, communities, were livable and lovable must give those memories to children because they will never be able to understand love of home, God and country otherwise.
I was on the island of Tonga in the South Pacific. A family wanted me to eat lunch with them. In a pit in the yard, with hot coals, on strange looking leaves, they cooked fish using herbs known only to them. It was delicious beyond compare. Then as now, it brought back the memory of a sons devotion to his aged father.
In the community in which I was reared the old three room school house had been given to a local lodge. The rooms were large but it had been accommodated to care for an elderly couple who, during the depression, had lost everything. Devoted to the church and the community this old couple had several daughters living around but their great joy was their only son, Robert, who, after they had sacrificed everything, he had graduated from the University. This man, exceptional in every way, became a well known government parks authority. Having been superintendent of Hyde park (FDR's home and burial place) and others. He had told my cousin who owned the country store nearby, supply my parents every need and you know you will get paid. The main thing, each week when the fish man comes by, make sure my father gets a shad, the fish which he loves so well. And so it was, week after week, year after year, the fish man always made sure a nice shad was delivered to the home.
Robert left a large estate and among his bequest the building of a Baptistry in the Church in which we were all raised, built in 1874. Until then, we had all been Baptized in a local fish pond. Robert had a great love for his parents, his family, his friends, his community. I was working across the road one day when his parents, sitting on the front porch, both very old, both disabled, both walking with canes, spotted his car arriving. As old as they were, like children, they were waving and dancing. This is what parenting used to be like.
In the same community, another poor white family, educated one daughter, their only child. After college, she became very successful as a Boston lawyer. She wrote me a letter and told me how much her father was enjoying his new spectacles...he could finally read the bible. She said, “you know my mother is bedridden and I would so appreciate you going by the house and seeing if there is anything you can do for her eyes, she so enjoyed embroidery and quilting.”
I was speaking in the community and I sent word that I would be at their house at a certain time. He had her all propped up in a chair. She was afraid that since she was illiterate I could not examine her eyes. I had my opthalmoscope and retina scope which enabled me to check on the health of her eyes in case of cataracts and I could determine her prescription very accurately with the retina scope. I had the prescription made up and sent it to her via my mother. My mother said, all she could do was cry because she could see how to thread a needle and sew. Of course I had told her that the new glasses were a gift from my mother but the wonderful daughter insisted on sending me a check. This is what parenting used to be like.
Since those days, I have been totally blind. My drivers often tell me that the world has totally changed during the past 50 years. They say, “Doc, you would not believe what the world is like now...most girls with tattoos and piercings, young men wearing baggy pants, drivers making obscene gestures at one another.” A friend told me recently about going to an athletic event. One of the prominent couples in the city were seated in the stadium below him. He said they were dressed in finery befitting a global event but, he said, each time the opposing team came near their side of the stadium they would yell out obscenities and make obscene gestures. As their team was losing, they decided to leave but he said, I felt even worse when I noticed, as they passed by, he had a Christian cross in his lapel and she was wearing a Christian cross around her neck. This couple, wealthy, educated, country club members, too, have children but they are known to have addictive problems, have not done very well. This is today's parents, in today's world.
The first time I was in Russia, I stayed at the large hotel at the Kremlin directly across from St. Basil's Cathedral. Of course in Russia, large means better. The dining room, a dormitory type structure, seated 2,000 people at long, crude tables. Each hotel room had a peep hole where staunch, ugly women working the halls could keep an eye on everything going on in your room. A friend, traveling with me, a commentator on WOR radio, New York City, used the old fashioned, hard contact lenses. In his bathroom, he put some paper in the lavatory to hold some water so he could wet his lenses. This “hall woman” immediately came in shaking her finger at him. In my own bathroom, I was using a used towel to wipe off my shoes. A hall woman came in shaking her fingers at me. Big brother has not stopped at your front door either. Every day, in every way, we are losing all the freedoms for which our ancestors paid a tremendous price.
At a recent prom, when the young people arrived for this night of enjoyment, before they could enter the building, police searched their cars, searched the pocket books of the girls and the pockets of the boys to make sure they were not taking anything illegal inside. There was a time when young girls in evening gowns, young boys in tuxedos, looked upon their high school prom as the zenith of their high school accomplishment. When will today's parents realize that their children are now puppets of the state?
Without God, you cannot understand God. To the believer, no explanation of God is necessary. To the unbeliever, any explanation of God is impossible.
Those of us who knew America when parents, children, churches, communities, were livable and lovable must give those memories to children because they will never be able to understand love of home, God and country otherwise.
2010 Census
2010 Census
With the U.S. Census process beginning, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) advises people to be cooperative, but cautious, so as not to become a victim of fraud or identity theft. The first phase of the 2010 U.S. Census is under way as workers have begun verifying the addresses of households across the county. Eventually, more than 140,000 U.S. Census workers will count every person in the United States and will gather information about every person living at each address including name, age, gender, race, and other relevant data.
The big question is - how do you tell the difference between a U.S. Census worker and a con artist? BBB offers the following advice:
If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have a badge, a handheld device, a Census Bureau canvas bag, and a confidentiality notice. Ask to see their identification and their badge before answering their questions. However, you should never invite anyone you don't know into your home.
Census workers are currently only knocking on doors to verify address information. Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census.
REMEMBER, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ASK, YOU REALLY ONLY NEED TO TELL THEM HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE AT YOUR ADDRESS.
While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range, YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT YOUR FINANCIAL SITUATION. The Census Bureau will not ask for Social Security, bank account or credit card numbers, nor will employees solicit donations. Anyone asking for that information is NOT with the Census Bureau.
AND REMEMBER, THE CENSUS BUREAU HAS DECIDED NOT TO WORK WITH ACORN ON GATHERING THIS INFORMATION. No Acorn worker should approach you saying he/she is with the Census Bureau.
Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, mail, or in person at home. However, the Census Bureau will NOT contact you by Email, so be on the lookout for Email scams impersonating the Census.
Never click on a link or open any attachments in an Email that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau.
For more advice on avoiding identity theft and fraud, visit www.bbb.org
PLEASE SHARE THIS INFO WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Addition by Dr. Morris
As is always the case, what are blind people supposed to do??? I have an intercom on my house and I do not allow anyone in my house unless I recognize their voice. I have been robbed and abused too many times. This is the thanks I get for having given my eyes for YOUR country. Never once, during hurricanes or any other catastrophe has a government agency ever shown me any consideration at all...NOT ONCE. This country's largest minority is the disabled...about 32%. At least those in a wheel chair could see the identification card of the investigator but, generally speaking, those of us who live alone are at the mercy of anyone who can get inside your house...but who cares, all the government wants is just out cooperation as we pay insidious taxes like the normal and healthy. Two police officers broke into my back door and searched my house...evidently trying to find something with which to embarrass me...since I had been alerting the public via radio to certain tactics. My driver and I found them in my house...my driver, and still my driver Joe Rush said, "What are you doing in this man's house? He is a blind veteran?" One said, "I know he is a veteran, he has a uniform in his closet." Please tell me what he was doing in my closet?
With the U.S. Census process beginning, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) advises people to be cooperative, but cautious, so as not to become a victim of fraud or identity theft. The first phase of the 2010 U.S. Census is under way as workers have begun verifying the addresses of households across the county. Eventually, more than 140,000 U.S. Census workers will count every person in the United States and will gather information about every person living at each address including name, age, gender, race, and other relevant data.
The big question is - how do you tell the difference between a U.S. Census worker and a con artist? BBB offers the following advice:
If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have a badge, a handheld device, a Census Bureau canvas bag, and a confidentiality notice. Ask to see their identification and their badge before answering their questions. However, you should never invite anyone you don't know into your home.
Census workers are currently only knocking on doors to verify address information. Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census.
REMEMBER, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ASK, YOU REALLY ONLY NEED TO TELL THEM HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE AT YOUR ADDRESS.
While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range, YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT YOUR FINANCIAL SITUATION. The Census Bureau will not ask for Social Security, bank account or credit card numbers, nor will employees solicit donations. Anyone asking for that information is NOT with the Census Bureau.
AND REMEMBER, THE CENSUS BUREAU HAS DECIDED NOT TO WORK WITH ACORN ON GATHERING THIS INFORMATION. No Acorn worker should approach you saying he/she is with the Census Bureau.
Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, mail, or in person at home. However, the Census Bureau will NOT contact you by Email, so be on the lookout for Email scams impersonating the Census.
Never click on a link or open any attachments in an Email that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau.
