The Power of God

I am in awe of the power of God …
Not in His use of it, but in His restraint of using it. He does not command nor force compliance with His way. He invites. He teaches. He has not created a race of slaves, puppets or robots. He created us as thinking beings, capable of choosing right from wrong, good from evil. He does not smite us dead if we do not follow Him but will give us the rest of our lives to make the right choices. We can do no less than He in the use of what power we may have and turn it to be used for the good of all. It is called selflessness.
(Just something of which I have become aware on the way to where I am today.)
I think it would be wonderful if every person in the world would have been taught this from infancy and believed it. Wouldn’t it be a better world?

Rabble Rouser Report #13

The 2012 election is over but people are still circulating these things. Sour grapes maybe? This time it popped up on Facebook over a picture of Michelle Obama accusing her of having 40 government paid aids compared to any previous first ladies’ 1. It is a total lie but the rabble rousers count on the fact that most people only read headlines and believe anything they read. After all they can’t put it on the internet if it isn’t true! If you believe that, I have some land in the Everglades I could sell you.

The rabble rousers use lies and half truths to promote their cause in attempting to discredit their opponents. They know that people believe what they want to believe and seldom, if ever check the facts. But the discerning readers do check and the Rabble Rousers do not realize that discerning people will find the lie. The fact is that the use of the lie removes all credibility for the cause the Rabble Rousers are trying to promote. Among discerning people, they do more harm than good.

I will not place myself as a member of the Rabble, the un-discerning and the gullible. You are smarter than that too … don’t fall for it. And … if you repeat and circulate the lie it will be assumed that you endorse it. We have no problem in an honest disagreement … but let’s keep it honest.

Gun Control – Or Rather, People Control

The subject of Gun Control came up on Facebook prompting (additional) thought. Some time ago I wrote, “I do not believe in Gun Control“. I still stand by those words but we always hear the argument that making more laws is useless because it is the criminals who obtain unregistered guns and the criminals are the problem. But … all guns start out as legal. Because of the greedy, the careless  the incompetent or the stupid, they end up in the hands of the criminal or the otherwise law abiding person who will use them in a criminal or careless manner. It has also been argued that some are smuggled in from foreign countries but of course that is a source for the criminals that comes from the greedy, seeking to make a profit without regard of the victims.  It makes no difference as to the source, we should try to prevent these people from obtaining the guns in the first place or by making them responsible for the guns after they relinquish control in an irresponsible manner be it intentional or accidently.

But, “they” say the laws will not be obeyed and so why punish the law abiding citizens with more laws,  It was Kahlil Gibran who suggested in “The Prophet” that we make our laws to justify the punishment of Criminals, not to prevent crime. That may be true but should we then do away with all law? After all, some will disobey them. I think not. We can at least try to protect the honest and the law abiding.

We claim to be more civilized than the times when every man carried a weapon at all times and I would like to think we are. No, it is not a perfect world but maybe we could work toward perfection instead of throwing up our hands and declaring every man for himself. Times change and we, hopefully, work towards a more civilized state of existence. I, for one, place my faith in the prospect that our lives are not in constant danger and I will not live in fear of being assailed and harmed. And I do not chose to be judge, jury and executioner of criminals. I will simply try to stay out of danger and leave it to the law enforcement people to do their jobs.  Some may think that to be foolish and unrealistic but may I point out that I am over 81 years old and I have never been robbed nor am I dead … and I got to 81 and beyond without having a gun to protect myself. Some may call that lucky but I call it Faith.

The trigger for this discussion was a picture of a boy getting a toy assault rifle for Christmas. I was dismayed. Not that I didn’t play with guns when I was a child. I did. But I don’t think that we should be encouraging the idea that we can solve our problems with guns and killing those who oppose us. This seems to be the very attitude that is tearing the inner city of Chicago apart. Should a civilized society be encouraging such thought? I, personally, think not.

Sure, go ahead … do your hunting and have your sport with shooting. Hone your skills as a marksman. Enjoy your collection of interesting and historic weapons. But accept responsibility of your weapon and activities.  It is as much a moral responsibility as a legal one. Accept registration and the regulations of transfer of ownership of the weapon. Accept the need to show your ability to secure and use your weapon safely and responsibly. We do this for our automobiles, can we do less for weapons which are even more dangerous if misused.

But … one thing … don’t tell me that you need a gun to protect yourself from the government. That is sedition and treason. I recommend self deportation to Syria.  That’s the way they still need to do things there. Those may be harsh words but let me see if I understand the concept of the way things are … We had our revolution to throw off an oppressive British king and his soldiers. Back in 1776 we established a representative government which was “Of the people, by the people, and For the people”. The people, us, were to elect representatives to make the laws and do the governing. In other words, we are self governing. It is each of us, we, the people, who are the government. So, do we shoot ourselves? We hold elections to select the people who will govern the way we want them to govern. The basic idea seems to me that we are not to shoot them if we made a mistake in selecting them. Instead, we use the ballot box to correct our errors. Sure, it doesn’t work perfectly. What does? Does that mean we should quit trying and start shooting people? Look at the words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Our form of government has been tested by the (un) Civil War and has been found to be good and sustainable. Let’s stay on that path.

