An Unsettling Question, Part Two
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Adam Graham's Podcast for his blog: http://www.adamsweb.us/blog
Rush is not a preacher, he's a talk show host. If he did do it, all he needs to do is admit and he'll be forgiven by everyone but the mainstream press.
I've started training for my new job in Boise. It's a fun work environment with great benefits. I'll write (a little) bit more about it when I update my work bio. I certainly won't write everything. Again, my opinion is that it's unprofessional to gripe about your current job and being a kiss-up doesn't do any good.
Your prayers are appreciated. The city of Boise is full of opportunities, but I haven't found the place I fit in, in the local body of believers. I don't know where I should go or what I should do. I'm also desperate for a chance to preach.
I miss Montana. I miss knowing people who would be there consistently, of knowing my place, even though it was limited. Everything is so wide open here, I don't know what to do.
You enter the museum and it takes a full hour or more to get through all the stuff in there. Let me tell you it's a great collection of historical items, including plenty of World War II posters and memrobillia. They even have a tank and an old car in there. Also, they have several old machines that work including an early video game from the 1960s, as well as several music playing machines from the early 20th Century.
Once you get into the cafe portion of the museum, you may think it's over. You could be more wrong. Because through the back door is the yard, full of historical stuff. They have made historical buildings with schools (the school had a NEA newsletter from teh 1940s talking about the importance of religion in school). Also had a lot of stuff out there. The only negative about the museum is that the yard is very eclectic. It has the stereotypical design of a redneck's back yard, but few rednecks have Fighter Jets, Tanks, and Helicopters on their front yard.
You can't sit on a lot of the cool equipment, the tanks and fighter jets are sealed, but you can sit in the helicopter and there's a huge tug boat you can climb on.
More than that, the museum is very conservative and it will remind you why you should be proud to be an American.
Expect some things to come down the pike soon. Currently I'm working on an e-book for 29ways.com and will soon officially endorse a Presidential Candidate for 2004. I'm looking for work and may be looking at an out of state move. The Flathead Valley is Northwest Montana is a great place to live by the price of living here is really high. I'm sorry to say.
Wrong! The Episcopal Church has been Apostate for several years
Consider that a third of Episcopalean ministers don't believe in the resurrection and that John Shelby Spong spouts his blasphemy with the title of Episcopal bishop attached to his rantings. That Reverend Robinson was even a Priest.
To those true Christians remaining in the Episcopal Church, I admonish you according to Revelations 18:4, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."
Bob Hope died at the age of 100. I thought Bob Hope as a comedian was okay. Bob Hope as a man was far more than that. How few of our modern entertainers would have the courage and guts to go into harms way to bring some "hope" and laughter to the troops. Bob Hope was.
Mr. Hope died and you'd think this would be a time of solemn remembrance and mourning. Instead, it was time for a left wing cultural critic to decry all of this "God Bless America" remembrance of Hope, because he didn't get any of his jokes.
Christopher Hitchens who has now become an expert on comedy has declared Hope "hopelessly unfunny". even daring to accuse him of cowardice. I thought the liberals pecking at Strom Thurmond's corpse was really tasteless, even though Thurmond had done some awful things in his life. Hitchen however has attacked a dead man because his style of comedy didn't exactly fit his tastes and preferences.
How cruel and disrespectful is that? It used to be that when people died, we would put RIP (Rest in Peace) on their grave. Such a practice should be abandonned as the left certainly will have none of that for anyone who did anything for this country.
If the question is war, the answer is no. I supported the war in Afghanistan strongly, I stayed neutral throughout the Congressional debate on the war in Iraq but enough is enough. I oppose going to Liberia or any other hellhole that our politicians try and send our troops to.
The idea that patriotism requires we declare our support for every war is repugnant. While the yahoos who've fueled the anti-war movement in this country heretofore have been communists and other malcontents, unlimited continuous war is neither patriotic nor prudent.
Where in the world are our troops? Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, South Korea, among dozens of others. Our armed forces are stretched thin and I will not support a draft or massive increases in defense spending for the sake of such noble goals such as "ridding the World of evil". (More on that in a future column.)
Example: "Dick Gephardt today announced that his health care plan, if passed into law, would cover all Americans, stimulate the economy and provide the state of New Hampshire $767 million in fiscal relief over the course of three years" (press release, June 3, 2003).
What it means: Money.
What it hides: The money gets counted three times: as health care, economic stimulus, and aid to states and cities. And by the way, it comes from you.
Subtext: What I've learned from 27 years in Congress is to spin everything as a special-interest appropriation.
Examples: "Democrats can move this county forward … to making education our top funding priority and providing free college education for all" (speech to Democratic National Committee, Feb. 22, 2003). "We need to make it possible for fully paid college in this country, so everyone who wants to go to college, and that includes higher education, and law school, and medical school." (Children's Defense Fund forum, April 9, 2003).
What it means: You pay nothing …
What it hides: … until April 15.
Subtext: Nobody's going to outbid me for the campus vote.
I can't show you anymore, but read the whole series for yourself.
Apparently, some of our Leftist friends don't seem to think so. Former United States Senator Strom Thurmond's body was hardly cold when Slate Columnist Diane McWhorter accused Thurmond of fathering a Black, illegitimate child when he was 23! You got to hand it to Slate and Diane McWhorter it takes a lot of guts to raise allegations against a dead man when he can no longer rebut the charge!