For more advice on avoiding identity theft and fraud, visit www.bbb.org
PLEASE SHARE THIS INFO WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Addition by Dr. Morris
As is always the case, what are blind people supposed to do??? I have an intercom on my house and I do not allow anyone in my house unless I recognize their voice. I have been robbed and abused too many times. This is the thanks I get for having given my eyes for YOUR country. Never once, during hurricanes or any other catastrophe has a government agency ever shown me any consideration at all...NOT ONCE. This country's largest minority is the disabled...about 32%. At least those in a wheel chair could see the identification card of the investigator but, generally speaking, those of us who live alone are at the mercy of anyone who can get inside your house...but who cares, all the government wants is just out cooperation as we pay insidious taxes like the normal and healthy. Two police officers broke into my back door and searched my house...evidently trying to find something with which to embarrass me...since I had been alerting the public via radio to certain tactics. My driver and I found them in my house...my driver, and still my driver Joe Rush said, "What are you doing in this man's house? He is a blind veteran?" One said, "I know he is a veteran, he has a uniform in his closet." Please tell me what he was doing in my closet?
German View of Islam
A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'
We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.
The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts-- the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Addition by Dr. Morris,
The above is true beyond words to express. I have been in each of the countries mentioned and I can tell you without fear of contradiction that there is hatred there beyond compare. Leaving Kigali in Rwanda, my car was accosted by wild fanatics. At the time I had a shadow of vision in one eye, and I have never seen such anger in the eyes of another individual. We were just outside the airport and we literally fought our way into the airport. I was swinging my white cane and suitcases. Everything in the airport was behind bars. The police were afraid to come out and help. For our safety, (there were two others including my guide) we were locked inside the managers office until we could get on a plane. From Mexico, with boxes marked "Garden Implements" machetes had been used by these people to slaughter thousands. I asked the same question in each country where terrorism had taken over, China, Russia, Algeria, etc. Each time I was given the same answer. "We either submitted or died". In all these places, as well as in America, big brother is no longer outside your door but knows everything that goes on in your house.
In bold below is an article from rawstory.
"Students in a Philadelphia-area school district have launched a lawsuit accusing their schools of spying on them at home through webcams installed in laptop computers the district gave them.
The parents of Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton High School in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, have launched a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 1,800 high school students who were issued laptops by the Lower Merion School District.
Robbins' lawsuit alleges that students and parents weren't told that school administrators had the ability to activate the laptop webcams remotely, even when the student is at home or away from the computer.
The lawsuit seeks "damages for invasion of privacy, theft of private information, and unlawful interception and access to electronic information," reports Courthouse News.
Robbins' family only found out that school officials were allegedly spying on students when an assistant principal confronted Robbins about "improper behaviour in his home,” and showed him a picture taken from Robbins' school-issued laptop, reports the Toronto Star.
"The school district has the ability to and has captured images of [students] without their permission or authorization, all of which is embarrassing and humiliating," the lawsuit states.
“As the laptops were routinely used at home, it is believed ... that many of the images captured may consist of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including various stages of undress."
"If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come," writes technology blogger Cory Doctorow. "I often have the laptop in the room while I'm getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students' clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying."
Doctorow adds: "Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.
"But when schools take that personal information ... they send a much more powerful message: your privacy is worthless and you shouldn't try to protect it."
According to the Toronto Star, the Lower Merion School District is among the wealthiest in Pennsylvania, and one of only two districts in the state to earn "Moody’s highest bond rating," perhaps explaining how it can afford a laptop for every student.
The district's teachers "are among the highest paid in Pennsylvania and its students’ college-entrance scores are among the highest in the country," the Star reports."
http://rawstory.com/2010/02/school-laptops-spy-hom/
You have no privacy left. Scanning your naked body at the airport is just the beginning. Wake up!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Predictions
#488
I have sold my ancient slide rule. A slide rule was a show and sign of confidence and scientific accuracy when I was a student. It always amazed me that so many young students in today's world, had never seen a slide rule and knew nothing about it's mathematical ability. In 1933, and then completed in 1937, one of the marvels of the world, the Golden Gate Bridge was built. This 1.7 mile bridge spanning the San Francisco Bay was built at a cost of 23 million dollars. The concrete foundations on either side are sunk into bedrock and through mathematical calculations, on the slide rule, long before the computer, a side to side sway of over 20 feet was built into the construction of the bridge. The engineers of that time, could “predict” the quality of such construction.
Attached to this commentary is the copy of a letter from the NC Department of Justice concerning some complaints I have wanted to get out of my “crawl” for many years concerning local injustices. As I could have predicted when dictating the letter, I could easily have dictated the predicted reply. Most government agencies, are just going through the motions. As you can see from the letter from John J. Aldridge the buck does not stop there as far as justice in this state. But rather, he just passes the buck to others, if others wanted to solve problems of local injustice, I would have no reason to write him. He states that it is up to the local DA and local Sheriff to handle problems of injustice. In this area, this state, you can not even get a response from a District Attorney, Attorney General or a local Sheriff. These people are more corrupt than the criminals. The Sheriff in an adjoining county just got out of jail. I have known several in this county who should have gone to jail. Nothing short of murder will get the attention of the Chief of Police. Thievery, identity theft etc. are of little concern to the Police, the Sheriff, or the District Attorney.
Even elected politicians can be accurately predicted in their responses. Each congressmen and senator has a staff of 50 assistants. One time, I had my assistant circle the date on each response from those who are supposed to represent me (representative from this district) because I had gotten the very same response to any matter for which they had been written. They just have a generic reply to everything. I predict, that if you look at your responses from congress people and senators, legislators and even local officials, you will find the same. Even contributing to a political party has nothing to do with anything, particularly in North Carolina, totally controlled by Democrats for over 100 years. One Democrat worker told me ,”you can vote for these Republicans if you want to but it is the Democrat bureaucrats who are in charge.”
David Rockefeller, in his book, said, “some men are born to rule but all the rest are born to be ruled.” I have reached a place in wring letters to both elected and bureaucrat officials that I can accurately predict the response every time. This is the reason so many Americans have stopped protesting about anything. They have learned that it is a waste of time, that all you will get in reply is a generic message typed on an expensive computer by an over payed government employee on expensive stationary...all of which you pay for with your tax dollar.
Vince Lombardi said, “the only time success comes before work is in any dictionary”. We find that elected officials (DA, Sheriff, City Council, County Commissioners) are just interested in getting re-elected. It is an insult to this totally blind veteran who gets nothing from the state except a free license plate (a free license tag is given to every decorated veteran who is disabled) but expected to work and pay as much tax as anyone else even though most disabled citizens use few of the facilities which taxes support (jails, parks, University and other halls, most cases schools). It is an insult for the Chief Justice lawyer in the state (Mr. Roy Cooper) to tell this veteran who faces every day of existence in absolute blackness that it is up to a disinterested Sheriff, an unconcerned police department (using mostly bullies and thugs to keep the populous in control) to give some measure of relief or resolution to the thievery and other forms of corruption in this county of this state. Surely I would not have confronted you with the problem if any resolution had been found here. Can one imagine, that in my own house, Deputy Owens of the Sheriff's department and Police Officer Mays of the WPD, as well as others have told me in the cutting of telephone wires, break ins of my buildings and car, that only if I were “killed” would some investigation start. One person put five automobiles for sale on my online account, another stole my password and ordered merchandise on my online account. I reported all of this along with the evidence and nothing happened. This happens over and over and as was the case with ex Sheriff Causey, just “word” that nothing would be done...probably in all these cases because I have been...all my life...an outspoken Republican. You see Mr. Aldridge, as a lawyer from the most prestigious law firm in this town told me, “you must have political clout in this town if you get any justice.” Another lawyer from an equally prestigious law firm told me, “if a blind, totally disabled, veteran cannot get justice, what will happen to the rest of us?” I predict that because of your unconcern with justice in this county the state will soon be without justice.
It takes work but according to NCAG, “there is no agency to investigate complaints of a citizen”.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wimble Square
#487
In better days, Edgar Bergen said to Charlie McCarthy, Charlie, “Do you know anything about the radio?” Charlie McCarthy said, “I know how to turn the radio on, and I can tell you 95% of what I will hear when the radio is on”.
In my lifetime, I have seen political correctness take over the state controlled news media, print, television, and certainly the radio. From the talking points put out by government agencies and the administration, we know ahead of time what will be discussed all the time. Face it, authoritarian, totalitarian, control has taken over this once free country. Think of the men and women who have given their time, talent and wealth for our freedom. Think of the many who lie buried in military cemeteries who thought they were fighting for your freedom. Know that the most precious freedom, was the free will given to us by the Creator.
If you do anything anymore, you must have a privilege license, a diploma, a permit, a certificate of some sort. Other than a 6 foot extension cord in your house, you must have an electrical inspection to move any appliance around, or change lighting. Insurance is required for everything. When I was young, most drivers did not have automobile insurance and certainly there were none who had hospitalization insurance. Now, you are afraid to have anyone work in your yard without being covered by liability insurance.
In Communist Cuba, the committee for the defense of the revolution (CDR) specifies every street and the people who are to walk guard on that street...watching every human activity that takes place on that street. The entire country of Cuba is governed in this manner. I found it much the same way in my trips to Communist China, Russia, and other socialist countries in the world.
