Wit or Wisdom

This just in: This edition of Congress is the most worthless edition of, well… anything.

Now I’m sure this is not news to most of you, but just as a refresher:

- They are conducting mock hearings of officials in the Bush Administration based on little evidence.
- They refuse to accept what they are told in these hearings and even have the audacity to directly contradict the people they’ve just tried even though they have no knowledge of the event.
- They then have the audacity to declare that said people should be tried in a court of law for lying to Congress (can you be charged with that?)
- They attempt to waste their time passing non-binding resolutions to pull the troops out.
-When those fail, they try to pass binding resolutions to pull the troops out.
- They filibuster highly qualified judicial nominees and then whine and complain when they cannot get cloture on their attempts to take away the funding, and therefore the safety, of the troops.
- They parade around the country for two years campaigning for President and do NOTHING about the office to which they have already been elected.
- They set up a fake all-night meeting to work on the “Iraq problem.”
- And the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and……………………..

The most truly ironic part is that they were elected in misguided revolt to the policies of President Bush, of which MSM has given the impression are failed. Yet… their approval rating is lower than his… you don’t see anything about that in the nuze.

Regardless, it would be funny if it wasn’t supposed to be serious. Maybe we could have a poll to see who is better fit to run the country: the U.S. Congress or Paris Hilton?

for my mother to reconnect the internet. Which I only know how to do, but she only can allow to happen.

Friends, foes, and countrymen, I support Mike Huckabee for President.

I’ve just submitted my application to be placed on the “Blogs for Huckabee” list, and though wordpress won’t let me edit my CSS unless I fork over the cash, which I won’t, I’m still going to talk about him, even if I don’t get on the list.

Plain and simple, Mike Huckabee is THE conservative candidate. And unless people like me start talking about him, the word won’t get out.

On every major issue, and virtually all of the minor ones, I am with Mike Huckabee. He proposes the sorts of things that got conservatives the votes in the first place, and we have reason to believe he will stick with those things. He proposes shutting down the Internal Revenue Code and replacing it with the FairTax. He is for full 2nd Amendment rights. He defines marriage as one woman and one man and is completely against abortion. He is strong on defense. He will back Israel up. And he absolutely believes that faith and politics should mix. He will not back down.

He should be our next President. What’s not to like?

I read a lot, and I’d like to do this often, but then again, there are several things I’ve said I’d do on this blog… and haven’t done them. So we’ll see.

Several books I’ve been reading lately and would very much recommend that you do the same:

Bankrupt by David Limbaugh. A scathing, thorough book that shows how Democrats, from their own quotes, are not interested in anything but their own power. If you actually thought most liberals are good people who want what’s best for the country, especially the ruling liberals, then you need to read this book.

Somebody’s Gotta Say It by Neal Boortz. Boortz is a libertarian (I think the Grit probably would like him), and while I certainly don’t agree with a significant portion of what he says (pro-gay marriage, somewhat pro-abortion, and makes a rather weak argument against intelligent design), he has some excellent points about the Constitution and what the government’s rights really are, and what ours really are, and what should be done about these things.

If you are an atheist, you absolutely must read The Real Face of Atheism by Ravi Zacharias. Zacharias is the premiere Christian apologist of our day, and what he has to say will probably cause you to seriously rethink your position on God. You will not find yourself offended, just corrected. For all who aren’t Christians, read Jesus Among Other Gods. And just for good measure, if you are you should read those books too. They will seriously affirm, in a thinking way, your faith.

Liberals are hypocrites. Particularly when it comes to the issue of… well, never mind. Pretty much to all issues. I’m sure a lot of liberals never intend to be hypocrites. I’m sure a lot of them, particularly the rank-and-file traditional liberals aren’t looking to be hypocrites. But they are.

The fact is, you cannot have so many positions that are based on lies, untruths, half-truths, deceptions, and misconceptions and be consistent in your views. Real life always comes around bite you in the behind if you do. I see very few liberals who actually believe the logical conclusions of what they say they believe. Very few liberals are actually willing to make the sacrifices necessary to back up their big mouths.

Take global warming for example. Did anybody watch the LiveEarth concerts? I watched about five minutes of it. Then I had to stop to go nauseate over the toilet.