In conclusion I reiterate that I don’t believe in gun control but I do advocate self control first and laws for people control second since people seem reluctant to use self control. After all, the only reason we need laws at all is that people do not use self control.

Rabble Rouser Report #12:

The latest attack uses “Diane Sawyer reporting on U.S. bridge projects going to the Chinese…” as the basis for their attack on Pres. Obama. Yet, no place in her report does she mention the President or even the Federal government. Wait … she does say that the states involved refused federal money to avoid complying with federal laws that prohibit giving the contracts to foreign governments. A realy smart rabble rouser would have edited out that part of her report. But of course the rabble rousers are counting on their audience being so anti Obama that they would pay no attention to that part of it. But to guild the lily they include a project that is not at all guilty of the offence. But of course their audience would never think of checking the facts. What is turning me against any Republican leanings is the fact that all these email attacks by the rabble rousers are anti-Obama and thus pro Republican. I will not abide by dishonesty! As far as I am concerned, someone who obviously lies to promote a cause, looses all credibility.

The email also included the following … and I quote exactly …

Please refrain from using Snopes.  Once it was determined that the husband and wife who run the site are bleeding heart Liberals funded by Sorostheir credibiliy disappeared

Well, I do not find that statement to be credible for several reasons and so I did and will continue to rely on Snoops to ferret out the rabble rousers.  My thanks to the friend who sent that to me, adding grist to my mill.

Rabble Rouser Report #11

The claim is that Obama admits not being born in Hawaii …

The email starts with …

Scroll all the way down and watch the video. It is Obama after he became a Senator. How come it never came out before now?  Obama admits not being born in Hawaii …  Can one doubt his own admission? Where is Sixty Minutes? 

To answer the first question, it was long in being published because it took a lot of time and effort to falsify the video. As to the second question, they wouldn’t touch such an absurd and obviously false claim video a ten foot pole. To get the entire story I invite you to visit the fraud as viewed by Snoops. The doctored video is shown in it’s entirety on the Snoops website. Also, on that web site is the statements of the man who produced the doctored video thinking no one would see it as anything but the joke that it is.

To those who are desperate to believe such a claim, I remind them that if something looks too good to be true, it isn’t. You all should know that. But the rabble rousers know that many will believe really stupid things just because that is what they want to believe. Also, wouldn’t you think that if there was any credibility to this at all, that the Tea Party would have it in every one of their campaign adds!  Mr. Obama has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that he is a citizen of the United States of American and he has been elected by more than half of Americans to the Office of the President. He is our president. What is … IS. Live with it.

Rabble Rouser Report #10

Social Security … A Benefit

The emails are coming from the Rabble Rousers. The subject is Social Security and the claim is that “They” are calling it a “Benefit” now. Apparently, the “they” is the current federal administration how can they call Social security a benefit when it is our money and we deserve it. As a matter of fact, we are getting less of our own money back than we should!

Well, the problem is that the myth of Social Security that the rabble rousers are trying to build on and ingrain in us is that it is “our personal bank account of savings”.  The fact is that it never was and never will be. The first part of Social Security is that it is a tax, pure and simple. When we work, we have a tax on our earnings …  money deducted from our pay check that goes to the government and it is no longer ours … it belongs to the government. The second part of Social Security kicks in when we retire. At that point, we receive a Social Security BENEFIT.  It is a benefit of working and being a productive citizen and the amount we get is based on the amount of our recent earnings as a measure of how productive we have been. Where does this money, this benefit, come from? It comes from the taxes paid by those who are still working or just coming into the work force. The taxes you and I paid when we were working is long gone and was used to pay the benefits for those who were retired while we worked.

But then, how could the Social Security program run out of money as many fear? This, unfortunately is a real problem because as people live longer, more of them are collecting benefits for a longer time. At the same time, there may not be enough people working and paying taxes into the system to generate enough money to pay those benefits. Thus, what you realy have is a government cash flow problem. (So what’s new?) And … calling it a Social Security benefit is not new. It always has been called that and it always will be. What is … IS!

If you want to realy understand the way Social Security works, stop being agitated be the emails from the Rabble Rousers and read Social Security. And … if you want to have your own personal retirement account, open a 401K or an IRA.

Rabble Rouser Report #9

The email said that President Obama is going to sneak through a 1% tax on all bank transactions. Moreover this is somehow tied to social security payments. Bringing in the fact that in 2013 all social security payments will be made by direct deposit or to a prepaid debit card lends the illusion of truth to the claim but has nothing whatever to do with the lie about the tax. To add insult to injury, the originator of this email demonstrates that the target of this missive is indeed the rabble who are easily led by the nose and are not astute enough to read the entire message. They claim that Snoops says the assertion of the pending tax is true and inserts a “copy” of Snoop’s statement. The fact is that Snoops pages are under copyright and making a copy is illegal. The reason for this is that copies can be altered as was the case here. To prove the believers of this outright lie are indeed gullible and not capable of reading, they include a link to the actual Snoops page that says the whole thing is false.

It saddens me that otherwise intelligent and good people are so eager to believe in their cause that they jump to the chance to embrace the propaganda of the rabble rousers. I will not be part of the rabble. This is not because I am partial to President Obama but because I am the Knight Commander of the Use the Internet Responsibly Crusade.