Slowly but surely, the same type collectivist, totalitarian control has taken over this once great Democratic republic called the United States of America. In my wildest imagination, I could not think of homeowners associations...where you pay your hard earned money to buy a house on a street and suddenly you are under the control of fellow homeowners on the street. When I bought my house here in “Wimble Square”, I was the first owner and still am the oldest owner in this housing development. After a year or two, I was told by others who had purchased the new homes on the street that they were going to form a “homeowners association”. My next door neighbor, Curtis, said, “it will amount to nothing except just keeping bazaar actions from people who may move here”. Mostly as a matter of curiosity, I went to the first meeting (have never been to one since) just to see what these folks had in mind. Several lawyers lived on the street and one, an assistant DA, had drawn up some bi-laws. Then, some of the aging “blue-haired” widows began proclaiming how things would be controlled...wrought iron gates at the exits of the parking lots...controls of exterior paint, now, mind you, each person owns their own lot and home and pays their individual taxes like their other expenses. I thought to myself, “did I wake up in Russian this morning?” I was probably the only person in the group who had ever been out of the country. These ignorant people knew nothing about Communism or state control (I am a totally blind, 100% disabled medical officer veteran and have had my passport stamped in 157 countries). I got right up, excused myself, and left the meeting. I am the only one still here of that first group...they have died, moved etc. But, from then until now, they have tried to monopolize and aggravate this old blind homeowner.
My first experience with the sadistic personalities of these people came, when, on July 4th, this veteran put an American flag in his front yard. Immediately, they descended like flies on jelly telling me I could not fly an American flag in my front yard. Since I am the only conservative in the association they do not allow me to put a political sign for a Republican in my yard. They even had the audacity to tell me that the shrubbery in the front of my house was outdated and I should put in new shrubbery.
I maintained for many years, not only this house in Wimble Square, but a much more expensive house in New York City and still one on the ocean at Wrightsville Beach. A new couple, Yankee retirees, moved next door while I was in New York. On my return, in the front yard, they introduced themselves and learning I had just returned from New York City said, “I'm so glad we have a Northern neighbor, we are so tired of these stupid Southerners”...a Southerner all my life.
The Veterans Administration came down from Winston Salem and told me they would like to enclose my back porch as an exercise room so I would not have to go to the gym in bad weather or when I did not have a driver. When the room was almost finished, they, having witnessed the construction, decided that even though I had all the permits etc. I did not have their permission and so the room must be torn down. My lawyer said, “finish the room, let's see if they will face me at the courthouse”.
Mr Luther Rogers, who owned some yet un-built lots on another street built some additional houses. I called him and said, “you know Luther, you probably will advertise that there are common areas in this development. These folks have fenced off the common area and put a lock on the gate. I cannot even walk into the common area in which I pay taxes and homeowners dues myself.” He said, “in a few minutes you will hear me taking that fence down. I know you can't see what I am doing but you will hear it and, any time you have trouble with these frustrated people, I will be right behind you at the courthouse.”
Such is the policies and attitudes of Americans who have decided they prefer Communist control...ignorant to even understanding what they are doing...ever willing to exercise their control over their fellow citizens, even so called neighbors. I understand there are 1,000 of these homeowners associations even in the small town where I live, dictating what others can do as they hypocritically claim to be Americans.
One young man who worked for me, and his wife, rented a town house in a similar situation. Each month, a little group from the homeowners association would walk around this neighborhood with their clipboard scrutinizing each owners privately owned and maintained home. My employee rented his house, both he and his wife worked. Neither smoked but the all powerful association advised them that their venetian blinds had became discolored from their smoking and must be replaced. This couple, disgusted with this “American” experience, moved...moved to a house where they did not have dictators living around them.
I could give many more illustrations I have known not only involving me but others. Dr. Franklin, President Lincoln, even Socrates were right when they told us that our worst enemy is usually “inside the gate”. Inside the gates of gated communities, inside the gates of homeowner associations throughout the city and country we find the world's best known tyrants and dictators. When one of these usually “migrant Yankee Americans” buys a house here and he immediately takes over the homeowners association, he thinks he purchased every house on the street. Next to me, a former police chief in a New York state city would even go out and question one of my employees, standing on the street, waiting for a ride. The time has come for Americans to awaken to the fact that liberty will soon be a thing of the past...not easily regained.
In better days, Edgar Bergen said to Charlie McCarthy, Charlie, “Do you know anything about the radio?” Charlie McCarthy said, “I know how to turn the radio on, and I can tell you 95% of what I will hear when the radio is on”.
In my lifetime, I have seen political correctness take over the state controlled news media, print, television, and certainly the radio. From the talking points put out by government agencies and the administration, we know ahead of time what will be discussed all the time. Face it, authoritarian, totalitarian, control has taken over this once free country. Think of the men and women who have given their time, talent and wealth for our freedom. Think of the many who lie buried in military cemeteries who thought they were fighting for your freedom. Know that the most precious freedom, was the free will given to us by the Creator.
If you do anything anymore, you must have a privilege license, a diploma, a permit, a certificate of some sort. Other than a 6 foot extension cord in your house, you must have an electrical inspection to move any appliance around, or change lighting. Insurance is required for everything. When I was young, most drivers did not have automobile insurance and certainly there were none who had hospitalization insurance. Now, you are afraid to have anyone work in your yard without being covered by liability insurance.
In Communist Cuba, the committee for the defense of the revolution (CDR) specifies every street and the people who are to walk guard on that street...watching every human activity that takes place on that street. The entire country of Cuba is governed in this manner. I found it much the same way in my trips to Communist China, Russia, and other socialist countries in the world.
Slowly but surely, the same type collectivist, totalitarian control has taken over this once great Democratic republic called the United States of America. In my wildest imagination, I could not think of homeowners associations...where you pay your hard earned money to buy a house on a street and suddenly you are under the control of fellow homeowners on the street. When I bought my house here in “Wimble Square”, I was the first owner and still am the oldest owner in this housing development. After a year or two, I was told by others who had purchased the new homes on the street that they were going to form a “homeowners association”. My next door neighbor, Curtis, said, “it will amount to nothing except just keeping bazaar actions from people who may move here”. Mostly as a matter of curiosity, I went to the first meeting (have never been to one since) just to see what these folks had in mind. Several lawyers lived on the street and one, an assistant DA, had drawn up some bi-laws. Then, some of the aging “blue-haired” widows began proclaiming how things would be controlled...wrought iron gates at the exits of the parking lots...controls of exterior paint, now, mind you, each person owns their own lot and home and pays their individual taxes like their other expenses. I thought to myself, “did I wake up in Russian this morning?” I was probably the only person in the group who had ever been out of the country. These ignorant people knew nothing about Communism or state control (I am a totally blind, 100% disabled medical officer veteran and have had my passport stamped in 157 countries). I got right up, excused myself, and left the meeting. I am the only one still here of that first group...they have died, moved etc. But, from then until now, they have tried to monopolize and aggravate this old blind homeowner.
My first experience with the sadistic personalities of these people came, when, on July 4th, this veteran put an American flag in his front yard. Immediately, they descended like flies on jelly telling me I could not fly an American flag in my front yard. Since I am the only conservative in the association they do not allow me to put a political sign for a Republican in my yard. They even had the audacity to tell me that the shrubbery in the front of my house was outdated and I should put in new shrubbery.
I maintained for many years, not only this house in Wimble Square, but a much more expensive house in New York City and still one on the ocean at Wrightsville Beach. A new couple, Yankee retirees, moved next door while I was in New York. On my return, in the front yard, they introduced themselves and learning I had just returned from New York City said, “I'm so glad we have a Northern neighbor, we are so tired of these stupid Southerners”...a Southerner all my life.
The Veterans Administration came down from Winston Salem and told me they would like to enclose my back porch as an exercise room so I would not have to go to the gym in bad weather or when I did not have a driver. When the room was almost finished, they, having witnessed the construction, decided that even though I had all the permits etc. I did not have their permission and so the room must be torn down. My lawyer said, “finish the room, let's see if they will face me at the courthouse”.
Mr Luther Rogers, who owned some yet un-built lots on another street built some additional houses. I called him and said, “you know Luther, you probably will advertise that there are common areas in this development. These folks have fenced off the common area and put a lock on the gate. I cannot even walk into the common area in which I pay taxes and homeowners dues myself.” He said, “in a few minutes you will hear me taking that fence down. I know you can't see what I am doing but you will hear it and, any time you have trouble with these frustrated people, I will be right behind you at the courthouse.”
Such is the policies and attitudes of Americans who have decided they prefer Communist control...ignorant to even understanding what they are doing...ever willing to exercise their control over their fellow citizens, even so called neighbors. I understand there are 1,000 of these homeowners associations even in the small town where I live, dictating what others can do as they hypocritically claim to be Americans.
One young man who worked for me, and his wife, rented a town house in a similar situation. Each month, a little group from the homeowners association would walk around this neighborhood with their clipboard scrutinizing each owners privately owned and maintained home. My employee rented his house, both he and his wife worked. Neither smoked but the all powerful association advised them that their venetian blinds had became discolored from their smoking and must be replaced. This couple, disgusted with this “American” experience, moved...moved to a house where they did not have dictators living around them.
