It is immoral the amount of public debt run up year after year by our elected officials. Our founders must be turing over in their graves over the huge indeptedness we now face as a nation. Our current crop of leaders can not even hold a candle to these men of old who helped shape our nation.
Although much alighned by the left-leaning news agencies, the tea party advocates have been right about what is wrong with America more so than the so-called experts. Take a look at a few examples:
Minimum wage. One of the first things Democrats did after taking back Congress in 2007 was raise the federal minimum wage 41% from 2007 to 2009. Result? The unemployment rate went from 4.4% in May 2007 to 10.1% in 2009. It is 9.2% even today — four years later.
The Democrat Congress also decided to apply the same minimum wages to American Samoa. Results? Near-decimation of its economy, one that had been based largely on low-cost tuna canning and textile work.
… employment fell 19 percent from 2008 to 2009 … tuna canning employment fell 55 percent from 2009 to 2010… Average inflation-adjusted earnings fell by 5 percent from 2008 to 2009 and by 11 percent from 2006 to 2009.
TARP. Unless you were a politician or executive of a large bank, you were likely against the Troubled Asset Relief Program. I would guess that most anyone now calling herself a member of the Tea Party was against TARP in 2008. But Senator Barack Obama voted for it, along with most of his Democrat colleagues. Also the top brains of the Stupid Party pushed it: Henry Paulson , George W. Bush, and John McCain .
Here’s the funny thing: while Paulson was lending out less than $0.3 trillion, the Federal Reserve was lending out over $16T to do about the same thing! By my calculations, Paulson’s TARP slush fund was less than 2% the size of the Federal Reserve’s.
When the dust cleared, the federal government owned two bankrupt car companies and the god-awful home mortgage portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — entities that had nothing to do with the original purpose of TARP.
Global markets were so enamored with TARP that there was an immediate sell-off of about 20% in global stock markets the moment it went into effect. I also credit TARP, and McCain’s reaction to it, for McCain’s loss to Obama. Ever since, all budget discussions have involved units of trillions instead of mere billions. The world has not been the same since TARP.
Stimulus. Opposition to Obama’s stimulus was the origin of the Tea Party. Now we know the story.
What really happened: There are 1.2 million fewer jobs now than when the stimulus was passed. Unemployment went over 10% (vs. prediction of 8%) and is still over 9% (vs. prediction of about 6.8% at this time). It cost $814B or more. Maybe 6% of it went to infrastructure projects. Obama’s reaction? A little joke: “Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected.”
ObamaCare. ObamaCare was sold as a way to bend the health “cost curve” down. As it turned out, it is bending the cost curve up — health care will be more costly than it would have been without ObamaCare. It’s so great that in its first year about 1,500 companies, states, and unions were granted waivers.
ObamaCare strangled the recovery in the crib. The private sector has been generating only 6,400 jobs per month since it was passed, compared to 67,600 before. We would never return to pre-recession unemployment levels at the current pace. ObamaCare is costing us over 60,000 jobs per month.
Drilling moratorium. According to a new study by IHS Global Insight, merely picking up the pace in granting oil drilling permits would go a long way in producing jobs throughout the US, adding to GDP and reducing dependency on foreign oil sources. In 2012 alone it could mean 230,000 new jobs, $44B more in GDP, 150 million more barrels of oil, and $15B less in imported oil.
Budgets. Now we find ourselves in another budget fight, with the Tea Party getting the blame from much of the media and liberal punditry. The truth is that Democrats have not even written, much less passed, a budget of any kind in over two years; they simply kill everyone else’s.
- The Republican-led House passed a budget on schedule in April. Senate Democrats voted it down.
- Obama proposed a budget in February. The Congressional Budget Office scored it as having a 10-year cumulative deficit of $9.5 trillion. The Democrat-led Senate voted that down too, 97-0.
- The House proposed the only written plan for addressing the debt ceiling — the Cut, Cap and Balance plan. Senate Democrats voted that down, too.
The similarities are too many to ignore. Remember God is not a respecter of persons, if he punished one society for their lawlessness and debauchery He is most likely to do the same for all others who follow after the same course. If God destroyed both Sodom and Gomorrah, and the late Roman Empire, America is not immune to his wrath.
There are many in America who have cried out against this debasement of our society, most often they are ignored or worse ridiculed and lambasted. Those who espouse decency are declared extremist and radical while all those who promote the killing of children and immoral sexual debasement are called champions of civil-rights.
Be warned! God is not mocked! What he done before he will surely do again!
The culture of the Roman world was brutal and nasty. Ironically, we see its worst practices reviving with vigor. Please give us a moment as we recount a history seldom taught today’s students.
The Roman Empire had a twisted view about the value of human life. These views were banished by the ascendency of Christ’s teaching. Infanticide was both legal and encouraged in ancient Rome. Pagan societies, such as the Carthaginians, Romans and Greeks went so far as to kill their children outside the womb, sometimes as a religious sacrifice to their gods. According to Plutarch, the Carthaginians “offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs of young birds; meanwhile the mothers stood by without a tear or moan.”
We see a modern American society which looks at children as a burden, and a generation of mothers who have decided by their own “choice” to sacrifice a generation. Population control is now an international objective.
Roman views on homosexuality were closer to today’s views than many realize. Pundit Nathaniel Blake characterizes it this way: “But, the Roman conception of same-sex relationships was very different than that of the modern West. The most important factors in the Roman view seem to have been the status and role of the partners. The Romans did not consider homosexual or heterosexual identities as exclusive from one another. While bisexuality was common, strict homosexuality was all but unknown. Unlike the modern view, social class mattered a great deal in the acceptability of homosexual relations. The upper classes were much more likely to indulge in homosexual acts, and masters had the sexual use of their slaves.” It was common to see an older man who held dominance over a younger male, using him for sexual pleasure.
