Prayers not enough, or not enough prayers?

I've obviously been remiss in keeping up with my blog. For those of you aware of this, my dad is doing quite well following his open-heart surgery - thanks for all the prayers and support. It was a lot of care-taking for a few weeks, but now he is mostly self-sufficient, and walking a little more every day.

It's been an interesting conflation of events since his surgery. Since he has been going through so much in his recovery, our world and our country have faced a lot of challenges as well, especially with the hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, and, most recently, the sickening evil in Las Vegas last Sunday. 

It's common for many to wonder where God is in the face of tragedy and evil. And those who believe in God, Christians in particular, are often mocked for our beliefs, especially when we continue to believe in God during times of evil.

It's no surprise, then, that following the latest event in Las Vegas, people started asking "where was your God" in this, and politicians - past and present - like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi -- were quick to say prayers aren't enough - we need more control of guns. 

Aside from the fact that God gives us free will, and all the control of inanimate objects in the world won't stop evil, the other fact is that in a society that more and more diminishes God, we can only expect more heinous crimes like the one in Vegas. 

Simply put, it seems pretty clear that the more we've banished God from our culture, the more we've ushered in an anything-goes ideology that worships the individual's "freedom to choose" above all else. But maybe it's time we start looking at what a deadly combination Godlessness and self-gratification really is. After all, with no God, there are no consequences - like hell - and so why shouldn't those with a desire to kill just do what they want? The flip side, of course, is that it makes us all vulnerable to the whim of the one who feels there is nothing to lose.

It's remarkable that people like Hillary and Nancy have no problem with the murder of innocent humans in the womb, but they are horrified over the murder of people by guns...to the extent they can use it as a chance to exert control over everyone, that is. And of course, they feel duty-bound to remind us that turning to God for help is not the answer. 

Look at how that dismissal of God is working for us. Before we accept the random political premise that prayers aren't enough, though, at the very least, isn't it time we acknowledge that what we need is more of them? 

NFL whiners more interesting than attack on Christians

(The following is an article from Christian News Alerts)

The NFL players boycotting the national anthem have overshadowed the more disturbing story of a mass shooting at a church on Sunday, which the media doesn’t seem to want to talk about.

According to The Blaze, this is because the mass shooting doesn’t fit the liberal narrative many in the media are trying to promote. NFL protesters opposing Trump is “sexier and more watchable” than a black immigrant from Sudan who killed a white woman and shot at a church full of Christians before he was stopped by a man with a legally owned gun.

Sunday morning, Emanuel Kidega Samson — who immigrated to the US from Sudan — shot and killed Melanie Smith in the parking lot of the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ. He proceeded to enter the church and fire upon those in attendance, injuring seven.

His attack was stopped when Caleb Engle, an usher for the church, attacked Samson. During the struggle, Engle was pistol-whipped but continued struggling with the gunman. Engle managed to escape, and went to his car to retrieve his own gun. He used it to keep Samson — who accidentally shot himself — compliant until police arrived.

This terrible tragedy was largely ignored by the media over the weekend. Instead, the mainstream media spent countless hours covering the supposed heroism of NFL players protesting Trump by disrespecting the national anthem.

Matt Walsh, the author of the article on The Blaze, believes that liberals in the media outlets took a look at the two stories and realized the NFL protests better fit with their narrative and ran with that, burying the mass shooting story.

In Walsh’s words, the church shooting flew under the radar of millions of Americans because it wasn’t deemed important enough. “That’s because a terrorist attack at a church, which was cut short due to the incredible heroism of an usher, is a minor and insignificant event compared to political demonstrations of millionaire football players, according to the media and a large portion of our society.”

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. USA Today reports that Americans were more obsessed with the videos of Miley Cyrus twerking at the Video Music Awards than the hundreds of Syrians gassed to death by their own government. At that time, Americans decided a celebrity making a fool of herself was more important than mass murder.

