With these two ominous mushroom clouds forever hanging in our collective memory, it is easy to forget that is history now and Hiroshima and Nagasaki might not be what we Americans expect them to be.

And conversely, in our hotbed of industrialization and commercialization and progress, it is easy to forget that those places the government has lavished substantial attention on may not be the paradises we envision they ought to be.

First, there is the cloud we all know so well. That evidence of ultimate destruction, the mushroom cloud. But where we see this eternal spectre, the enterprising Japanese, freed from their oppressive military/industrial complex serving the whims of sycophantic minions of the Emperor-god Hirohito, have turned a thousand-year wasteland into this:

Hiroshima Japan

Where is that man-made desert of radioactive fallout we’d expect? Not here apparently.

Compare that thriving scene with this image that is becoming all too common in that cesspool of government largesse, Detroit:

Detroit Michigan

Depressed is a charitable description.

Maybe we should drop a few more A-bombs?

Just kidding. And honestly, the Japanese government tends to be significantly more meddlesome on average and for a longer time than the US government. But when you look at the wasteland and tragedy that once was this shining city of American ability and pride, the automobile capital of the world, that is now an also-ran laughing stock for most and a hell-hole and increasingly decrepit pit for many of those unfortunate enough to live there, there really is little comparison between this place that ought to be surging and that place, which we generally write off in our mind’s eye.

Pudge at Sound Politics

Read the list of bills Rep. Matt Shea has submitted that were dropped by that august assembly.

In the critical race for “the people’s seat” in Massachusetts, the ideological walls are as high as can be. Incumbent Martha Coakley (D), the favorite for the seat recently vacated at the passing of Teddy Kennedy is defending herself against the increasing tide that is support for Scott Brown.

Coakley supports ObamaCare, opposes the war in Afghanistan, and favors higher taxes on the wealthy. Brown is against the health care legislation, backs the president’s surge in Afghanistan, and wants across-the-board tax cuts à la JFK. Coakley is an EMILY’s List prochoice hard-liner; Brown condemns partial-birth abortion and is backed by Massachusetts Citizens for Life. Coakley has no problem with civilian trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Brown thinks it reckless to treat enemy combatants like ordinary defendants.

Other differences abound. Coakley doesn’t like being questioned about her stated and public views when they may reflect poorly on her and she doesn’t like admitting the possibly she may have been incorrect in the past. Even CNN reveals her follies. While Brown homeschools his kids, speaks eloquently regarding the true nature of government, and promises to be a serious thorn in the side of the currently prevailing powers in Washington.

Should Brown win, the Democrats are already threatening to block his appointment to the Senate, until after the “health-care” bill is passed.  We shall see.

Pat Robertson, again

Neil asks for someone to please take away Pat Robertson’s microphone. I agree.

But they won’t take it away because the portions of our culture that despise Christianity are much happier if they don’t have to misrepresent. Even denying morality and absolutes, they’ll take a juicy truth over a conjured or fabricated tale if it achieves the desired result.

So I’d love for that man to just go away, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to happen until God deems his time right.

Neil again

Neil continues his fight against liberal theology and liberal theologians.

That man has more patience than I could ever find in dealing with these people so invested in lies and fabrications, so intransigent in their fallacies.

I am glad Neil is that way, though. Perhaps those he preaches against will someday hit their heads on a doorpost so hard the voices of rationalization and self-justification will shut up, and they’ll see, through the might hand of the one true God, the truth as it is, and not as they wish it to be.

Keep up the good work my friend.

The way things ought to be

WinteryKnight is very much about that, hence his many “MUST-READ’s“.

The good news is, they all are.

He’s also very concerned about the plight of manhood and boyhood in our society. From the feminized path that boys must take through our public school system to the extreme cases of insane feminism beating down men trying to do the right thing by their children and families, WinteryKnight chronicles the sad story of the life of the man today.

Frankly, I didn’t know quite what I was up against.

But I’m glad to have found this new blogging buddy and I encourage you to check him out to.

Bonus for single ladies: he’s single, is a great catch, and has very high standards (which some of us are working to fix).

I can’t stand having pockets over full. Too often pants pockets today are constructed shoddily, almost as an afterthought, and the contents of the pockets bump against my legs and rub and get in the way and abrade.

But what can you tell about a man from his pockets? The Art of Manliness posted a selection from a 1933 Esquire magazine which portrayed the story of a man through the contents of his pockets.

