Did we miss the 9/11 lessons?

Rand Paul.  I would have trouble supporting that guy.  Sean Hannity was trying to make the point that the Iraq war was basically won and that Obama had only to make security arrangements but fell down on the job which allowed ISIS to grow.  Paul avoided comment, so Hannity repeated himself.  Paul would hardly agree, saying that the country was no country at all and that Iraq was probably doomed.  Yeah, but.  If someone declares war on you, it doesn’t matter if you’d rather be on the golf course, you better learn to respond.  Freedom isn’t free.  And that is why Paul seems out of step with most of the Republican party.

            Monica Crowley, Phd. in foreign affairs, says quite correctly that some Muslims are jealous to the point of insanity.  They can’t accept the fact that Christianity and the West has succeeded while Islam and its society has crashed and burned.  They were supposed to be on God’s side! They were supposed to conquer the world! And so we see successful Muslims, going to our schools and practicing their skills in good jobs, yet secretly turning to violent jihad.  Hasan and bin Laden, Tsarneavs and Mohammad Atta, 4 physicians who tried to car bomb Glasgow airport, name after name, all were successes.  (It’s not the dregs of Islamic society who do this.) Yet being successful in the West made them feel like traitors to Islam—a faith and a political society mashed into one.  So just as Islam teaches that ALL people go to hell-- pagans and infidels to burn forever, true Muslims to be refined by torture until they are ready for heaven—except for martyrs for Allah’s faith who go straight to heaven, they choose martyrdom.  And this attitude is proven by their targets.  They hate the success of the West so they targeted the World Trade Center instead of say, a football game where there would have been far more easy casualties.  And they targeted the USA’s political hub—Congress and the President.  But one pilot overflew the White House which is hard to pick out from the air and he crashed into the Pentagon.  The plane that was supposed to hit the Capitol was taken down by passengers and crashed in Pennsylvania. 

            And so we listened to a President speak strong words about ISIS the night before the 9/11 anniversary.  He had hopes that should some disaster occur, he would seem prepared and leaderlike.  It was pretty transparently political, even to MSNBC.  Their commentators kept making the excuse, “Well we couldn’t have done any different because Maliki didn’t want us in Iraq.”  That’s probably the lamest whining I’ve heard in years.  We shall see what the next two years bring.

Politics and Luther

We have had a wild and wooly week in politics.  Steve announced his Interim study on Fracking and Ground Water about a month ago.  Papers wouldn’t print our press release, so we took out ads and ran a “Straight Story From Steve” as we often do to get a story out.  Then suddenly the Oklahoma Environmental Quality guys were investigating fish kills along the Salt Fork River south of town and Steve was right in the thick of the news story.  Today he did interview for a radio station that will go on air tomorrow.  This next week is both the County Fairs for Kay and Osage and Tuesday is the Interim study on Oklahoma City.  Whew!

            But there’s still room for a little humor.  You know how Bill Clinton told us how he once tried Marijuana but didn’t like it and he didn’t inhale.  Well Joe Biden just announced that he once tried a marijuana brownie, but couldn’t keep it lit.  The feds proudly announced that the border is sealed and they had corraled all the illegals out in the Nevada Desert.  We’re talking about Cliven Bundy’s cattle you know.  And the IRS says it was all a silly incident and they never really targeted conservatives or tea partiers.  Oh?  I dare you to wear a Don’t-Tread-On-Me teeshirt or Fair-Tax hat to your audit. 

            And some serious stuff.  I wrote about this last year but it bears repeating.  Glenn Beck often points out that the Reformation was also a Catholic thing—that many people wanted the medieval church reformed and eventually got it done in 1563.  (Beck had Catholic upbringing.) And of course there were many who contributed.  But the stunning break-up into Protestants is traced to 1517 when Luther posted his 95 theses or arguments on a church door.  But where did he mentally break with Catholicism and what were the circumstances?  It is called the Tower Experience.  Here’s the story. Do you remember what the world was doing 500 years ago last night?  In a quiet room in the tower of a college dormitory, a scholar-monk , sat preparing lecture notes on the Psalms.  He had always struggled with Romans 1:16-17, “For I am  not ashamed of the Gospel.  It is the power of God to salvation for anyone who believes. For in it the Righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, ‘the righteous shall live by faith.’”   Luther knew the gospel story and knew it gave salvation, but what was the meaning of the Righteousness of God?  Isn’t that a terrifying thing to encounter--God’s absolute perfection and wrath? How did one know if you ever had enough faith, had confessed enough and been genuine in confession, reformed your life enough?  And what was this thing about ‘to’ and ‘from faith’? 