I could give many more illustrations I have known not only involving me but others. Dr. Franklin, President Lincoln, even Socrates were right when they told us that our worst enemy is usually “inside the gate”. Inside the gates of gated communities, inside the gates of homeowner associations throughout the city and country we find the world's best known tyrants and dictators. When one of these usually “migrant Yankee Americans” buys a house here and he immediately takes over the homeowners association, he thinks he purchased every house on the street. Next to me, a former police chief in a New York state city would even go out and question one of my employees, standing on the street, waiting for a ride. The time has come for Americans to awaken to the fact that liberty will soon be a thing of the past...not easily regained.
No!
#47
Perhaps the most important word in any language is the word No. Nancy Reagan, first Lady and wife of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the US, was criticized by the liberal media for her famous “just say no” in Americas “so called” war on drugs. Our famous wars on poverty, pornography, drugs, and every other vice that has brought down the institutions of this country have been victimized by the liberal media and comedians. Who’s liberal mentality like that of Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, declares that there is no right and wrong and like an animal in the alley “anything goes” and as Sinatra sang all the way to hell, “(I did it) my way”.
Think of how much better off the entire world would be if our first mother Eve, in the Garden of Eden, beguiled by the very liberal serpent who made her doubt the command of God, had just said no.
Think of the how the mental hospitals and treatment centers for every known addiction of man drugs, alcohol, food, cigarettes, sex, had just said no. Think about the children of the 37% of single women who have children without fathers how different their lives would be with a father in their home. 1 out of every 16 drinkers of alcohol becomes an alcoholic. Think of the mayhem of the alcoholics home, the abused mother, abused children, and the heartbreak of concerned grandparents. This country could save enough money to feed every hungry child with nutrition just on the profits of “Demon Rum”. The addiction to food, particularly food of little nutrition value (65.2% of the citizens of the united states are obese) this is our greatest public health epidemic. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, but a matter that should alarm every parent is the number of children who are over weight (30% of children are obese). Stupid school board members such as those in the county where I live (New Hanover County North Carolina) allow soft drink machines to be installed in the schools where a flavored sweet mixture of sugar and carbonated water just adds to the problem simply because the schools prioritize the coins they get from the machines rather than the health of the students. More stupid school officials led by the so called dieticians further add to the problem by serving food that taste good to the students but is of little nutritional value. When will parents, teachers, and the general public learn that part of the training of a child is the care of the most miraculous creation of almighty God the human body. Made up of tissues containing cells which must have nutrition. And above all a soul which will never die. Thank God, I had a mother used the most important word in the human language no! She said no to food which was not healthy, she said no to activities which were not healthy.
Of the 4,600 young people who left Jerusalem in the Babylonian captivity, only one Jewish male, Daniel, said “No” to his captures who wanted them to eat foods that were against there religions. The bible is the answer book, it has all the answers for every problem which mankind can face. Written by God, until this moment, every promise and every prophecy has been fulfilled. When it instructs us on what to eat and the way we should live tempered lives all of us, even to the President of the United States, only can rely on the information.
This morning, this Muslim president went to a predominantly Christian prayer breakfast in the capital and referred to the Koran. According to King Solomon, it is the “small foxes that spoil the vines”. Our useless lawmakers and liberal media have formed a duet, singing the same tune, “we don’t really care about what happens to this country”.
The largest tree, which looks healthy on the outside, that might still be bearing leaves or berries will fall in a storm if the interior has deteriorated. The foundation laid by 56 honorable forefathers in our constitution has been crumbling for sometime now. Now we find that the very essences of our constitution is being trashed. The best example I can give you of this was related to me by a pastor of a small country church recently. He stopped at a country store to fill his gas tank so he could get to the next city. When he went back to his car he noticed that the store owner had given him $5 too much change. He sat debated for awhile whether he should keep the money or give it back. He went back to the store owner and said that he was given to much change. The store owner said, “No, I was in your service last Sunday night and you talked about honesty”. My pastor friend said when I went back to my car and shook for a few minutes because I had almost sold the good name of my savior for $5.
When will we as a nation say “enough is enough”? It is time for us to use the most important word in any language, No!
Perhaps the most important word in any language is the word No. Nancy Reagan, first Lady and wife of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the US, was criticized by the liberal media for her famous “just say no” in Americas “so called” war on drugs. Our famous wars on poverty, pornography, drugs, and every other vice that has brought down the institutions of this country have been victimized by the liberal media and comedians. Who’s liberal mentality like that of Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, declares that there is no right and wrong and like an animal in the alley “anything goes” and as Sinatra sang all the way to hell, “(I did it) my way”.
Think of how much better off the entire world would be if our first mother Eve, in the Garden of Eden, beguiled by the very liberal serpent who made her doubt the command of God, had just said no.
Think of the how the mental hospitals and treatment centers for every known addiction of man drugs, alcohol, food, cigarettes, sex, had just said no. Think about the children of the 37% of single women who have children without fathers how different their lives would be with a father in their home. 1 out of every 16 drinkers of alcohol becomes an alcoholic. Think of the mayhem of the alcoholics home, the abused mother, abused children, and the heartbreak of concerned grandparents. This country could save enough money to feed every hungry child with nutrition just on the profits of “Demon Rum”. The addiction to food, particularly food of little nutrition value (65.2% of the citizens of the united states are obese) this is our greatest public health epidemic. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, but a matter that should alarm every parent is the number of children who are over weight (30% of children are obese). Stupid school board members such as those in the county where I live (New Hanover County North Carolina) allow soft drink machines to be installed in the schools where a flavored sweet mixture of sugar and carbonated water just adds to the problem simply because the schools prioritize the coins they get from the machines rather than the health of the students. More stupid school officials led by the so called dieticians further add to the problem by serving food that taste good to the students but is of little nutritional value. When will parents, teachers, and the general public learn that part of the training of a child is the care of the most miraculous creation of almighty God the human body. Made up of tissues containing cells which must have nutrition. And above all a soul which will never die. Thank God, I had a mother used the most important word in the human language no! She said no to food which was not healthy, she said no to activities which were not healthy.
Of the 4,600 young people who left Jerusalem in the Babylonian captivity, only one Jewish male, Daniel, said “No” to his captures who wanted them to eat foods that were against there religions. The bible is the answer book, it has all the answers for every problem which mankind can face. Written by God, until this moment, every promise and every prophecy has been fulfilled. When it instructs us on what to eat and the way we should live tempered lives all of us, even to the President of the United States, only can rely on the information.
This morning, this Muslim president went to a predominantly Christian prayer breakfast in the capital and referred to the Koran. According to King Solomon, it is the “small foxes that spoil the vines”. Our useless lawmakers and liberal media have formed a duet, singing the same tune, “we don’t really care about what happens to this country”.
The largest tree, which looks healthy on the outside, that might still be bearing leaves or berries will fall in a storm if the interior has deteriorated. The foundation laid by 56 honorable forefathers in our constitution has been crumbling for sometime now. Now we find that the very essences of our constitution is being trashed. The best example I can give you of this was related to me by a pastor of a small country church recently. He stopped at a country store to fill his gas tank so he could get to the next city. When he went back to his car he noticed that the store owner had given him $5 too much change. He sat debated for awhile whether he should keep the money or give it back. He went back to the store owner and said that he was given to much change. The store owner said, “No, I was in your service last Sunday night and you talked about honesty”. My pastor friend said when I went back to my car and shook for a few minutes because I had almost sold the good name of my savior for $5.
When will we as a nation say “enough is enough”? It is time for us to use the most important word in any language, No!
Nihilism
Nihilism
Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and classical philologist, the first promoter of the “God Is Dead” doctrine which still persists until this day. Bertrand Russell is probably the most recent promoter of this doctrine. The first issue of Time Magazine not to have a picture on the cover, but only the words “God Is Dead” on
April 4, 1966 caused a circus in the fundamentalist and other religious denominations of the world. Russell, when asked why he did not believe in God, said “I have not been presented enough evidence.”
From earliest childhood memories, boys have always played such games as “King Of The Hill”. The most popular comic books are the action figure, male superlative figures such as “Superman”, “Batman,” “Spiderman,” Ironman, etc. Not until the 21st Century did psychologists as well as pastors and parents sense the feminization of males. Sensitivity training for maleness, the unpopularity of manliness even to the extent (probably from “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the integration of females into male units of the military) that basic training and other very male, very rough survival requirements which had kept many males alive in past wars have been softened to suit the politically correct ambitions of the liberal media spectators.
As an Army medical officer with staff rank, I expected the non-commissioned officers to have the knowledge and control of all recruits and trainees. If an enlisted man got out of line, there was always a tough sergeant who would get in his face and tell him about the facts of life in the military. The greatest thing about an all-volunteer military force is that you have forces who want to be there. In other wars where the draft was in effect and there was so many who resented their military obligation and even their country, espirit de corps was always a problem particularly in time of combat. After all, the military is not a democracy. You do not take a vote concerning a military objective.