Yet Americans are not the only ones to blame for fixating more on the NFL controversy than the attack on Christians. The liberal media was responsible for diverting the attention away from the terrible tragedy in Tennessee, and instead toward millionaire football players apparently standing up to the President.

As Walsh states, the media ran with the NFL story because it is “vastly more politically convenient” when it comes to promoting the liberal agenda. A story of a true hero using his Second Amendment rights to keep fellow Christians safe from a madman — who happens to be a Middle Eastern immigrant — does nothing for the liberal narrative.

This bias and cherry picking of pro-leftist stories is a prime example of why many Americans distrust the media.

It also raises the moral and ethical questions regarding why those in the media — whose responsibility it is to inform and notify Americans of important events — decided disrespectful, unpatriotic athletes were more interesting than a mass shooting at a Christian church.

Demands for minimum wage hike put jobs at risk

While many Americans spent Labor Day taking some well-deserved rest from their daily work duties, other workers across the country spent the day demanding an increase in the minimum wage. 

Dubbed “Fight for 15”, the rallies centered on raising the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour. In Chicago, for instance, several thousand people rallied against Gov. Bruce Rauner’s recent veto of a bill to raise Illinois’ minimum wage to $15. The state’s minimum wage is currently $8.25 — except in Chicago, where it has been set at $11. 

“Hold the burgers hold the fries … make our wages supersized!” a crowd of fast-food workers chanted in Connecticut as they marched outside a McDonald’s in Hartford. Never mind that McDonald’s has recently raised wages and begun to offer paid vacations for its employees. 

“We hope to get the message that $10.10 an hour [Connecticut’s minimum wage] is not enough and we need more and we deserve more. That and union rights,” said Richard Grimes, who works at a Burger King in Hartford. 

Sounds good on the surface, but it seems that entry-level workers miss the mark in asking for this kind of pay raise. Don’t they realize that they could very well find themselves with lower wages when their hours are cut back because small business employers simply cannot afford them, or worse, their jobs are replaced by robots altogether? 

This is not to knock these types of jobs, but an entry level, fast-food type job was never meant to be a career in and of itself. Like anything, it’s meant as a starting point to build upon and excel, either within the original workplace, or by taking the knowledge learned there and applying it in other areas as a worker grows his professional experience, resulting in higher pay along the way. In other words, a worker should earn higher pay, not be handed it upon demand. 

If an existing job’s pay is not enough to meet financial obligations in the meantime, how about taking on a second job until things improve? I’ve had plenty of experience working a full day in an office and waiting tables at night back in the day. Nobody owes us anything, and demanding employers make things easier for us at the cost of reduced hours or the job itself is not the solution.

Our diminishing safety in a leftist world

The anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the well-funded left-wing extremist group, has begun targeting Christian, pro-family, pro-traditional values organizations in earnest, especially since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and particularly since the violence in Charlottesville, VA.

Of note, in the aftermath of the Charlottesville, VA, tragedy, the SPLC's "fake hate" has targeted the pro-family group, Liberty Counsel, with vile lies that have spread far and wide through potentially thousands of news outlets, including CNN, which has joined forces in attacking Liberty Counsel. This defamatory attack equates Liberty Counsel with the most radical elements of society (including the person who drove the car into the crowd in Charlottesville) in a blatant attempt to link Liberty Counsel to violent, extremist radicals.

Unfortunately, major players are jumping on the bandwagon, such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, who just announced he is donating $1 million to SPLC, and Amazon, which has just banned Liberty Counsel, along with other traditional organizations, from partaking in its Smile Amazon program, which allows consumers to choose a charity to receive a donation with every purchase. Liberty Counsel is now banned from being a potential charity to choose on Amazon's site.

Apparently, SPLC didn’t learn – or more likely simply doesn’t care – that its aggressive hatred of Christian groups has already led to at least one violent scene of attempted murder when, in August 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the lobby of Christian-based Family Research Council and began shooting.

