these truths

Experience has shown us that we are more willing to suffer, while troubles are endurable, than to set things right by dismantling our accustomed arrangement.* 

We endure the limited choice of two ruling parties, both of which are well intended, but they fight like angry children, and often do as much harm as good.  Their approval rating is at 8%, suggesting we'd prefer almost anything else.

We endure the untruths of political power holders as though it were the expected norm.  The lives of our young men and women are poured out on the altar of the long lamented military-industrial temple.  We protest and endure. 

We endure the promises not kept, the exaggeration of authority, the intrusion of rule into our personal lives and resources.  None are easily endured, but we manage.

Having been promised liberty and equality, and rule by the consent of the governed, we face inequality and rule by the wealthy and influential.  We see the marginalized and disenfranchised among us, those who are left behind while a chosen few bask in extraordinary privilege.

We began as a beacon for the world of democracy and noble purpose.  We stood for right in the face of tyranny, and we were respected for it.  Our reputation has fallen among the nations and at home, however.  No longer America the just and fair, no longer the place of brotherhood and great heart, now we're just the rich and selfish, or at least that's our reputation.  Read the Congressional Report.  We've made too many choices for economic advantage rather than justice.

So we continue to endure for a season in hope of change, of moral and ethical clarity and return to what is right and good for our citizenry and our purpose among the nations.

Seasons change, though.  It's happened before.

*... all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 

    ~ from the U.S. Declaration of Independence 

Meanwhile, our options available in order of impact include:

• Personal life choices; be the person you hope your children will emulate.  Pray for strength and clarity to do so.  
• Community choices; be involved in the good part.
• Humanity choices; find the need and lend a hand.  Study and discover what helps; it's not as easy as you might think.  
• Political choices; understand the process and its foundation.  Write your congressional representatives.  You may have to pretend you're part of a mega-corp to get their attention, though.  :)

Change-makers and help-bringers have more fun, and they live in the real world!
They get to leave knowing they've done their part well.

The Big Lie

 1937 - The party told folks that the Jews were a
 corrupt and wicked race.  People believed it.

Why would people believe something just hugely false?

It's not uncommon, and we've all fallen for it.  Remember when we were told that black people were a less developed species than whites?  Remember when women were said to be less intelligent and rational than men?  Our culture was warped by such large-spectrum falsehoods.

It's difficult to clean up the mess from such wrong thinking.

We're two centuries along in dealing with race issues.   We banned the importation of African slaves in 1808, but the remnants of such wrong thinking are still visible in our culture, and will likely take generations more to die out completely.  Appropriate equality and respect for women are similarly slow in arriving.

There are two parts to the problem of wrong thinking.
The first is the ambiguity of an issue.  The second is the advantage that it provides.

In the racial question, for example, Africans were different than Europeans, and it seemed perhaps reasonable that they were in some way inferior.  It was ambiguous, lacking science and validity, it was not accurately understood.  The advantage for rule and wealth (African diamonds and gold) followed quickly, and the easily resolvable question was politically sustained for the benefit of the wealthy and influential of the period.  They're all dead now, fortunately.

Today we're dealing with an issue that began similarly, and is now less ambiguous.  We began the discussion on abortion and law around 1800.  Over the years, advances in science and medicine let us see problem pregnancies and begin to consider the issue of the mother's safety separately from the child's life.  Abortion to save the mother's life was legalized, and the debate moved on to issues of preference and timing.

It was a political and philosophical battle in the U.S. until legalization in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, and defined by law as an issue of privacy.  You could abort up to viability as determined by the doctor.  The issue of viability was a marker for the debate.

We didn't have the scientific clarity in the 19th and 20th centuries that we have now.  When Winston Churchill was born two months early and survived, he was a rarity.  Viability of preterm births has improved over the years.  Today, a 24 week preemie will usually go to the neonatal unit with a chance of survival, but the threshold of viability is not that precise.  A few successful 22 week preemies have now entered the scene.

Cecile Richards - President, Planned Parenthood - 

compares abortion to a colonoscopy and considers

both to be 'health care'.
One detects cancer early and can legitimately
 be considered health care.  The other terminates a
life and is unrelated to health care except
 by deliberate misrepresentation.

When Sarah Capewell gave live birth at 21 weeks 5 days gestation, her son was denied treatment at the hospital, and died within two hours of birth. According to the mother, he was breathing unaided, had a strong heartbeat, and was moving his arms and legs.  If he had been born two days later he might have received treatment.  

So the questions of privacy, viability, preference, and ethics are all on the table.  The early distinction of fetus vs. baby is less useful than was hoped by abortion advocates.

The 'born alive' laws are quite clear, but the abortion industry appears to violate that criteria.