It was truly amazing how smart my Father became when I went to college. As many of his friends said to me at his visitation and funeral, “He was a man’s man.” There were many ministers who participated at his funeral. Each had remarkable things to say to the huge crowd but I will remember one saying, “He could butcher a cow or a hog, accomplish anything on a farm but he could also sit down at a sewing machine and sew, he delivered all four of his children, he was an excellent cook, made sure his children were college educated and his home and farm were show places.”
After my Mother’s death, I was at the family farm home one day and there were probably 20 pecan pies on cabinet tops around the kitchen. I said. “What is the story with all these pies?” He said, “I could not sleep so I got up and baked pies. Like your Mother, I put them in the freezer and if there is a need in the community I can always take a pie.” This is the heritage he left his sons and like his father and his father’s fathers before him they knew the importance of a man in the house.
In the history of man, worship has always played a tremendous part. Every ancient city had an acropolis (highest point in the city) such as The Acropolis in Athens where the magnificent Parthenon was and is still located. Sculptures depicting their gods were so numerous around The Acropolis in Athens that even the Apostle Paul stated that they had a sculpture to an “unknown god.” One never forgets such magnificence as the frieze or sculptures at the Parthenon (much of this sculpture was hauled off by the British during their occupation and is now found in The British Museum). But perhaps the most perfect example of ancient sacrificial worship is The Pantheon in Rome. The Pantheon Dome is more than 43 meters high and until 1436 was the world’s largest. The Pantheon was built by Hadrian with a large opening in the center of the dome where smoke from animal sacrifices could escape and rain water could come in and wash away the blood.
At the dedication of Solomon’s Temple which was and has never been surpassed as the greatest and most expensive building in the world (estimated $20 billion dollars) there were 22,000 oxen sacrificed and “sheep without number.” Solomon’s Temple, built with cedar wood of Lebanon assembled without sound of hammer or ax or any tool of iron had the magnificence of gold and brass almost beyond comprehension.
It has always been a matter of a man’s need to worship something greater than himself. Nietzsche, Russell and even today’s Hawkins (Steven Hawkins of Oxford ) cannot understand this. “The thought of foolishness is sin: and the scorner is an abomination to men.” (Proverbs 24:9) The worship of God has always been considered foolishness from the earliest history of man until the present.
Voltaire, a French philosopher and cynic said “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh” and “God is always on the side of the big battalions.” It is significant that after his death, his home became a distribution place of Bibles. 
Albert Einstein, an American physicist and greatest mind said, “God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean” and "Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.” :
Eric Berne wrote the book “Games People Play.” The tragedy of the world even in the year 2009 is that even those who do not believe in God play games with God. Polls show that 75% of the population of the United States call themselves “Christians” but, it is hard to differentiate the Christian from the Non-Christian. The greatest number ever 15% state that they do not believe in God.
One of the world’s greatest creatures, Dr. R.G. Lee, famed pastor of the Bellevue Baptist Church, Memphis, Tennessee, who preached to thousands in the huge sanctuary every Sunday baptized an average of 20 converts each week said, before he died, “I wish I knew that 10% of my members would be in heaven.” He knew, as do most pastors, that he is preaching in a cemetery that most of his membership is already dead. The most alive people in the world should be those who trust God, alive while still breathing and alive after clinical death, last breath here, first breath there.
Nietzsche was not only a philosopher but a great pianist and a friend of many great musicians. Nietzsche said, and this says it all about him, “Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?” He never could understand why he could not play as well as some of his friends.
Ted Turner one of America’s wealthiest atheists when his ex-wife Jane Fonda professed conversion to Christianity, had little to say good about Jane or God.
Our only salvation, our only redemption is through Jesus Christ who put on a tent of human flesh as God and dwelled among us so that we could be Christlike. “Light has come into the world, men prefer darkness to light.” (John 3:19 ) The scripture with which we should guide our existence is found in Paul’s Love Letter To The Church at Philippi. “To know him, the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his suffering.”
Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and classical philologist, the first promoter of the “God Is Dead” doctrine which still persists until this day. Bertrand Russell is probably the most recent promoter of this doctrine. The first issue of Time Magazine not to have a picture on the cover, but only the words “God Is Dead” on
April 4, 1966 caused a circus in the fundamentalist and other religious denominations of the world. Russell, when asked why he did not believe in God, said “I have not been presented enough evidence.”
From earliest childhood memories, boys have always played such games as “King Of The Hill”. The most popular comic books are the action figure, male superlative figures such as “Superman”, “Batman,” “Spiderman,” Ironman, etc. Not until the 21st Century did psychologists as well as pastors and parents sense the feminization of males. Sensitivity training for maleness, the unpopularity of manliness even to the extent (probably from “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the integration of females into male units of the military) that basic training and other very male, very rough survival requirements which had kept many males alive in past wars have been softened to suit the politically correct ambitions of the liberal media spectators.
As an Army medical officer with staff rank, I expected the non-commissioned officers to have the knowledge and control of all recruits and trainees. If an enlisted man got out of line, there was always a tough sergeant who would get in his face and tell him about the facts of life in the military. The greatest thing about an all-volunteer military force is that you have forces who want to be there. In other wars where the draft was in effect and there was so many who resented their military obligation and even their country, espirit de corps was always a problem particularly in time of combat. After all, the military is not a democracy. You do not take a vote concerning a military objective.
It was truly amazing how smart my Father became when I went to college. As many of his friends said to me at his visitation and funeral, “He was a man’s man.” There were many ministers who participated at his funeral. Each had remarkable things to say to the huge crowd but I will remember one saying, “He could butcher a cow or a hog, accomplish anything on a farm but he could also sit down at a sewing machine and sew, he delivered all four of his children, he was an excellent cook, made sure his children were college educated and his home and farm were show places.”
After my Mother’s death, I was at the family farm home one day and there were probably 20 pecan pies on cabinet tops around the kitchen. I said. “What is the story with all these pies?” He said, “I could not sleep so I got up and baked pies. Like your Mother, I put them in the freezer and if there is a need in the community I can always take a pie.” This is the heritage he left his sons and like his father and his father’s fathers before him they knew the importance of a man in the house.
In the history of man, worship has always played a tremendous part. Every ancient city had an acropolis (highest point in the city) such as The Acropolis in Athens where the magnificent Parthenon was and is still located. Sculptures depicting their gods were so numerous around The Acropolis in Athens that even the Apostle Paul stated that they had a sculpture to an “unknown god.” One never forgets such magnificence as the frieze or sculptures at the Parthenon (much of this sculpture was hauled off by the British during their occupation and is now found in The British Museum). But perhaps the most perfect example of ancient sacrificial worship is The Pantheon in Rome. The Pantheon Dome is more than 43 meters high and until 1436 was the world’s largest. The Pantheon was built by Hadrian with a large opening in the center of the dome where smoke from animal sacrifices could escape and rain water could come in and wash away the blood.
At the dedication of Solomon’s Temple which was and has never been surpassed as the greatest and most expensive building in the world (estimated $20 billion dollars) there were 22,000 oxen sacrificed and “sheep without number.” Solomon’s Temple, built with cedar wood of Lebanon assembled without sound of hammer or ax or any tool of iron had the magnificence of gold and brass almost beyond comprehension.
It has always been a matter of a man’s need to worship something greater than himself. Nietzsche, Russell and even today’s Hawkins (Steven Hawkins of Oxford ) cannot understand this. “The thought of foolishness is sin: and the scorner is an abomination to men.” (Proverbs 24:9) The worship of God has always been considered foolishness from the earliest history of man until the present.
Voltaire, a French philosopher and cynic said “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh” and “God is always on the side of the big battalions.” It is significant that after his death, his home became a distribution place of Bibles. 
Albert Einstein, an American physicist and greatest mind said, “God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean” and "Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.” :
Eric Berne wrote the book “Games People Play.” The tragedy of the world even in the year 2009 is that even those who do not believe in God play games with God. Polls show that 75% of the population of the United States call themselves “Christians” but, it is hard to differentiate the Christian from the Non-Christian. The greatest number ever 15% state that they do not believe in God.
One of the world’s greatest creatures, Dr. R.G. Lee, famed pastor of the Bellevue Baptist Church, Memphis, Tennessee, who preached to thousands in the huge sanctuary every Sunday baptized an average of 20 converts each week said, before he died, “I wish I knew that 10% of my members would be in heaven.” He knew, as do most pastors, that he is preaching in a cemetery that most of his membership is already dead. The most alive people in the world should be those who trust God, alive while still breathing and alive after clinical death, last breath here, first breath there.
Nietzsche was not only a philosopher but a great pianist and a friend of many great musicians. Nietzsche said, and this says it all about him, “Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?” He never could understand why he could not play as well as some of his friends.
Ted Turner one of America’s wealthiest atheists when his ex-wife Jane Fonda professed conversion to Christianity, had little to say good about Jane or God.