Corkins later told police that he wanted to methodically kill as many people as possible because the FRC was listed as an SPLC “hate” group. Another victim, Dr. Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute scholar, was targeted in a violent outbreak earlier this year at Middlebury College after the AEI was identified as a “hate group” by the SPLC. In neither incident did the SPLC apologize or even acknowledge any regret.

It has become a common tactic of the Left to aggressively label groups that promote conservative and Judeo-Christian values as “hate groups” and “fringe” – rather than try to win in the court of public opinion. The goals are to demean religious belief and values and to shame and intimidate pro-family people into silence – and thus keep them out of the public forum.

The SPLC’s tactics against Christian and conservative groups is reminiscent of how Nazis worked to dehumanize Jews by producing movie clips showing Jews interspersed with rats and other vermin, to produce the message that they were all part of the same polluting society.

The SPLC employs a similar strategy using a series of “hate maps” for each state, interspersing Christian and conservative groups alongside neo-Nazi and KKK groups. They also use a lot of Nazi and KKK imagery on their website and list pro-family organizations and individual leaders among neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups and leaders. Of course the goal is the same: to present these groups as all being equally vile. This fans the flames enough to assist them handily in raising huge amounts of money from gullible liberals to help fund their efforts to silence and sue anyone not in line with leftist thinking.

Not surprisingly, the SPLC fails to list actual hate groups – such as Black Lives Matter, which has advocated murdering police, and all leftist violence against Trump supporters, conservative speakers on college campuses and other hateful activities. And is it any surprise that since the SPLC started listing innocent, pro-Christian groups as hate groups that there have been numerous attacks on churches and gatherings of conservatives? 

The SPLC doesn’t just leave the furthering of its agenda in the hands of those activists who fund it. A major tool for pushing its message of hate against conservative and Christian values is its “Teaching Tolerance” magazine, a truly creepy publication that basically teaches that true “tolerance” demands the rejection of traditional religious and cultural values. Because thousands of copies of “Teaching Tolerance” are sent to schools across America, how frightening to think that children are being fed the type of propaganda that could one day turn them into advocates for “protecting society” from "hateful" conservatives by any means, at any cost - just like the many 1930s-era Germans who bought into believing that they should be afraid of Jews.

The Left knows it can never win the war of public opinion using facts and reason, so the only choice is to lie about, shame, intimidate, and harass conservatives and people of faith who dare to speak out. It’s a classic bullying tactic. But like any bully, if you stand up to this boldly and aggressively, they will begin to back down. Bullies always do because deep down, they’re basically cowards. That’s why it’s so important to keeping fighting with the truth, because the truth eventually wins - and if we don't fight for it, conservatives will be facing, in fact already are, a very real and increasing threat to our safety.

Anti-monument thugs need history lesson

Takiyah Thompson, the 22-year-old college student who toppled a monument of a Confederate soldier in Durham, North Carolina, instantly became a hero of the liberal media. She became even more of a hero when she was arrested at a news conference in which she demanded amnesty for the protesters.

For instance, Huffington Post hailed her in its headline, saying, “Takiyah Thompson, Hailed As ‘Hero,’ Showered With Support For Toppling Confederate Statue.” The media hung on her every word at the news conference, an event put on by the Workers World Party, a group that Thompson belongs to.

Nothing, however, was said about the Workers World Party itslef, the Marxist-Leninist group that has taken credit for organizing the monument-toppling. There was a reason for that: the Workers World Party’s history needs to be hidden in order for Thompson to be hailed as a hero.

As The Daily Caller points out, “the WWP has some very dirty secrets. It’s a pro-North Korean, anti-American organization that often espouses violence and crime to get its way…founded in 1959, it’s a hardline offshoot of the more moderate Socialist Workers Party.”

But as the WWP put it, “Organizers and protesters in Durham sent a clear message: Love does not trump hate; only mobilized people’s power can tear down white supremacy.” So vandalizing of property is suddenly unlawful?