Contents of His Pockets at Ten

1 watch, lacking a main spring.
1 report card, badly frayed and unpresented at home.
1 much damaged cigarette, unsmoked.
1 penknife.
1 rubber band, for use in sling-shot.
Remains of an exploded toy balloon.
2 marbles.
4 caps of milk bottles, won in competition
1 dirty handkerchief.
1 piece of chewing gum.
2 keys which do not fit locks.
7 pieces of string.

Read A Pocket History Of Milton J. Wurtleburtle.

The latest face of terror: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

The recent thwarted terror attack highlights two aspects of this war which I think deserve further emphasis.

First, government-run airport security is a joke at best, a catastrophic failure at best. Umar Farouk was on the all-important watch lists and his father had even sent a warning specifically to us regarding the threat his son posed.

The best the government can do is ban knitting needles, body search old ladies, and incarcerate people with unfortunate names and I believe it is completely reasonable that we criticize such paltry, misguided, and obviously insufficient systems as loudly as possible.

Average people: the real Anti-Terror

Second, private citizens foiled this attack without assistance from government-sanctioned law enforcement and despite their government-enforced lack of protective weaponry.

Government = 0
Citizens = 1

Perhaps the moral is, once again, don’t trust the government when you are capable.

Oh, and my bet for what the government will do as a result of the extensive and obligatory review they’ll carry out of the Transportation Security Administration is that they’ll fire a few lower level people and raise the fees charges for airport security. Cynical? Yes. Most likely true? I’m betting on it.

Christ did not come to bring peace but to bring a sword

“Glory in the highest” the angels sang, “and on earth peace, goodwill to men.”

From this first joyful proclamation of Jesus’ birth to this day, Jesus’ name has been used by advocates for peace of all kinds regardless of those advocates belief in and surrender to Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Pastor Todd preached Sunday on the hard thought that Christ did not come to bring the peace we men expected. In Matthew 10 Jesus proclaims something seemingly directly contrary to the angel’s words:

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Isn’t the Messiah supposed to bring peace? After all, the angels could not be lying, could they? I’m so confused!

Elsewhere Jesus seems to confirm the angels and contradict Himself:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

The Jews Jesus was preaching to in Matthew 10 were expecting a Messiah who would wage one final war and end all conflict with Israel as the masters of the universe. They were expecting the Prince of Peace to beat the Romans into submission and enthrone their own county in the seat of eternal power. Forget Pax Romana, they wanted Pax Iudeah.

The Jews were correct, in once sense: the peace Christ brought would be achieved through final conflict.

In John 14 Jesus is speaking specifically to His disciples, and by extension, to those who believe in Him as their Savior and Lord. He reinforces the distinction between His peace and the peace the rest of the world claims by stating He will not give His peace the same way the world gives.

There are two different kinds and times of peace that Christ is bringing to mankind. The instant and constant kind enjoyed only by those who have fought Christ and lost and surrendered and now live in subjection to His will and in His protection. And the future, hoped-for peace which will only come about when all mankind ceases it’s striving with God, the vice-grip of sin is broken from every heart, and the deceiver and tormentor and death are cast, along with all their minions and followers, into the pit of eternal destruction in God’s wrath.

The peace Christ  brought at his birth was the instant and constant peace available to those who put their faith in Him. In that same birth He began the final process up to the final day with the final trumpet shall sound, ushering in that final, lasting, and universal peace.

Wishing and hoping for universal peace on this earth is a hopeless and pointless task. Sin is the dominant force in the majority of people’s hearts, and sin is selfish. Sinners will not even agree together, and even God had not sent His Son to bring even greater conflict, the sinners themselves would find conflict enough among themselves.

Christ’s presence in this world brings even greater reason for conflict. The coming of Christ brought not the peace we men hoped for but the seed to greater conflict due to the presence of truth and those who would not and will not accept it.

Christ brought truth and truth wars against the lies which hold so many captive. Those who remain captive to the lies of the world also war with vehemence against the truth and those who have surrendered to it. The conflict is mutual and inescapable.

Peace on this earth is reserved only to those who surrender to Him and live in allegiance to His will. Peace in eternity is only given to the same.

This is not an exclusive claim because the means of salvation is freely available to all. There is no person alive not permitted to surrender to Christ, and God makes clear throughout the bible His will that no one should perish. This is the goodwill to men, that God, who worked with man despite his sin, provided the way out of the penalty for that sin.

