Thursday, January 22, 2015

A Nation of Ungodly Principles


This is Thursday January 22, 2015 the 42nd anniversary of Roe verses Wade, and the holocaust of forty million unborn babies, many who would have reached the age of forty now.  The problem with speeches today is that everything is just unchristian, as opposed to left or right.  It’s pro gay, pro breaking an agreement - - in case of pensions and the disabled Social Security cut, and it’s pro early termination of life.  There is a new bill introduced in California that wants to make “end of life” measures easier to do.  There is the thing about if you have been diagnosed you have less than six months to live you can choose to off yourself any time.   Norman Goldman is discussing Roe verses Wade right now.   Thom Hartman takes exception to the specificity of the ruling dividing the pregnancy term into these trimester things.  The whole ruling is stupid and the sooner it’s overturned, the better.  I don’t see what’s stopping them from overturning it this year.  They have the votes, “Don’t you think?”    The word “penumbral” is misused by everybody because the word “penumbra” is a partial shadow, meaning - - as with an eclipse - - it’s partial sunlight and partial shadow- - - so the word would imply a “vague” right, as I read it.  The idea of fetal viability is not the way to go with abortion rulings.  Because if you throw a full term baby in the trash can in the cold, he or she will die, and the person who threw that baby in the trash can will be charged.  So let’s throw ‘viability” in the trash.  Mike Huckibee let a future mass killer out of prison because he found “Jee-sus”.  In El Salvador this one woman was throw in jail serving seven years of a thirty year sentence so far.  What was her crime.  Having a miscarriage.   And apparently she had drugs in her system and went to a rehab center because she was pregnant, but the people at the rehab center reported her to the police.  I hope I have that story right.  I’m not in favor of any draconian and vindictive measures against women involved in questionable pregnencies that are terminated one way or the other.  I guess Republicans want women to report any miscarriages to the police because the fetus is a person.  The Republicans just today tried to pass a twenty week limit on having abortions.  I would disagree with that only to the extent that if they’re going to pass a law like that it should be twelve weeks.   But the Republicans themselves pulled the bill because Republican women didn’t like the provision that says that you need to report a rape to the police so that there is a public record of it.  You wouldn’t even need exceptions for rape or incest in this case because twelve weeks is almost three months and that’s plenty of time to have found out about the pregnancy and go out and do something about it in that time limit.  Norman Goldman says the Republicans have given up on gay marriage, and they are in the process of giving up on marijuana control, and now the battleground has moved to end of life legislation.  There is a growing trend here and that is - - democrats only have successes on arguably matters that good Christians would be against.   In other words we are running headlong into a completely ungodly set of laws that promote greed and corruption - - - but hey- - if you’re depressed about that - - go get stoned!

There are vague hints that officer Darren Wilson may be charged with violating Michael Brown's civil rights.  But they say "The bar is set really high because the officer has to be consciously aware at the time of his action that he is intensionally intending to violate Michael Brown's civil rights.  When they charge you for anything else such as speeding or reckless driving, they don't ask you if you INTENDED to drive dangerously, they just assume you WERE because they SAW you driving that way.  So the whole reasoning is ludicris here.  The last I'd heard was that the Obama Administration intended to take no action at all in the Ferguson shooting.  Gun violence and police killings found no place in the President's state of the union message.   Voting rights was one of the few things in the whole speech I agreed with the President should be brought up, and he spent precious little time ON voting rights.

The important stuff is in the next paragraph below but meanwhile - - .  There was a thing on Bill and Melinda Gates and philanthropy.  There is also a sizable asteroid passing by earth 750,000 miles away on January 26th.    In terms of Mom’s prospective new place Paul wrote out much of the basic information he conveyed by phone.  I think there is a link to click.  In terms of stocks, today the DJI was up 250 points and if you’d gotten out of the market last Thursday you’d have lost about two percent today.  But I said at the time, “You don’t want to try and call the peak exactly but you’re going to be off a few percent”.   They say that some of these late 1950’s cars that are being driven in Cuba today could fetch up to sixty thousand on the market if they are in good condition.  Things really do go up in value if they’re old enough.  I’m sure all of my vinyl record albums at Dr Levy’s house have gone up tremendously in value over the past ten years.   People are worth more than objects, but objects are worth more than- - an invitation to be saved, because those are a dime a dozen.  And one criteria of whether an object is worth a lot is the uniqueness and replacability of the object.   Speaking of that- - if Mom does make the move to just three miles down the road- - - maybe I’ll get her old computer because it would be in a lot better condition than mine is. 

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” ― Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

No matter what the politicians say about how great America is and how we, as a people, will always triumph, the fact is that the nation seems to be imploding.

Despite the dire state of our nation, however, you can rest assured that none of the problems that continue to plague our lives and undermine our freedoms will be addressed by our so-called elected representatives in any credible, helpful way, and certainly not during a State of the Union address.

Consider the following facts:

Our government is massively in debt. Currently, the national debt is somewhere in the vicinity of $18 trillion. More than a third of our debt is owned by foreign countries, namely China and Japan.

Our education system is abysmal. Despite the fact that we spend more than most of the world on education ($115,000 per student), we rank 36th in the world when it comes to math, reading and science, far below most of our Asian counterparts. Even so, we continue to insist on standardized programs such as Common Core, which teach students to be test-takers rather than thinkers.

Our homes provide little protection against government intrusions. Police agencies, already empowered to crash through your door if they suspect you’re up to no good, now have radars that allow them to “see” through the walls of your home.

Our prisons, housing the largest number of inmates in the world and still growing, have become money-making enterprises for private corporations that rely on the inmates for cheap labor.

We are no longer a representative republic. The U.S. has become a corporate oligarchy. As a recent survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen.

We’ve got the most expensive, least effective health care system in the world compared to other western, industrialized nations.

Nearly one out of every three American children live in poverty, ranking us among the worst in the developed world.

Patrolled by police, our schools have become little more than quasi-prisons in which kids as young as age 4 are being handcuffed for “acting up,” subjected to body searches and lockdowns, and suspended for childish behavior.

We’re no longer innocent until proven guilty. In our present surveillance state, that burden of proof has now been shifted so that we are all suspects to be spied on, searched, scanned, frisked, monitored, tracked and treated as if we’re potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

Parents, no longer viewed as having an inherent right to raise their children as they see fit, are increasingly being arrested for letting their kids walk to the playground alone, or play outside alone. Similarly, parents who challenge a doctor’s finding or request a second opinion regarding their children’s health care needs are being charged with medical child abuse and, in a growing number of cases, losing custody of their children to the government.

Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your propert
y.

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