“So you know there are times when after the procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating”         - Dr. Ben Van Handel describing post-abortion condition of the 'fetus'.

Lucas Moore, born a at 23 weeks, is celebrating his first

birthday, healthy and whole.  He was legally abortable,

just a 'fetus', a tissue mass, a product of conception, 

according to Planned Parenthood, and a good candidate

for organ harvesting and sale. 

Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow was asked point blank: “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?” She replied: “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”  Asked again by stunned hearers, she repeated her answer.  

She was testifying against a Florida bill that would require abortionists to provide emergency medical care to an infant who survives an abortion.  Planned Parenthood later issued a clean-up statement that in the unlikely event that a baby were born alive it would “provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.” That is of little credibility, since a Planned Parenthood counselor has been caught on tape admitting that the organization leaves infants born alive by abortion to die.

Federal law requires appropriate care for an aborted child with a beating heart just like any other newborn.  The magic transition from fetus to baby occurs upon emergence from the mother.  But ...

'It's still a fetus until birth.'  The Big Lie is almost lost in the debate.  If we call it a child, it's a problem.  We can call it a fetus until it is born, and for the law, that defers the problem.    

At some point, however, we are aborting a human child. A born-alive child is legally recognized as such upon emergence from the womb, even before its first breath.  Pre- or full-term, it is legally a human being once it is outside its' mother.

That child is the same, however, whether in the doctor's hands two seconds after delivery or in its mother in the seconds just prior to birth.  And the hours prior, the days and perhaps weeks prior. Calling the child a fetus doesn't change that reality.  It's not an easily resolved question, but such deliberate misrepresentation is political, not objective science or reason.

The big lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

The centerpiece of Pro-Choice and of Planned Parenthood is abortion built on the big lie.  

Rejection

According to the media, Terry Jones is a
Christian pastor with a dwindling 
congregation of about 15 at
 last report.

Jones conducted a public burning of the Koran
in 2011. In response to the media coverage,
protesters in northern Afghanistan attacked
a UN Aid Mission, killing 12 people,
 including 7 UN workers.

Jones has been denied entry into Canada,
the U.K., and Germany for his hate-speech.

According to the German Evangelical Alliance,

Jones was released from the leadership of the

Cologne Christian Church in '08 due to his

indefensible theological statements and

 his craving for attention.

In 2012, Terry Jones promoted a film vilifying

 Islam, titled Innocence of Muslims. The film

led to protests in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia,

and Libya. Jones screened it at church on

9.11.2012, a day he named, "International

 Judge Mohammad Day"

In 2012, Jones hanged an effigy of Obama in
front of his church. Effigies of Obama and
Bill Clinton were burned in 2013.

For the the 2012 elections, he declared

 himself an independent presidential

candidate. He is a listed candidate

for the 2016 U.S. election.

A formulaic approach to religion is common but troublesome.
Do this and this, and you'll be saved and go to heaven.

If you refuse the gospel, you won't.  You'll be rejected at the gate.
Those are the rules.

So, what if you hear the gospel from folks like Terry Jones?  How does that affect your salvation equation?  Only the most unlearned can listen to this fellow.  Does his talking about the Bible and Christianity count?  Most will reject what he offers, and wisely so.

There are so many who have been driven away by religious rules and rule purveyors.  There's truth, and then there's arrogance and foolish error that spills out of narrow minds.  The two are unrelated.

The media flail over Jones is inappropriate, of course.  Talking with his few followers about Jesus and burning the Koran doesn't make him a legitimate spokesperson either for Christianity or its author.

Had Jones encountered the author, he'd perhaps have a different message.

The 'good news' is farther from this sort of nonsense than can be described in words, and it's not about rules. 

• Although he's perhaps running for president, Jones hasn't been in the news lately.  In January, he was working at Fry Guys in a mall food court in Florida.  Here's hoping he gets his thinking straight.

From 2012... and Muslim Peace

Are banks necessary?

No.  As individuals, we don't need them.  There are many alternatives for the typical household.  Credit unions, brokerage accounts, insurance accounts, and prepaid/reloadable credit cards are a few examples.

Are banks trustworthy?
Not particularly.  Banks are supposed to play by the rules, but that hasn't gone well.  Between 2009 and 2014, the largest U.S. banks paid $130 billion in fines, settlements, and criminal penalties for their illegal activities.  That was just for the times they cheated and got caught, of course.  Small, local banks are more reasonably managed.

Are banks keeping your money safe?
No, that's the government's FDIC.

Our first banks were small, local, and community focused.  They knew their customers.  They held money for folks in the form of deposits, and they loaned it back within the community.  Interest on deposits and more interest on loans is how they managed their costs, but that was and still is their purpose.  All the rest is questionable.

Most banks now are far removed from communities and from their customers.