These WWP folks seem to assume that the monuments were originally meant to signify oppression or hate or approval of slavery. But could they possibly consider that monuments could have been meant as a sign of repatriation, bringing those that had set themselves apart from the Union back into the fold? At the very least, can they not see these monuments as a reminder of our shared history, good and bad, and what we can learn from it? What a concept to actually see these monuments as a sign of actual unity of past.

Unfortunately, corrupt, divisive and uninformed people have recently sought to muddy the waters and propose a different meaning for those monuments, while fanning the flames of real hate by their horrible, violent actions. Perhaps it’s time they be reminded of what the monuments’ original purpose was. And, while I'm at it, if they want to eradicate real hate, how about at the very least starting with a protest of organizations like Planned Parenthood, which aborts close to 300 black babies every single day?

But no matter. People like Thompson are protesting on false premises, committing crimes, and making demands as if they deserve it. They are what is wrong with this country. I hope Thompson does face consequences for her actions. I’d settle for her being sentenced to at least one year of authentic history study and a reality check on what real hatred is. In the meantime, the only statement she and her ilk are making is that “we are thugs and the laws don't apply to us." That's not exactly a recipe for peace.

Are people finally seeing through Gore's lies?

Why did Al Gore think he could delude the public again after his first effort, "An Inconvenient Truth," was debunked? After its first weekend in theaters, “An Inconvenient Sequel” came in a humiliating 15th place in the US box office. But rather than acknowledge that maybe people finally see through Gore's bold attempts to further pad his coffers by hocking lies, his supporters are simply blaming Paramount Pictures for sabotaging the movie. How it would be Paramount's fault I don't know, but that's who they're blaming.

But what do Gore and other leftists have to gain from pushing the global warming hoax? Power. As one reporter put it, “By attempting to unite the entire planet under the ruse of battling ‘climate change’, globalist billionaires can consolidate political power into the hands of a few international leaders. This, in turn, allows for a much simpler manipulation of currency and resources, allowing men like George Soros to garner an unacceptable amount of influence throughout the world…all at the expense of international sovereignty.”

This mindset has been in place for a while now, of course. In 1988, then-Sen. Timothy Wirth, D-Colo., said: “We’ve got to … try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong…we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

While US-taxpayers are saddled with about $25 billion a year in funding the hoax, climate “experts” can’t even agree on what the crisis is. Recall that in the 1970s the panic centered around an impending new Ice Age. The proposed remedy for that non-crisis was unilateral disarmament, a call to nationalize everything, and the desire for a UN-supervised world socialist government “to spread the wealth around”.

When the ice failed to form by the 1990s despite years of cooling trends, the climate alarmists needed a new scapegoat: heat (despite the aforementioned years of cooling trends). Not surprisingly, the Global Warming alarmists proposed the same remedy: taxes and consolidated control.

Carrying the climate crisis baton, our former (thankfully) Marxist president, Barack Obama, dutifully bestowed $50 million of our money to the UN Climate Change fund organized by the absurd Paris Climate Accord. Thankfully, President Trump put an end to that nonsense by pulling us out of that agreement.

Nonetheless, the left is still working hard to create their one world utopia complete with the UN as the world’s government. Sadly, many of these people actually believe they’re crusaders who are working to change the world into a better place. The truth of course is that those behind the curtain are working on a new and hideous form of feudalism where there is only a ruling class and serfs. That’s exactly what happens when you give the bulk of power to a few, while dominating the many.

As for Gore’s movie failure, the box office tanking of his on-screen falsehoods couldn't have happened to a more perverse, lying fraud. With his private jet and multiple homes using more energy than an entire small town, his is the biggest carbon footprint of all. Yet his hoax has made him a billionaire thanks to all the gullible people that supported him – and, in some cases, still do. But maybe the dismal performance of his sequel is a sign of hope that more eyes are finally opening? We'll see. 

Our own permissiveness coming back to haunt us...