Our only salvation, our only redemption is through Jesus Christ who put on a tent of human flesh as God and dwelled among us so that we could be Christlike. “Light has come into the world, men prefer darkness to light.” (John 3:19 ) The scripture with which we should guide our existence is found in Paul’s Love Letter To The Church at Philippi. “To know him, the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his suffering.”
Mother's Day
This is a poem I learned in the fourth grade. Like poetry I learned from the first grade onward, it has stayed in my mind and now I wish to share it with you.
Somebody’s Mother
The woman was old and ragged and gray
And bent with the chill of the winters day
The streets were wet with the recent snow
And the woman’s feet were aged and slow
She stood at the crossing and waited long
Alone uncared for amid the throng
Of human beings who passed her by
Not one heeded the glance of her anxious eye
So meek, so tender, afraid to stir
Lest the carriage wheels or the horses feet
Would crowd her down in the slippery street
Along the street with laugher and shouts
Glad in the freedom of school letting out
Came the children like a flock of geese
Hailing the snow pile high and deep
Past the old woman so old and gray
Hastened the children on their way
At last came one of the merry troop
The gayest lad in all the group
He paused beside her and whispered low
I’ll help your cross if you wish to go
Her aged hand on his young strong arm
She placed it without hurt or harm
He guided her trembling feet along
Proud that his own were firm and strong
Then back again to his friends he went
His young heart happy and well content
She’s somebody’s mother boys, you know
She’s old and slow
And I hope some fella, will lend a hand
To help my mother you understand
If ever she’s old and gray
And her own dear boy is far away
And somebody’s mother bowed low her head
In her home that night, in her prayer she said
“God be kind to that noble boy”
“Who’s some mother’s son, of pride and joy”
Just as Mary, the mother of Jesus, her sister Mary, and Mary the wife of Cleophas, were at the foot of the cross when our blessed Lord gave up His life. Next to the heart of Jesus, there is no greater love in a heart then the love of a mother. God went to the limits of understanding to show us a mother’s heart, even the lower animals.
In the African bush, you see the mother elephant protecting her young, the mother lion protecting her young, the mother birds, protecting her young and even in your backyard, the mother hen protecting her young. The mother cat carrying her kitten in her mouth, protecting her young. The human animal, God’s chief creation, in recent centuries, is the only mother animal which will abort her unborn or kill her young after birth.
Not so much with girls, but it is a unusual son who does not show affection for his mother. How often we have seen a tough athlete, always speak of his mother. The last words in a military hospital by a young man dying for his country are always words about his mother.
Some years ago, one of the half-way houses in town, sent a young man to me hoping I could find some work for him to do. He was about eighteen years of age, and I was busy clearing some under brush etc, from some acreage I owned, where I needed to install a parking lot for a building which I owned. I had several young men helping me but I put him to work with a bush ax and sling blade. I think it impressed him that an old blind man, owner of much real estate, would still do that type work. He was very much afraid I would cut myself and was constantly advising me to “Be careful.” It is a young man of despicable character who does not show concern for an old veteran regardless of where the younger man comes.
Later, I let him assist at some work at one of my houses, and as always is my practice, I brought them in the house for cold drinks and food. When the others had gone out I asked him to stay behind because I had a curiosity as well as a concern for this young man’s past, present and future. I always ask the same question, “What are you doing here.” He said, that he had left home several years ago and had been living in a nomadic existence and had finally wound up here in this beach community. I said, “Do you have a mother?” He said, “Yes, but she remarried and we could not get along particularly with her new husband.” I said, “Do you have brother’s and sister’s?” He said, “No, I was the only one before my father, who had battered both of us, had left and was killed. It was tough, and she had gone from man to man trying to survive and I was just pulled along.”
I had a telephone in the kitchen and said, “ Call your mother.” He said, “It has been almost 5 years.” I’m an old blind man, few people talk back to me, I was holding the phone I said, “CALL YOUR MOTHER.” And he did call his mother and she answered the phone. They talked for a little while and then I said give the phone to me. I told her who I was, that her son was standing in my kitchen, that he was working for me, that it did not matter to me or to God what had happened in the past. My concern was her knowing that he was in good health, that he still loved her because I could see it in his face and in his eyes and that I knew in the depths of my being, that she loved him and was concerned about him. I said, “I’m giving you my phone number, you call me if you want to talk to me further and I will make sure he stays in contact with you.”
I then gave him a little lecture and told him he could travel the world over, but his mother was the best friend he would ever have. I said, and I do not make it a practice to preach to people I do not know, “next to Jesus Christ who I hope you will get to know, I want you to promise me to stay in contact with your mother. What is past is past, Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift from God.” After paying him for his work, I gave him some clothes out of my closet and told him to stay in contact with me.
I have never heard from him again, I have never heard from his mother again, but like ships passing in the night, or the many people you pass on the streets, you just ask God of redemption and reconciliation, to take charge. The only thing that He asks of us, is to trust Him, He will do the rest.
There are many things I remember about my own wonderful mother. I remember her aprons, how many things she could carry in her apron. She could stop by the vegetable garden, pick enough beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc, for a meal that she could carry in her apron. She could take a “setting hen” off her nest put all her babies that had just hatched in her apron and install them in a coup. She was always putting on a clean apron and always had a clean apron for a member of the family helping her prepare a meal.
When one of us came home from college, she had an inexplicable memory of our favorite food. She had a magical thermometer in her stethoscopic hands where in she could diagnose most sickness. In that large house with heat only in sitting room, she could ease into our bedrooms, check the temperature of our feet, and determine if we needed more cover. She had that remarkable ability to walk into a neighbors sick room and make them feel better. From the time I was a small child, I could tell that her presence in the church caused everyone to smile. She was the oldest of seven sisters and they always spoke of her with absolute devotion, so did her cousins, so did her friends. I never knew her to challenge my father about any of his decisions, her words to us always, “Your daddy will decide.”
Boys who are reared by an exceptional mother have more trouble living with a non-exceptional wife. One of my friends, told me, that he asked his wife, “When will you be able to make biscuits like my mother.” She said, ”As soon as you can make dough like my father.”
When we are young, and we see the manikin type women in publications, and even our own school teachers with carefully groomed hair, make-up, well chosen clothes, we get the idea, particularly on the farm, that our mother is a very plain, unsophisticated, un-kept “field-hand servant” for the farm home. It is surprising how well educated our parents become, when we go to college. We learn that their hard work, daily routines, do not lend to a prissy, social lifestyle. But the life of drudgery becomes one of inspiration as we look back on the aspiration they endured for us. My mother said her children were like a led pencil God had given her and He would read what she had written. She felt that she and my father’s greatest accountability in their discipleship, on this earth, was the children they had trained for His glory.
All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.
Abraham Lincoln
Money
Sitting next to me on a plane in the airport in Miami, a man who told me he worked for the former GM president Charles Wilson as a manager of his yacht. Knowing that I had a beach house in Wrightsville Beach, NC, he told me that the yacht traveling from Miami to NY was always put in at Wrightsville Beach, because the Wilson’s had a home at Ashville in the mountains and a car would come down and pick them up from the yacht. So, one afternoon he called, came by my house for a short visit, before the yacht was to proceed up the coast. I had heard about the lifestyle of the “rich and famous”, the former president of GM and his wife, not only had the yacht but a house in Miami, a house in Asheville, and a house in upstate NY. Very senile, they just travel from place to place, all houses fully staffed, he said, “they don’t need much attention, just something mostly pretty to eat”, “when her cat gets under the bed and will not come out she cries and we have problems”. This shows again not only the lifestyle of rich people but the emptiness at the end of the road when relationships have not been made. This is the importance of having something towards the end other then money.
After my mothers death, I would call my father that I was coming up to the farm to visit and take him out to eat. My driver , an older black man, would always say, “He will be sitting on the front porch waiting for you”. Before my mothers death, my sister, her only daughter, knowing she was coming home for the weekend, said when she came around the curb of the road, she could always see her standing behind the glass door in the kitchen, watching and waiting.
In my collection of wonderful paintings and prints I own the one, “The waiting Welcome”, which shows a mother and daughter looking intently out at the sea waiting for the sight of a returning ship. Along the river here in this historic port city, the old historic homes have balcony’s at the top where women over the years, have watched for the return of sailing and steam ships. Such is the importance of establishing relationships, more important, then the accumulation of money.
Leona Helmsley, wife of Harry Helmsley, real estate and hotel tycoon, was a billionaire real estate and hotel owner. Several times married before capturing the Helmsley empire, when died in recent years, left 12 million dollars to her dog “Trouble”. She did not leave anything at all to two of her grandchildren but left 10 million each to two grandchildren with the stipulation that they must visit their grandfathers grave once a year.
I owned a co-op apartment in Manhattan for many years, which I used when their. At one reception, I met one of the Vice Presidents of her company and he said she was “a demon from hell”, obsessive compulsive, she could spot a flower in a cup flower arrangement across the room which did not fit exactly into her idea of a bouquet.