Some folks these days would like to take their business elsewhere, perhaps for ethical reasons.  The big banks do all manner of things that cause people of conscience to prefer an alternative.

"Virtually all independent economists and financial experts agree that the economy cannot stabilize or recover unless the giant, insolvent banks are broken up (and 1, 1A,  2, and 3).  And the very size of the big banks is also warping our entire political system."  ... as in purchasing the legislation they need.  And size ... the larger banks are bigger than most countries.

A capitalist free market economy has much to commend it.  Big banks aren't included in the list.


The current generation has seen emphasis on insider plays, manipulation of the marketplace, and purchased regulation.  Every president and virtually every congressman has supported the financial industry and the wealthy at the expense of the citizenry.

The result is a national ponzi scheme.  It's wealth extraction from the top with the price tag at the bottom of the pyramid where most people live.  That's the U.S. economic model since '79.

Assets.  I'm sure that was supposed to be 'by assets'.

   Okay, maybe not.
Note the asset scale increments, five hundred thousand million,
then one million million, ... incredible wealth concentration.

A classic ponzi requires suckers to buy in, but today's version depends on government regulation to open our collective financial resources without our permission for use by the ponzi players.  It has been noted by leading economists that the financial industry now serves the few and provides nothing for the well being of the citizenry.

There are a number of factors suggesting change is coming.  For now, you can get along fine without any banks being part of the process.  The more difficult task is defending the nation.  Feel free to suggest to your representatives that you'd be quite happy if the big banks were disassembled and made to behave responsibly.

Crossing the Line

The Law:  The problem with drawing a line in the sand is that someone is likely to cross it; it's almost a challenge to see if you can find a way to do it.

Ask any business executive or Wall Street player if there aren't trade and finance laws that you can beat just by arranging your books the right way, and you can make a killing.

The authority of law rises from the moral intent to prevent harm, to avoid a pitfall, as in 'don't do that or you'll hurt somebody'. We know it's not perfect; loopholes in the law let you hurt others legally, so for now, the law says that's acceptable.  Some folks are fighting to keep it that way, but to be fair, perhaps they don't understand what they've agreed to.



Norma McCorvey was Roe in Roe v. Wade.  She later testified to Congress:

Her parents named her Amillia - which means
resilient in Latin, a fighter and hardworking
 - to reflect her survival against the odds.
Born at 21 weeks and 6 days ...
Fortunately, Planned Parenthood was
 not involved.

"It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which had been used to create the "right" to abortion out of legal thin air. But Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee never told me that what I was signing would allow women to come up to me 15, 20 years later and say, "Thank you for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible." Sarah never mentioned women using abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy women, not women already wearing maternity clothes."

Instead of a last resort to avoid unendurable troubles, abortion has become a convenience available without restriction.

From the 2012 Democratic Party platform on abortion:

"... unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade  ...  We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way. ..."

Although unintended by the court, the ruling has loopholes big enough for an eight-month pregnant minor to walk through for an abortion without "her family, her doctor," or "her clergy" ever being part of the decision.

The party has removed the sentence “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare” from its platform. 

The question?  After millions of written pages and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the legal battles in state and federal courts and in government houses, the original question is lost.
Is there harm to anyone?

Abortion -- does it hurt anyone?

It's a moral question, not a legal one. We've come so far from our first intent that we now permit an abortionist to dismember a living, viable baby in the womb (just like these pictured here) and then sell its' heart and brain and other organs.

Where is the transition from embryo to child?  At what point have we crossed that line?

Food, Education, and Income

What we eat is perhaps affected by both education and income.  This illuminating graphic from Bloomberg Business is based on statistics and information from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.  It suggests that that poverty is unhealthy; what a surprise.

The impact of economic distress persists across generations.

A fellow I met recently laughed about working two jobs and sometimes three in order to meet the needs of his baby boy.  The child's mother had left him with custody and impossible debt.  As he wrapped up one job around 7 PM, he was off to another after a stop for supper at the gas station, a couple of burritos.  His own upbringing hadn't been easy; his father had been out of the picture for most of twenty-seven years.  Despite the difficulties, he was enthusiastic about moving forward career-wise as a worker on major construction projects, but employment opportunities have been scarce.  Walmart turned him away because he was 'overqualified'.

The difficulties some face are greater than for others.  Opportunity isn't truly equal and advanced education is difficult to tackle financially.  Those who attempt it are often left in debt for years whether they finish or not.

In the recent debate among presidential contenders, much was said about business and tax cuts and national strength, but not a word about our decades of accelerating inequality.  I'd hoped they would notice.

For the record, neither party is addressing the issue.

No one has an easy path.  Both success and meaningful life require great effort and perseverance.  None of us has any chance of doing it on our own alone.