The next day I turned on Sean Hannity, who loves nothing better than to point out liberal inconsistencies. Well… turns out most of these bands and speakers that came to these concerts flew in on private jets, producing more pollution than pretty much… well, more than your average Joe Conservative does. Among the possible solutions to global warming mentioned by the looneys: use cloth diapers, ride your bike to work, use electric cars, invest in wind power but not in my neighborhood (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a proponent of wind power but is leading a fight to keep it out of his city/suburb/whatever-it-is). And so on and so forth.

Take wiretaps as another example. Every administration, including the golden boy of liberals, President Bill Clinton, has engaged in this activity for years. Furthermore, there is nothing clearly unconstitutional about listening in on the phone conversations of people who are talking to people outside the country who are not citizens. Yet when President Bush starts doing it, they cry foul.

The list can go on… tax increases for the whole country except for Nancy Pelosi’s district, false reporting that leads to deaths that are somehow someone else’s fault, Scooter Libby as Bridget showed us (a note on that, I heard that Mrs. Clinton, show soundly denounced Mr. Libby actually engaged in perjury while in office, but the independent counsel, being weak-kneed, didn’t charge her because he didn’t want to “put the country through that.” Not to mention a certain playboy in the oval office who perjured and got away with it.). And on… and on… and on.

What makes anybody think they can be honest about anything?

This revelation from everyone’s favorite law student, theobromophile… Scooter Libby was Marc Rich’s lawyer!

Tonight, as I was watching my local news, I heard about a couple of different crimes recently committed in my area. Both of the criminals were minors, one the age of 12, and the other 14. The one that was 12 stabbed a 13 year-old girl to death with a steak knife yesterday. The 14 year-old has been charged as an adult for his crime. (What it was I can’t remember.) Anyways, the usual parade of family members and “friends” have come along, demanding that he be convicted as a child, because he is a minor.

The question of charging minors as adults or as juveniles is a long, thin line. It’s been said that the part of the brain that assesses risks and consequences is not fully developed until the upper twenties. Yet I have a hard time believing that minors who kill other people don’t know what they are doing. Perhaps the best illustration I’ve heard of this was on a TV crime drama, most likely CSI, where a detective was questioning a kid about a crime. The kid refused to take any kind of a deal to rat on his co-conspirators. He had committed murder, but was not interested in getting out of jail any sooner. Why? “They have cable TV and video games.” You don’t think that kid knew what he was doing?

Bottom line is that unless the minor is very young, such as four or five, and obviously didn’t know that they were going to kill someone, or didn’t mean to, when playing with the gun, the criminal needs to be charged as and sentenced as a fully responsible person. In fact, I knew from a very young age that murder was bad, and even though we don’t have any guns in the house (a product of my parent’s unfortunate opinion that guns do not save lives, which is one of their few non-conservative positions) I knew that you just don’t play with guns and knives. We weren’t even allowed to point toy guns at each other for the longest time. At least not until I and some of my friends made a movie! The fact is, especially in the culture in which many of these young people grow up, they know full well that when they pull the trigger, they are committing murder. Stabbing someone to death with a steak knife, and slashing another person’s wrists? The kid may be only 12, but he knew full well that he was committing a crime. I simply fail to see how anyone could justify trying him as a juvenile offender. He’s a criminal, and if you coddle his behavior, he will grow up to be more of one.

Last week, I was at my job, which involves a significant amount of interaction with the general public. As you can imagine, this leads to interesting situation… but more often entertaining or embarrassing ones. On this particular occasion, a young child was screaming. And what’s more, the child’s mother wanted to know if she could leave her seven-year old at the place while she ran and did some things. We are not a daycare service. So one of my co-workers told her no. Later on several of us were discussing what had happened, and she blurted, “talk about a reason for birth control.” I don’t consider my job to be a political forum, so I said nothing. (Well, that and the fact that there are only about two other conservatives there besides me.) However, this presented an opportunity for me to think about the difference between the ways certain people would approach this problem.