Many of these “money” people who have evidently had few relationships with family or friends, have neglected the most important relationship, their relationship with God. You cannot negotiate with God with money. “The cattle on a thousand hills are his”. (Psalms 50:10) The highest form of worship is our giving to God. We are responsible to Him, He owns everything we have. In the Old Testament, under law, requires 10% (tithe), but, under grace, we are responsible for 100%. YOU CANNOT OUT GIVE GOD.
This countries wealthiest president was its first president George Washington. When you have seen the expanse of lawn around Mount Vernon and studied his land “holdings” you realize that the millionaires in congress today, millionaires that have sought the presidency, the 800 or so billionaires in our nation today, cannot be compared to the wealth and patriotism of the father of this great nation.
Every time I take a shower, I thank God for running water, inside plumbing, because I realize how many of my ancestors who fought for and helped build this great nation, never had a decent bath. Most of today’s young people have never seen a “well bucket” or ”hand pump”, they have never seen a “wash board” or “wash pot”.
Even the poorest citizens in America live better than even the wealthiest citizens in third world countries a few decades ago. The poorest people in this country live better then 90% of the worlds population. If you have a house to live in, a change of clothing, food in the refrigerator or pantry, you live better then 90% of the worlds population. If you have a car, some money in the bank, you live better then 92% of the worlds population. I have known people who are poor and have a greater lust for money then people who are already rich.
This is the only country in the world in which people from other countries ( Mexico, Cuba, Etc) will risk life and limb (trying to float in an old car built into a boat or through a dangerous tunnel under the ground), to have a chance for success and wealth, they think that this country affords and does, in most cases, afford. Even the new Mexican arrivals in this country, will work all day in a low paying job or two, and then cook tortillas at night to sell to their fellow workers for lunch. This is called, “getting ahead the hard way, working for it”.
My father, would work on a tractor until midnight on Friday night on a large farm, get up early and milk cows, feed hogs, etc and be at a barber shop in town when it opened at 8 o’clock to stand on his feet and cut hair all day on Saturday. He could find more work for himself and me to do on a rainy day then most men could on a sunny day. But this is the reason, he never had to take anything from the government. He died a wealthy man. His children were all college educated, at his, not the governments, expense.
Those of you with eyesight have wealth which you cannot imagine, to see the beauty and color of a flower, the foliage of trees, the scenery landscape of rivers and mountains. I am very thankful that I did see these things before blindness (I am a totally blind 100% disabled service connected veteran). You should know, there are things money cannot buy. The Queen of England is worth a reported 3 trillion dollars. They are 86,400 seconds in a day. The richest person in the world and the poorest person in the world have the same number of seconds. At the end of your last day, no matter how much money you have you cannot buy one more second, not even the Queen of England.
I saw a good example of the comparison of money, as a young college student, working in a large cemetery. On a Sunday afternoon, their were burials of two babies, one baby belonged to the owner of a large automobile dealership in West Memphis, Arkansas, the babies gold casket was brought to the cemeteries mausoleum in an expensive hearse. On the other side of the cemetery where graves were cheap, a small cheap casket was brought to the cemetery in a Pick up truck. The grief’s of these two mothers could not be estimated both had lost a small baby and were grief stricken. Money made a change in their living conditions, but their mental anguish was the same.
It must be depressing to think of reporting our stewardship to almighty God and we hear the admonition, you were so blessed with so much money, yet, 34,000 children died everyday from disease and starvation. We will leave this world, as we came, with empty hands. Whether using these hands for the giving of money or using these hands in the voting booth, our compassion for the greatest of God’s creation will be uppermost in His mind and should be in our mind. To think that 63 million babies have been slaughtered in the abortion mills in this country since 1973 (1400 black babies everyday), and yet over 50% of the population (54% of Catholics voting pro-choice) support this 20th century holocaust. As the doctor said to Lord Macbeth, in Shakespeare’s play, “God have mercy on all of us”.
After my mothers death, I would call my father that I was coming up to the farm to visit and take him out to eat. My driver , an older black man, would always say, “He will be sitting on the front porch waiting for you”. Before my mothers death, my sister, her only daughter, knowing she was coming home for the weekend, said when she came around the curb of the road, she could always see her standing behind the glass door in the kitchen, watching and waiting.
In my collection of wonderful paintings and prints I own the one, “The waiting Welcome”, which shows a mother and daughter looking intently out at the sea waiting for the sight of a returning ship. Along the river here in this historic port city, the old historic homes have balcony’s at the top where women over the years, have watched for the return of sailing and steam ships. Such is the importance of establishing relationships, more important, then the accumulation of money.
Leona Helmsley, wife of Harry Helmsley, real estate and hotel tycoon, was a billionaire real estate and hotel owner. Several times married before capturing the Helmsley empire, when died in recent years, left 12 million dollars to her dog “Trouble”. She did not leave anything at all to two of her grandchildren but left 10 million each to two grandchildren with the stipulation that they must visit their grandfathers grave once a year.
I owned a co-op apartment in Manhattan for many years, which I used when their. At one reception, I met one of the Vice Presidents of her company and he said she was “a demon from hell”, obsessive compulsive, she could spot a flower in a cup flower arrangement across the room which did not fit exactly into her idea of a bouquet.
Many of these “money” people who have evidently had few relationships with family or friends, have neglected the most important relationship, their relationship with God. You cannot negotiate with God with money. “The cattle on a thousand hills are his”. (Psalms 50:10) The highest form of worship is our giving to God. We are responsible to Him, He owns everything we have. In the Old Testament, under law, requires 10% (tithe), but, under grace, we are responsible for 100%. YOU CANNOT OUT GIVE GOD.
This countries wealthiest president was its first president George Washington. When you have seen the expanse of lawn around Mount Vernon and studied his land “holdings” you realize that the millionaires in congress today, millionaires that have sought the presidency, the 800 or so billionaires in our nation today, cannot be compared to the wealth and patriotism of the father of this great nation.
Every time I take a shower, I thank God for running water, inside plumbing, because I realize how many of my ancestors who fought for and helped build this great nation, never had a decent bath. Most of today’s young people have never seen a “well bucket” or ”hand pump”, they have never seen a “wash board” or “wash pot”.
Even the poorest citizens in America live better than even the wealthiest citizens in third world countries a few decades ago. The poorest people in this country live better then 90% of the worlds population. If you have a house to live in, a change of clothing, food in the refrigerator or pantry, you live better then 90% of the worlds population. If you have a car, some money in the bank, you live better then 92% of the worlds population. I have known people who are poor and have a greater lust for money then people who are already rich.
This is the only country in the world in which people from other countries ( Mexico, Cuba, Etc) will risk life and limb (trying to float in an old car built into a boat or through a dangerous tunnel under the ground), to have a chance for success and wealth, they think that this country affords and does, in most cases, afford. Even the new Mexican arrivals in this country, will work all day in a low paying job or two, and then cook tortillas at night to sell to their fellow workers for lunch. This is called, “getting ahead the hard way, working for it”.
My father, would work on a tractor until midnight on Friday night on a large farm, get up early and milk cows, feed hogs, etc and be at a barber shop in town when it opened at 8 o’clock to stand on his feet and cut hair all day on Saturday. He could find more work for himself and me to do on a rainy day then most men could on a sunny day. But this is the reason, he never had to take anything from the government. He died a wealthy man. His children were all college educated, at his, not the governments, expense.
Those of you with eyesight have wealth which you cannot imagine, to see the beauty and color of a flower, the foliage of trees, the scenery landscape of rivers and mountains. I am very thankful that I did see these things before blindness (I am a totally blind 100% disabled service connected veteran). You should know, there are things money cannot buy. The Queen of England is worth a reported 3 trillion dollars. They are 86,400 seconds in a day. The richest person in the world and the poorest person in the world have the same number of seconds. At the end of your last day, no matter how much money you have you cannot buy one more second, not even the Queen of England.
I saw a good example of the comparison of money, as a young college student, working in a large cemetery. On a Sunday afternoon, their were burials of two babies, one baby belonged to the owner of a large automobile dealership in West Memphis, Arkansas, the babies gold casket was brought to the cemeteries mausoleum in an expensive hearse. On the other side of the cemetery where graves were cheap, a small cheap casket was brought to the cemetery in a Pick up truck. The grief’s of these two mothers could not be estimated both had lost a small baby and were grief stricken. Money made a change in their living conditions, but their mental anguish was the same.
It must be depressing to think of reporting our stewardship to almighty God and we hear the admonition, you were so blessed with so much money, yet, 34,000 children died everyday from disease and starvation. We will leave this world, as we came, with empty hands. Whether using these hands for the giving of money or using these hands in the voting booth, our compassion for the greatest of God’s creation will be uppermost in His mind and should be in our mind. To think that 63 million babies have been slaughtered in the abortion mills in this country since 1973 (1400 black babies everyday), and yet over 50% of the population (54% of Catholics voting pro-choice) support this 20th century holocaust. As the doctor said to Lord Macbeth, in Shakespeare’s play, “God have mercy on all of us”.