Finally, we see the debasement of money and profligacy of the state. Today taxpayers fund stadiums for the “games.” Roman emperors don’t hold a candle to the US Congress and the Federal Reserve in the looting of the public coffers and destruction of money.
In this, Roman Emperor Caracalla comes to mind. In addition to murdering his brother, Caracalla is mostly remembered for granting Roman citizenship to every Freeman in the empire. Caracalla’s goal was to broaden the tax base to pay for his extravagant spending. He raised the inheritance tax so he could double public salaries and win the allegiance of the legions. His public works are still on display today. If you visit Rome, you can see the ruins of the gigantic “Baths of Caracalla.”
His final contribution rivals the Federal Reserve. The silver denarius was an innovation in sound money introduced by Emperor Augustus. It was 95 percent silver like America’s pre- 1964 coinage, and the denarius lead to greatly improved honest trade around the empire. Caracalla, in his drive to increase spending, changed it to a coin with only 50 percent silver.
It took later emperors to debase it as far as the Federal Reserve has debased America’s currency. By 268 AD the denarius was only 0.5 percent silver. The result was predictable, as prices rose throughout the empire by up to 1,000 percent. Soon the “barbarians” hired by the emperor as mercenaries would not accept the denarius as payment, and insisted on being paid in gold.
Such manipulations by Roman leaders are legendary, but Americans who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it. The moral and financial collapse of Rome lead to a renaissance of morality and the “Christian Era.” We can only hope that the accelerating American collapse leads to a return of the time tested honest culture that celebrates life, prudently shuns sexual immorality, and with commerce flourishing after a return to honest money.
Have they bothered to look across the aisle to see how weak the Dems Ticket is? Obama has to run unopposed in order to even get on the ballot, and just to be sure that O can win they will do whatever it takes to clear out the opposing teams bench before the election. This sounds like a communist dictatorship somehow or is it just me?
Let us not forget that Obama did not actually win the primaries in 2008, Hillary forfeited her ELECTORIAL COLLEGE votes to O to put him over the top. They even cut the primary short and did not allow two states to vote for fear O was going to loose the primary.
For your information all you naysayers, the toothfairy could be running on the GOP ticket and have more qualifications to lead then the current President. Mr Magoo would make a better President then Obama. Anyone on the GOP ticket is better than anyone on the DEM ticket. Oh yeah that’s right the best the dems got is OBAMA since they have no one else to put on the ticket.
Is it 2012 yet?
Insight for your “Journey across the Sky”
A View from the Nest
And nothing unclean may come into it, or anyone whose works are cursed or false; but only those whose names are in the Lamb’s book of life. Revelation 21:27 (BBE)
Passports: They say you can not travel abroad without one because they are checked at the borders of each country upon entry. If you do not have your passport in order, you can be detained at the border crossing or refused entry into the country.
I recently traveled into Canada when visiting Niagara Falls. I had not gotten around to getting a passport and was the designated driver of a van full of family and friends. They all had their passports and birth certificates and I, sitting in the drivers seat, had none. I had not planned on leaving the country because I love the United States and find all its natural beauty to be more than one life time can explore. However, I was being outnumbered to go to the other side of the falls. Secretly, if truth be told, I had planned all along to cross into the Canadian side to view the Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls from the vantage point of the Canadian side. The view from Canada was absolutely breathtaking!
The only way you could get over to the other side was to cross one of the two bridges connecting the American side to the Canadian side. We chose the last day of our trip to cross the border into Canada to visit.
Our van pulled up to the border crossing and the attendant asked to see all our papers and they were passed forward and handed out the driver’s side window to the border guard who checked them and then asked me where mine was. I simply told her I had not had time to get a passport before leaving for the trip and I was the designated driver. I gave her a silly stupid smile and she asked how long we would be in the country and I told her we were only crossing to see the falls from their side and would be leaving shortly thereafter to head for home.
We were allowed to proceed across the border and spent a few hours in Canada enjoying the beauty of the falls. To make a long story short, the crossing back into America was also uneventful and I did not have to produce a Passport in order to travel between the two countries.
I am sure having a car load of children and responsible adults all having valid passports helped my situation but the fact still remained I had no passport to cross the border, yet I did.
Although a passport was not required on that trip across the border I would not want to try that alone without the benefit of others who are legally documented. I am sure had I approached the border crossing alone without papers, I would have been turned away at the border and told to remain on the American side.
There are some places you can not travel without proper documentation. Secure areas of the capital and within the Federal Reserve bank and perhaps some science laboratories. There are areas that are off limits to those who do not possess proper clearances and credentials.
So it is with heaven. Only those who have the proper passports will be allowed to enter into that Kingdom. Only those whose names are found written in the admission book will be allowed access through the pearly gates. Only those who accept the proper identification with Jesus will be allowed to walk onto the streets of gold.
If Jesus is sitting in the driver’s seat you will have no problems crossing over to that country, if however you have delegated him to a passenger in your car you may find yourself standing outside the gate. Jesus needs to be foremost in your life, in the front seat, in first place, and not an after thought.
Passports are required for foreign travel and having your name written in the Lamb’s book of life is required for heavenly travel. Do you have your passport?
But those who are waiting for the Lord will have new strength; they will get wings like eagles: running, they will not be tired, and walking, they will have no weariness. Isaiah 40:31 (BBE)
"...that where I am you may be also." Jn.14:3
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. (Matthew 6:33)
Daily Bible verse plus a picture of God's creation following Wayne Cordeiro's "The Divine Mentor" format.
"Come and hear, all you who fear God. Let me tell you what he has done for me." - Psalm 66:16
Daily Thoughts and Meditations as we journey together with our Lord.
Sermons and Devotions
Random Ramblings from the Resident Raptor