The thing that the woman who said that totally missed was that “birth control” would have completely eliminated the life of the two kids of that woman. It has pretty much been proven that life begins at conception, or very close to. Therefore, we have to say that this woman was insisting that murder was the solution to this woman’s incompetence and irresponsibility. Therein lies the liberal solution to the problem. Simply wave a magic wand and make it go away. (Yes, I know abortion is more painful and complicated than that.)
The conservative solution, on the other hand, is for this woman to be responsible. The fact is, these screaming children didn’t deserve to be punished for the fact that their mother was not responsible, either in having them, and/or in raising them. Children are naturally going to turn out rotten if they are not raised with a certain amount of training and discipline. It is the responsibility of the parents to give their children a chance by raising them up correctly. Liberals are always talking about things being fair… well, one generation’s ill-advised, illicit relationship may end up destroying the lives of generations to come. Is that fair?

As I was participating in last Sunday’s door-to-door outreach at my church, I was given a sober reminder of the need for humility in our presentation of ourselves as Christians. My church centers its outreach around winning souls for Christ, and so, naturally, the main thrust and direction of our questions are designed to find out whether the person is a Christian or not. Well, as I moved toward that question with two separate individuals at two different houses last week, I was informed, rather indignantly by the first, that she was the secretary at the church that she was at and was on her way to heaven. The second, this one not so indignant as pompous and arrogant, informed me that he was deacon in his church. I asked him if he knew he was going to heaven. He said yes. I asked how. His reply: “I believe in the words of God.” The verse that ran through my mind was James 2:19b: “…thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” So, I asked him what the “words of God” said. His response was even more prideful than the first: “I don’t have to explain it right now.” Contrast this with the attitude of another person I met, who graciously thanked us for coming and being out sharing the Word of God, and told me why she believed she was on her way to heaven: “because she has accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.”

While I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they were merely not caught at a good time, as Christians, doubt or no doubt, we must remain humble. The Bible says in Jeremiah: Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord GOD of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee. (50:31).

I often wonder what feeds the egotism of some Christians in this day. While pride is natural to the human, it seems to me sometimes to be as prevalent, or more prevalent, in Christians than anybody else. Part of it might come from the fact that we tend to think we are somebody special. Not so. The old line is: Christians aren’t better, they’re just forgiven. Any Christian who thinks he’s better than other people merely because he’s saved is one of two things: Not a Christian, or one who will severely backslide very easily. Modern-day Christian pride might also stem from the business that “Christianity” has become. The mega-church is the big thing right now. Most pastors, sadly, are concerned with merely getting more people in the seats/pews. Church success is measured in numbers, not in the impact that the church has on its people or others around the world. Take this for an example. The church I attend has a Sunday morning attendance of about eighty. Not very successful by many standards. Yet most of those eighty are mature, seven-day Christians and their families. And we give fifty thousand dollars a year to missions. So we have success in our own way. Maybe even the right. Yet it goes to our heads sometimes. We recently were humbled to learn of another church, with fewer members than we have, giving over one hundred thousand dollars a year to missions. Big accomplishment, right? Well… let’s get a calculator out. $100,000 dollars a year, given by fifty people, is 2000 a year. A lot of money, or so it sounds. Yet divide that by 52, the number of weeks in a year, and you have a mere $38 dollars a week. My family could easily spend four times that amount, roughly $150, a week on groceries. So, even what seems like a big accomplishment, is nothing.

The point is we need to be careful of our pride as Christians, because our giving is nothing. If I recall correctly, according to a Barna poll, roughly twenty percent of Americans refer to themselves as evangelical Christians, meaning that they believe in salvation through the cross. America’s population is currently around 350 million, I believe. Say half of the twenty percent are adults capable of giving a mere $20 dollars a week to missions (not to the church as in a tithe, but just above and beyond to missions). You’re looking at seven hundred million dollars a week, and 36.4 billion a year. Can you imagine?

But what stays in the way? Laziness and pride. We’re just too good to make sacrifices like that. We’re too concentrated on inflating our egos by lifting our total attendance into the thousands. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with a large church. But where are our priorities? Evangelism and discipleship, which are the Great Commission? Not really. More like attendance and egotism.

Notice I said Independence Day… not July 4th, as it seems is becoming the hip thing to do, especially among the lefty crowd. The term “4th” means nothing to me, and should mean nothing to you. But the liberals would never want you to remember important things about our history… like the fact that we are the freest nation in the history of the world and should stay that way.

Okay… I’ll get off my soapbox. Happy Independence Day.