It was originally made five years ago in a little read "unauthorized biography". McWhorter full of indignation demanded to know why this allegation hasn't been more widely circulated. Indeed, I could bring equal indignation to the fact that many of Bill Clinton's relatively recent affairs (as reported in "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton" by Ambrose Evans Pritchard are not better known). However, the fact that someone is alleging something does not make it so.
More importantly, such an incredible poor taste and lack of grace was shown in making this attack that I'm astonished at it! But the Cartoonist are worst. Bill Day of the Nashville Commercial Appeal portrays Thurmond as flying upward to Heaven with a terrified look on his face as he head towards the the hand of a Black god. Apparently in the left's world, the only one it's okay to suggest faces a less than pleasant eternity is Strom Thurmond.
Ann Telnaes never to be outdone for plain, simple mean-spiritedness drew a picture of Thurmond's grave with the epitath, "Strom Thurmond: Born a Segregationist, Died an Opportunist." I'm sure the grieving Senator's family appreciates this. I'm sure South Carolinans of all races who have benefitted from Thurmond's service are pleased.
In the end, these warped leftist now view funerals as political affairs. Like every other event in life, death is an opportunity to score political points, to kick the corpse of a World War II hero and deny his family the right to grieve in piece. Let me be brutally honest. Senator Paul Wellstone's record and legacy will be shown by history to be more ominous, diabolical, and damaging to the American country. Wellstone championed infanticide and the destruction of American liberty. Still, conservatives manage to show a shred of decency lacking from these most recent detestable attacks.
During the trip, the Lord gave me a sermon/pamphlet idea I'll be working on. I feel refreshed and renewed, though pretty tired.
This week I found myself stuck at a laundromat without a book and caught a rerun of David Kelly's The Practice. I hadn't seen a full episode before, but while I was at home my dad was a big fan and as he blared the sound at full blast, I heard several episodes.
Despite it's liberal bias, "The Practice" is a great drama. It paints a very realistic picture of criminal defense attorneys and their clients (as realistic of a picture as you can paint without getting boring as a totally realistic lawyer show would spend 90% of the time working out plea bargains and 10% at trial). This episode I saw was about a prison inmate who killed his bunkmate in his sleep. A female attorney tried to get him to plead guilty as he'd signed a confession, his prints were on the murder weapon, and his bunkmate was sleeping.
The prisoner defended himself in court, claiming the common law defense of necessity. He testified that a man serving three life sentences for three prior murders had threatened to kill him unless he slayed his bunkmate. The story (inadvertently I'm sure) raises some very serious problems for the anti-death penalty crowd. What happens to a man when you can't touch him? If he's in for three consecutive life sentences, what else can you do to him with no death penalty deterrent?
The story ends with the prisoner escaping from the courthouse after killing a guard. One thing I do like from what I've seen/heard of the series is that Kelly isn't pretentious and doesn't glamorize criminal defense lawyers. He's quite honest that many of their clients are guilty, that if they are released they will commit more crimes, even against the attorneys that defended them. While it's more gritty than shows like Perry Mason and Matlock, it avoids painting an unrealistic picture of the legal profession and it's clients: Clean cut all-american kids who are wrongly accused were most of them. The degree of honesty Kelly shows is refreshing and it's important that people who may be interested in law get a proper perception of what they're getting into, rather than the glamorized notions provided by Lawyer shows past.
One cartoon showed George Bush jumping on a map of America drawn as the Incredible Hulk screaming, "Me Save America by destroying it." and the caption read, "The Incredible Bush". That wouldn't be stupid, except the Hulk never said anything like that. Such statements belong to "Bizarro", the opposite of Superman not to the Hulk.
Another comic portrayed John Ashcroft as the INS officer who took Elian Gonzalez away but this time Ashcroft was saying he would detain Elian to find out what he was up to. Stupid! If your readers have a short attention span, they'll not know what you're talking about. If they don't, they'll be reminded of another attorney general. This Attorney General who used Gestapo tactics to seize a boy from his uncle's home in the middle of the night. It reminds us of the Attorney General whose impatience, recklessness, and many would say malice aforethought led to the deaths of eighty Americans at Waco, Texas. This same Attorney General turned a blind eye to President Clinton's violations of the law, refusing to call her lawless boss to account.
The comic reminds that as unhappy as I am with some of John Ashcroft's heavy-handed tactics, I'm so glad that he. and not our prior Attorney General, Janet Reno is in that office.
I just finished a book by Rick Warren called the Purpose Driven Life. The book's far from perfect, especially as far as the writing goes. But if people would really apply want Warren says, Christians in America could change this country. Sadly, I fear much of his good advice will go unheeded. The heart of the church is cold and needs to awaken to God's truth. Sadly, I fear we're losing our way to sins of worldliness and materialism. The American church is becoming so cold, it's very sad.
I find myself wondering if this is the "Great Falling Away" and whether at last we will see the return of our Lord, who'll set all right. Though, we must go through the fire, come Lord Jesus, come.
Sadly, this is probably just another great apostasy that Christians must survive and fight through and that God must move to bring revival. Still, it seems worse than reports of times past. Then again, it's different I suppose when you read about something as opposed to living through it. The Saints of old thought the end was near to. Work while the light is with you for the hour of darkness comes when no man can work.