            As Martin Luther toiled on the lesson of Psalm 31 (or Ps.71, we aren’t sure) it states, “Deliver me in Thy righteousness.” Suddenly he realized that God’s Righteousness is also His unfathomable love that comes after us to deliver.  And that God’s deliverance is entirely His doing.  At which point, Luther said, “Then the entire Holy Scripture became clear to me, and heaven itself was opened to me.”

How’s that? Well, if we didn’t even see Deliverance (i.e. Salvation) coming, it is an utterly free gift--Grace.  And if by grace alone, God’s righteousness is given and credited  to us, then that righteousness is evidenced (revealed)from faith (as the quoted Habakkuk 2:4 passage says). Moreover it inspires us “to faith”.  And as faith and grace are entirely an interaction between the believer and his Lord, Savior and Lover/Friend, two things are true. No church council or bishop or canon can alter it.  And we know the gospel from the very expression of God in His Word.  Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Scripture Alone.

What date did this happen? Well, it was one night in early autumn, since Luther said he had just started the first fire to ward off the chill.  School had just started.  And it was either 1513 or 1514.  (Might have been 500 years ago last night) Luther didn’t remember and scholars can’t figure it out either.  But God truly lit a fire that night. In 1995, the German Catholic church had a conference with the Lutherans and told them with smiles all around, “You know we actually agree heartily with Luther on the Grace.” The presiding cardinal was the guy who would later become Pope Benedict. 

But many historians who have studied the era say they would pick a different date to commemorate the Reformation.  1521 was a debate between Luther and Eck, a Dominican scholar and that highlighted the gulf between the two sides.  Others, more spiritual, say 1515 would be more like it.  That was when Luther taught a year on Romans and published his beliefs which had departed from official teaching (Compendium on Romans).  Compendium was such a bombshell book that the church tried to destroy it.  When John Wesley had his Aldersgate experience 200 years later, he told about a spiritual awakening upon going to a prayer meeting of Moravians on Aldersgate Street. And what was happening when Wesley had this defining moment and conversion.  They were reading Martin Luther’s preface to Compendium on Romans, the only part of the book that was in existence at the time.  So powerful were the words!  In the 1970’s the Vatican ‘found’ the complete text in their libraries in Rome. 

What his exposition of Romans points out about Marty, according to Catholic historian Paul Johnson, was what a profound translator of scripture Luther was. He was also a profound translator of life.  On politics, he made a statement that a lot of people would emphatically nod in agreement even today.  “People often get the prince they deserve.”  Which is to say, if we don’t vote and do it wisely, we are sunk.

Ferguson foolery

I hate to admit that I feel little sympathy for the kid who got shot in Ferguson nor for the police officer.  Who knows what the true story is and a grand jury should sort it out.  But surely the businessmen of the city got a raw deal.

            You pour your heart and soul into a business and it is hard enough to make it work in the market.  4 out of 5 small businesses fail in the first two years.  Those guys in Ferguson probably had their houses mortgaged, no pension, and worked hundred hour weeks like I used to.  In the end, a bunch of hooligans destroyed their American Dream.  And what did they do to deserve this? Listen to the pundit theoreticians on TV who say, “Well, there’s no excuse for looting…”  No excuse?  It is criminal.  It is despicable, as in the root word ‘despise’.  And in the end, what do those idiots who looted have to show for it?  Their town will be a disaster zone for years to come.  Some say that Newark and Detroit never recovered from the riots there in the 60’s—fifty years ago!  Not one in ten thousand people you would ask could remember what righteous cause started those riots.

            Meanwhile the pious screwballs who run government and civic leaders who are a joke, are saying that they must rebuild.  Hunh?  That’s like telling a raped woman that at least she didn’t get pregnant and here’s a new dress to wear.  They may rebuild but if I were in business there, I would be haunted by serious considerations about leaving and going somewhere else.  “Well, I appreciate the efforts you make to rebuild my business, but from now on our main store will be in St. Charles.  Even if I were an unaffected plumber with only tools in the back of my truck, I would think, “Gosh, I have to travel ten miles in city traffic to find the plumbing supply house now.  I could just as well work out of the suburbs and still come into town to do some work.”  The few businesses who stay behind and fix things up will be able to charge more and will need to charge more to offset their sky-high insurance rates.  The ultimate bozos are the citizens of Ferguson. 