If you look at some of the things happening today, it’s pretty clear that our world’s complacent permissiveness toward political correctness and increased government control is coming back to bite us.

In the UK, where socialized medicine is well-entrenched, Charlie Gard, the baby with the life-threatening medical condition, was held prisoner by the hospital. Despite private funds raised by Charlie’s parents to bring their son to the US for experimental treatment, the hospital and courts wouldn’t allow it. They wouldn’t even allow the parents to take their son home to die there.

If the parents had been abusing Charlie, the government would have been right to step in. But Charlie’s parents did all they were supposed to do as his parents: everything they could to save their child. They should have had the liberty to do so.

This is what happens though when you allow government to provide healthcare -- you get government making life and death decisions, even against our will. Under this control, all the private funds in the world cannot buy the freedom to decide for ourselves or our loved ones what is best. If we learn anything from this, it’s that the Charlie Gard case is a dangerous sign for all those who want the same single-payer government-controlled health system here in America.

Meanwhile, Canada’s government is taking its authority even further. It recently enacted a law that gives government the power to remove children from their homes if the parents disagree with the child’s chosen gender identity.

Prior to this law, parents were rightly free to direct their children’s education, religious and cultural upbringing. But this legislation says parents may only influence a child’s upbringing “in accordance with the child’s own creed, community identity and cultural identity.” If the thought of a child left to his own devices in a world all too eager to gobble him up makes you shudder, don’t worry. The government is there to take over if things go awry. Who needs a mom and dad to get in the way of that?

As for gender identity issues, someone suffering from that needs compassion, prayers and psychological help, not government-forced coddling. Over a dozen surveys worldwide have shown that transgender suicide rates remain astronomically high regardless of how accepting society is, and it remains high even after they “transition.”

In a National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 41 percent of transgenders said they want to kill themselves not because of bullying, or because they’re being refused sex-change treatments, but because they’re confused, deluded, and they hate themselves. Encouraging hormonal and bodily mutilation as a solution is like prescribing liposuction to an anorexic. And forcing parents to accept their gender-confused child’s bewilderment and self-loathing, or risk losing them to the government, is simply insane. But it’s politically incorrect to question transgenderism, so parents better zip their lips if they want to keep their kids.

Here in America, when the US Supreme Court ruled that marriage was no longer between one man and one woman as God sees it, it was predicted immediately that this would usher in an aggressive transgender movement here as well, and has it ever.

In New York City, you can be fined up to $250,000 for refusing to use a transgender’s preferred pronouns. On college campuses, “No-Gender” t-shirts are trending as though it’s just the latest fad, while professors get terminated for failing to use the correct gender terminology. In Connecticut, a 15-year-old boy with a mustache is killing it on the girls’ track team because he “identifies” as a girl. How sad that all the training, commitment and effort put in by the actual girls on the team are for nothing because they simply cannot keep up with the physically superior boy claiming to be a girl.

In a telling interview following the recent track competition in which the mustached “girl” won first place, the “second” place actual girl said she could not share what she really thinks, but was able to express her disappointment at the loss. Of course she could not say what she really thought because it would likely have subjected her to the consequences of the hatred and intolerance of which she would’ve been accused.

It remains to be seen if the feminists who have championed political correctness and claimed for so long that girls can do anything boys can do, even physically, will be so willing to accept boys as being girls when those boys start getting the girls’ athletic scholarships. What a dilemma to have to choose between the politically correct tolerance they preach and the reality that such political correctness has wrought upon them.

This obsession with political correctness, the blind-eye toward government intrusion, and the demand that we embrace disorders as something good is to be expected. After all, our world has largely rejected natural order as designed by God. In doing so we’ve created a void being filled by bureaucrats who want to control us, while we promote feel-good emotions as our standard of what is right. Unfortunately, all this will deliver is more disorder, and if we persist in our own complacency rather than fight back, we’ll only continue to reap what we sow.