Iranian nuclear power plant southwest of Tehran

“In the last year, two things have happened,” he told the FADC. “Iran has advanced its military nuclear program, and the international community has lost its legitimacy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commenting on reports that Iran is now capable of building nuclear weapons and delivering them as warheads to Israel.

I’d add one more thing that has happened in the last year, we’ve lost a President with backbone and nerve and a strong sense of leadership and gained one who believes in diplomacy above all.

Diplomacy is good and an excellent first choice, but the entire world is now held ransom by the tin-hat despots and megalomaniacal extreme religious leadership of Iran because we didn’t bring our big stick to the table.

The mad hatter's haven't been to the real tea parties

Representative David Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, wants you to share in the sacrifice of the soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. But not like you may think.

His “Share the Sacrifice Act of 2010″ is a tax.

So what? What’s new and wrong about a new tax?

It’s the rationalization for the tax that is so ugly here.

This tax is to raise money to prevent payment for the war in Afghanistan from interfering with the monetary obligations piling up from the numerous other new and continuing social programs including socialized medicine.

In other words, the tax and spend quibblers on the Hill are admitting they’ve spent more than we’ve got and they’re coming to us again. And in order to justify this new tax upon us, recognizing our growing antipathy towards additional confiscation of our natural and just property through damaging levels of taxation, they claim it’s for the war.

We’re not fooled.

You can’t keep your yes hand zipped or even dream of living within our means, and so your forcing us to cough up more of what we’ve earned rightfully.

The co-sponsors of this bill, H.R. 4130, are the usually laundry list of suspects from the hallowed halls, Reps. John Murtha, Barney Frank, and James McDermott, to name a few. The unprincipled lot are after our pocket books again.

OpenCongress.org is an excellent source of information on all things Congress, and you can keep track of this egregious H.R. 4130 there.

Consistent discipline works for both recalcitrant children and rogue nations.

With children, letting them know their options and the consequences of their choices and allowing them to choose and accept their consequences is the bedrock of discipline.

Growing up, all of us children knew that for standard disobedience, the punishment was three swats from the Red bud rod. For lying, it was “triples” or 9 swats.

Some infractions had stronger or different punishments: when I tried burning the house down by inserting foreign objects into our old furnace, Dad grounded me for 6 months (I think I was out after 3 months on good behavior). For throwing nuts and dirt over my friend’s neighbors fence into their pool, we had to go to their front door and apologize. When I yelled at mom ( a few times), dad “tanned my hide” until he felt I’d learned that wasn’t an approved method of communication.

But the consistency was that we knew when we did something, there were expected and consistent consequences.

Now what if my parents were elected every 4 years, and they could only get 2 terms consecutively?

That wouldn’t work for child-rearing, obviously. But it is the best bet for a Republican form of government.

And yet, many of the weaknesses that make a constantly changing head of state such a bad idea for a family continue into the structure of the Presidency of the United States.

Right now, there is a nuclear-armed North Korea threatening severe retaliation to any attempts to curtail their missile-rattling. They are publicly stating their intention of shooting a missile towards Hawaii. None of their current arsenal will reach that far, but it’s no light thing to shoot a missile in the direction of the United States of America.

It’s my country.

The organization which likes to think it is the supreme chancellor of the entire world has already laid out sanctions against North Korea explicitly stating that country is not allowed to export any weapons or weapons materials.

North Korea has their number: now shipping to Myanmar/Burma is a shipload of weapons origination from North Korea.

So the cheeky brat has toed the line. It’s the recalcitrant child acting up and testing how far he can push against the rules.

The UN is in high dander over this and is threatening… wait for it… more sanctions! Yea, that’ll stop ‘em.

The United States of America is not the mother of the world, nor the father. We’re the big brother. We’re not responsible for controlling the internal workings of other nations, but as the largest and most moral (I did not say perfect, I said “most moral”) we bear a responsibility to the rest of the world that is not shared by any other nation right now.

In the Reagan and Bush days, our President would be standing tall and calling the leadership of North Korea on the carpet for the systematic denial of basic human rights even to their own citizens. Shame would be called upon the leadership of that nation for it’s repression of dissent backward, anti-liberty policies. And for it’s missile-rattling, North Korea would be facing an insurmountable and effectively devastating result to it’s brutish and bullying behavior.