            So what should the folks in Ferguson have done?  This too will sound weird but in the days of militias who protected their community things would have looked different.  They would  have rushed to their closets and grabbed shotguns and rifles, headed to the nearest merchant under duress and volunteered for night watch duty.  Looters tend to think twice when a business has 4 armed men in the doorway who are more than willing to shoot if they try to loot.  Just throw that darned rock at my window; toss that Molotov cocktail and see what you get in return. 

            I heard the arrest count a couple of nights.  78 arrested and 3 were from Ferguson.  120 arrested and 4 from Ferguson.  That means that the community organizers and outside agitators were the culprits.  So who are the protesters  after midnight?  Walter Williams wrote about how it is the tragedy of fatherless youth.  Typical Williams, he has facts and statistics to prove this as the cause. I have easier proof that it was out of town agitators.  During the riots, some rioters threw rocks at the St. Louis Cardinal gift shop at the stadium.  Police quickly arrested the perps.  Salient fact: the Redbirds are unequivocally the town heroes.  No person from St. Louis would dream of bashing the beloved Cardinals.  Unless the perps were from, say, Philly or Chicago.

            So what should Ferguson do?  I suggest, not entirely tongue in cheek, that we preserve the business district as-is and don’t rebuild it.  Just make it a National Monument to human foolery where for generations unborn we can remind ourselves of the results of shooting in the foot and destroying the American Dream out of spite and an entitlement mentality.  Meanwhile the residents can start a new shopping center somewhere else and bring in new businessmen and repent.  Which should give the media something to chew on.

The flag is already there

So Obama finally did something in the Middle East.  He cancelled a shipment of Hellfire missles to Israel, citing tension between USA and Israel. 

“Obama has quibbled with Israel over the defensive operation in Gaza, making various attempts to press Israel into accepting a truce with the adamant terrorist organization of Hamas. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly responded to the pressure by telling the administration "not to ever second guess me again," after Hamas committed one of its many ceasefire violations. According to US officials cited in the Wall Street Journal report, the Wednesday night phone call between Obama and Netanyahu was "particularly combative."—Drudge Report, today.

Nothing new.  Let me tell about something I didn’t know about until it came to light from Michael Youssef, a specialist in Egyptian politics and Middle Eastern affairs, and a US general interviewed by Mike Rosen.  See if you missed these interesting events which our news media has not foundto unimportant. 

When Egypt overthrew Mubarack then had an election, a popular Sufi Muslim general won the election by 3%.  Morsi of the the Muslim Brotherhood came in second.  But Obama demanded that the Egyptians install Morsi and his ‘party’ even though they lost.  (The equivalent of Russia demanding that USA install Nixon as President rather than Kennedy or Mondale instead of Reagan)  Egypt complied and of course the Egyptians revolted again.  What made them revolt?  There were 18,000 Christians murdered by the government during the year of Morsi.  Secular Muslims, who view the 15% Christian minority with some contempt nonetheless didn’t want a country where people just disappear.  Muslim Brotherhood, contrary to US media explanations is no political party, but rather an umbrella organization for over 70 terrorist outfits.  The Egyptians overthrew Morsi, and just this week disenfranchised the Brotherhood from holding any offices again or organizing as any kind of shell political party.  The Sufi general got 80% of the vote.  So what did Obama do?  He canceled US-Egyptian aid in a fit of anger.  Apparently he liked the Brotherhood. 

Unlike every other Prez since Nixon, Obama went to war on the sly.  In Libya he got an ambassador and 3 others killed.  What was that ambassador doing that was so important that we kept him in a dangerous location at Benghazi?  Running guns to the rebels in Syria, using them from Libya in the aftermath of Qaddafi.  Finally he refused to get involved in Syria, though he was equipping a group called ISIS that formerly called itself Al Aqeda in Iraq.  ISIS knows how to operate American arms now.  That’s why there is that picture of an ISIS guy hot-rodding a US tank captured in Mosul.  But when ISIS turned really, really violent as they conquered northern Iraq, Obama began to diss them.  Reports are that there were 90,000 Yazidis and Christians in Mosul.  Essentially none remain.  Perhaps half have been murdered.  Which all goes to prove that when you do nothing in the face of evil, you become like the Germans who stood by passively while the Nazis rounded up Jews.  You didn’t create the holocaust, but you let it create itself. 