Mixed Crowd
Biblical history reports that most of the troubles of Moses as he led the 2.5 million children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt, resulted from a mixed multitude who came along, mostly Egyptians, who had entered marriage with the Israelites. Almost immediately, they “longed for the flesh pots of Egypt”, they wanted cucumbers and melons.
Many protestant denominations and even Baptist, have been decimated by a mixed congregation, attempting to do God’s work with saved people when unsaved have become integrated. Those who are saved by faith in the grace of God know the mission of the church and know that the blessings of God depend on obedience. “To obey is better then sacrifice.” But those who are just “card signers” who have never been redeemed are the first to go along with anything including same-sex marriage. State after state is accepting the heresy of same-sex marriage, the most ridiculous legal fraud ever visited on any country.
Frederich Engels, who with Karl Marx, co-authored “The Communist Manifesto“, founders of worldwide communism, had the following to say about marriage, the marriage between a man and woman: “that marriage degenerates often enough into the crassest prostitution; a married woman only differs from the ordinary courtesan in that she does not let out her body on piece-work as a wage earner (prostitution).”
Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, a follower of Marx and a vowed communist, founder of communism in the United States, made the following statement about marriage “Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.”
Fidel Castro, leader of the communist revolution in this hemisphere, founder of communism in the western hemisphere said, “I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.” This week, a delegation of US congress persons, members of the black caucus, themselves promoters of communism and same-sex marriage, visited Cuba and Fidel Castro. It is easy to understand why our country is in such a desperate situation when we have elected officials in Washington and elsewhere, promoting the communist, anti-American ideology including the perversion of marriage.
Their should be no controversy about same-sex marriage as an accommodation to the perversion of homosexuality, their should be no controversy about abortion an accommodation to the pagan community who want to use this as a birth control method. Their should be no controversy about an anti-life, pro-abortion president of the United States speaking at any catholic school, (especially Notre Dame University) when Catholics, more so then any spiritual group, opposes slaughter of children. Their should be no controversy about the world's largest naval power being aggravated by “so called pirates”, citizens of a country that does not own a ship, tank, or plane. Their should be no controversy about a plane crossing the Canadian border, into the US on a 5 hour flight which could have caused any number of disasters to the worlds super power. Any pirate or pirate boat should be killed instantly, the plane should have been shot down instantly.
The greatest problem in this country is our inability to defend our ideas, our convictions, our reason for being, (raison d’etra). At this time of the year, the Easter season when we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (and, we were, at one time, a Christian nation) we see the beauty of our country and we bask in the opportunity provided by our country for its citizens, we realize, that like Simon of Syrene the first person to carry our Savior’s cross, we each have a cross to bear. We are a Jewish-Christian society, our spiritual beliefs give integrity and fragrance to our existence.
We have traitors to the protection of our republic in Washington and other government places of legislation just as we have traitors to the cause of Christ and the omnipotence of God in spiritual temples.
In the military, I knew men, who although they were wearing their country's uniform, hated their country. At VA hospitals, built and supported by the government to care for those who have given everything except life for their country. Employees who, though paid well for their work and even wear a name tag of the hospital, demonstrated their hatred for their job and for the veterans. Nothing is more disgusting or disappointing then the treatment of disabled citizens by bureaucrats, paid by tax dollars to support disabled citizens who would give anything not to be disabled.
Years ago, I came into contact with a member of the Jim Baker TV program cast. It was a big masquerade party with that particular program and the world knows what happened. This individual, performed with a singing group, the pianist was probably the worst of the lot, but they were all totally entangled with drugs including alcohol and sexual perversions of every type. They were well paid and could well afford their extravagant lifestyle and extravagant addiction. On TV, we see these “TV preachers”, with their expensive haircuts wearing thousands of dollars in expensive clothes and yet proclaiming how much they need contributions.
On the staff at one army hospital, I knew a medical officer who had at one time, was one time a pastor. In his drunken stupors, he would sing hymns and try to entertain his fellow non-believers. I would listen to this heresy and pray for his forgiveness but the thought always came back, our church pews not full every Sunday with people who sing hymns condemning themselves. ( “All the way my Savior leads me”, “All go where you want me to go”) Most of the church members I have known, do not go to church in the rain and, go to prayer meeting if a meal is served.
One of my aunts, until she died, worked most of her working life as a dietician at the O’Berry center near Goldsboro NC. This is an institution which houses hundreds of “throw away” children, macrocephalics, microcephalics, and other disabilities of every type. These children with no juvenile future, are cared for there by the state. Such was a challenge to employees, mostly because the children so wanted to be loved. I was told that many of the parents never returned to see their child. Older couples, in the community, were hired to act as grandparents for these children, to show them some of the attention they desperately needed. Across the highway, Cherry Hospital, an institution for adults with special needs. My father had a friend who worked at that hospital and as a small child, I would be with him when he stopped by to see his friend. When I was a child, it was a segregated, all black institution. I have never forgotten the horror story which I witnessed and which my father should have prevented me from seeing.
At an advanced age, I can tell you without fear of contradiction, getting old is not for sissies. Only through faith can we remain optimistic. The failures of those around us, whether in government or spiritual endeavor, must make each of us more determined to do our best.
“ 1But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
2When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
3For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.
4Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.” (Isaiah 43:1-4)
Mediocrity
#115
Mediocrity
Yogi Berra, born in 1925, was a player and manager with the New York Yankees. Berra, who quit school in the eighth grade had a tendency toward malapropism and fracturing the English language in highly provocative, interesting ways. One of his famous Yogi-ism goes, “if one does not have a goal (destination) any road will take you there”. The decline in aspiration and determination by today’s youth has been blamed on the government school system. One cannot blame a child for being a drunk when he grew up often seeing beer in the refrigerator. The child who is constantly encouraged to succeed will succeed. If a child is reared in a home where the family depends on a government check or government housing subsidy, do not expect the child to excel and have a desire for a future fine home.
Daniel Webster, who died in 1852, was one of the countries greatest legal minds and former Secretary of State. One time, he was criticized because walking down the street a slave tipped his hat to him and Webster took off his hat. When asked why he acknowledged the slave he said, “I cannot afford for him to be a better gentlemen than me”. In the aspirations of life the truly successful are those who take the “servant” attitude towards others. Perhaps this is where we get the word “civil servants“. Bureaucrats in most places have become civil masters.
Those who will escape mediocrity will have basic principals that will always set them apart from the average or mediocre.
One of the greatest men of the Bible was Joseph, son of Jacob, a “type of Christ”, who in every way shows us the attitude of an exceptional human being. Whether in his parents house or in Potiphar’s house, he had the inner strength and fortitude to make him “God’s man”. I believe that when his brothers took him out of the pit and sold him into slavery, the “iron bands” which held him on his way to Egypt enriched his very bloodstream with immunity to extend a zealousness for integrity that saw him through imprisonment, enticement, and the enrichment of a superior intellect that God used to preserve a chosen people.
If he had yielded to Potiphar’s indecent wife, if future destiny for his family and nation had been determined by doubts and deceits starting with his own brothers, his name would have been unknown in history. “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” (Genesis 50:20)
I was reared in a conservative country community, where the men and women with whom I came in contact with were decent people, never exposed to the silly decadence of the “civilized world”. The children in my country school had the values which they brought from their parents from home. It was only in the universities and later in the military that I was exposed to the decadence of lying, cheating, and stealing, and sexual promiscuity of the more affluent. Even in school, and we were studying to be doctors, we were embarrassed to talk about abortion and sexually transmitted diseases. I thought this nurse, who I was told later had been a “concubine” of a commanding officer in Japan, was just joking when she offered her intrigues to me. I was totally naïve about the sexual behavior of many enlisted people in the military, but could not believe what went on with married people at the officers club. I was told early, and I learned the truth, that “rank is made quicker by the sexual activity by the officers mate then by the ability of the officer“.
The hardest lesson for this Christian to learn is that “pagans act like pagans” and, often it is hard to tell the difference between Christians and those who masquerade as Christians. One of the most decent men I ever knew (we were born on the very same day) was an army medical officer (OBGYN) who claimed to be an atheist but he was the most Christian acting, speaking, young person I have ever known. I never heard him curse, not even slang, his demeanor and his attitude about everything, his work, fitness, social interaction, the product of clean living and a clean mind. He and I went to NYC in 1957 and attended the Billy Graham crusade in Madison Square Garden. We went on to John Hopkins seeking a residency at the hospital there. One of his friends told me, “he is the cleanest guy I have ever known”. If only that could be said of many of us who claim what we profess and some possess.
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost(1874-1963)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) said one time “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. The scripture tells us that “broad is the way that leads to destruction” ( Matthew 7:13).
Does anyone seek or appreciate the mediocre? Whether in our profession our spiritual or physical welfare, we should stay away from mediocrity. We only go this way once, life is not a dress rehearsal. Character determines destination and that destination is not determined by mediocrity.
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