In the Obama era we sit, and wait. And send a single ship to babysit the weapons-carrying vessel as it plies the waters heading towards the despotic dictatorship destroying Burma/Myanmar.

We aren’t allowed to board or hinder the vessel in any way.

We can ask them to stop.

Perhaps these people just feel they are misunderstood by the rest of the world. And if we just ask them how they’re feeling they’ll open up to us.

A word of advice, completely free: Don’t let psychologists run the police department and don’t let them run foreign policy.

“How do you feel” is not a valid question in foreign policy. Particularly when the one you’re asking is holding the trigger on a nuclear device and when his history shows mental instability on the part of the entire government.

You hold up a bigger hammer that he has and you let him know that if he takes one more step, you’ll whack him.

And when he takes that step?

Whack him.

As an expectant father, I’m none too interested in raising my child in a new round of fall0ut shelters and nuclear attack drills.

MADD is not peace. MADD is fear. (Nothing against Mothers Against Drunk Driving).

I don’t live in fear.

I choose to live in peace brought about by the appropriate and effective use of threat and fact of force.

President Obama apparently plans to achieve peace through the shrinking violet method.

Something the American populace needs to understand, and quickly, is that every election is a foreign-policy election.

The less our government does internally to America, the better off we’ll be. The more our government is involved in protecting American interests off-shore, the better off we’ll be.

And because, right now, we’re still the most moral nation in the world. It can be generally said that when America operates in it’s own best interest, the world benefits from it.

Not that we are so full of ourselves that we believe goods things for us are good things for all.

But a strong United States of America means petty tyrants the world over will know they can trust the actions and will of America will be continually against their petty tyranny. And that if they attempt to export either their pettiness or their tyranny, we’ll be there with a big stick, a mop, and a bucket to beat them into submission again and clean up their mess.

A strong United States would be calling steadily and constantly for freedom of the election in Iran, and working actively in support of the open and democratic process in that nation. And the world would safer.

A strong United States would be responding to North Korea’s insane and idoitic ambitions as it would to a petulant and rebellious child. We would state the consequences of their continued stupidity, and if they continued, we would give them the consequences they were promised. And the world would be safer.

It’s not really a difficult or complex idea, from this side. Which is probably why the hyper intelligent President Obama, who, along with his leadership team insist on seeing everything in so many shades of grey it would make a color blind person swear they could differentiate green and blue.

But unless there is a consistent, strong, and swift exercise of our own (and all others on this globe’s) rights to life and liberty ensured through the appropriate show and use of force, there will be consequences…

For us.

The video is 16 mins long but oh so very worthwhile.

Rather than embarking on a long dialogue, as is my norm, I want to instead throw some things out on the table for you to think about.

First . . . do we really readthe Bible, or do we just preview it through our Americanized mindset? In American culture, my actions are treated as my own, and the consequences are solely mine. However, read the Bible. Truly read it. The story of Achan clearly demonstrates that not only is a person responsible for their crime, but their wife, children, and grandchildren are to suffer for the sin and their possessions are to be destroy. Do I condone this? No, with fulfilment of the law, God brought grace. But guess what? God hasn’t changed, we are still responsible for the sins of those we are connected to (accountability) are our sins still effect those we are around (responsibility), to a much larger extent than our American minds want to accept.

Second . . . what makes us so special (American Christians)? We walk around acting like being an American Christian is a benefit to God. Somehow, we have a general mindset (not when we think about it, but when we just normally act) that God is in debt to us since we are American Christians and he owes us providence and goodwill. I got news . . . I am of no more value to God than a Chinese Christian who is of no more value to God than a Chinese heathen. We act like God owes it to us to keep our country “safe” and prosperous, but God owes us no such thing.

Third . . . are we (American Christians) the ones who decided who is a Christian nation and who gets God’s blessings? Somehow, we feel like we have a direct line to God and can dictate to Him who he should bless (us) and how the world should be run (through our prosperity). However, here is a though . . . maybe God is using, and blessing the Chinese. Here is an even harder thought, maybe God is using the Chinese to reshape the world for the next stage of human development. That is a hard pill to take, but guess what . . . we (as Christians) should rejoice in that because it is the next good  step in God’s good plan.

In closing, maybe we should get over ourselves, read what God really says (not what fits our mindset), and take joy in world event (and prepare for joyous persecution) because God has ordained it for his glory.

Dear Mr. Obama