So now we have a terrific mess on our hands.  There are well over 100 suspected Americans who have joined ISIS and will come back to terrorize USA as homegrown terrorists once their part of the war ends.  They have already caught one guy who foolishly tweeted his intents as he came back and authorities intercepted him at LaGuardia Airport. No more missles for Israel was the news today. And there is that UTube video of an ISIS guy bragging about how they will soon come to plant the flag in our White House.  Heck, I think it is already there.

Neglect?

So what would you say about a parent who lets her child go to the park every day where neighbors watch her child and there is supervised breakfasts and lunch?  What would you say about parents who let a kid roam over pastures and creeks for hours at age 8 with only a dog for supervisor?  What would you say about parents who let an 11-year old ride 180 miles through the wilderness and camp at night with no map or guidance whatsoever.

            The first case is Debra Harrel who let her daughter go the park in Augusta.  The South Carolina child custody folks charged her with felony neglect carrying a lengthy prison term, despite the protest of the neighbors who say that many kids are left to play in a group by parents who can’t afford child care. 

            The second case is my parents who often let me explore the pasture and creek below the farmstead.  With nothing more than a stick for protection and a big dog who was my best friend, I encountered rattlers and poison ivy and bulls.  Did I survive?  Yes, and learned a great deal for the experience.  I didn’t fall in the pond, either because my mother admonished me, “You don’t have to jump in the water to know you’ll get wet.”  And when me and the dog found a recluse steer, we drove him home just for fun, prompting my granddad to say, “been looking for that onery sucker.” I first discovered that chesnut trees have a blight and will not grow to maturity, that thistles bite back and if you pick up a rock, always turn it over toward you so if there is a snake underneath, he’ll be on the far side of the rock.  Were my parents neglectful?  No one in the 50’s thought so.  All farm kids had this upbringing.  Of course we turned out self-reliant, resourceful and confident which the liberals detest.

            The third case is that of Joe Miller.  In 1879, at the age of 11, his father put him on a horse and sent him from Pond Creek to Miami in the Indian Territory.  The 180 mile ride took 3 days.  He had to avoid outlaws and cross major rivers.  Why was he sent on this mission?  Because George Washington Miller, the trail boss whose life inspired Mr. Favor in the Rawhide TV series, had heard that the Ponca Indian tribe was being given a choice of two reservation sites, one near Pond Creek, one near what would become Ponca City. Miller was friends with the tribal elders, thought they had been mistreated, wanted them to choose the Ponca City area as better for their needs, and dispatched his boy to tell them about the two tracts.  Little Joe stood in front of the chief and clan leaders answering questions about the prevalence of wild plums, turkeys, grass types and rivers.  The tribe’s leaders were so confident of the kid’s answers that they agreed the Ponca area was best where they could put tribal headquarters on the hill between Salt Fork and Arkansas rivers. 

            I catch myself asking if anyone in the South Carolina bureaucracy could answer Joe Miller’s interrogators.  Indeed would they predict a good outcome for Joe as an adult, given what obviously is child neglect and endangerment by 2014 standards.  Probably not.  But Joe grew up to be head of the largest ranch in America, the 101 Ranch, and honorary chief of the Ponca Tribe.  Did I mention, he risked partnership with some inexperienced oilman named EW Marland who discovered the first acclaimed geologic oil find? Or that his ranch in conjunction with Oklahoma A&M perfected the first hybrid seed corn?  Or that in memory of his dad and their old time cattle drive friends, he created an honorary organization and hall of fame for those who drove 10 million head of cattle over trails from Texas to Kansas from 1870-1885.  Or that he organized the world’s largest Wild West show in 1905?

            Which brings me to another interesting thought.  Bloody Kansas in the 1880s had 89 murders and the 1885 population was roughly 225,000.  Compare that ten year murder rate to a single year in Chicago which has about ten times the population.  Answer is 500+ murders.  And these are caused primarily by gangs.  Maybe we should ask what constitutes reasonable parenting.  

Articles of Impeachment for Obama

The Dems are raising money  by alarming donors with the prospect of impeachment.  “Give money to preserve our Democrat Senate lest the evil Republicans impeach our President.” I doubt that will happen but I guess I agree with their premise.  So if we impeached Obama, what could we charge him with?  My granddad would have offered the following as a starter.

 

“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.”

“He has…obstruct[ed] the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners.”

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.”

“He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.”

“For …abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.”

“He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us.”

“In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humbe Terms; Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury.  A Prince whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a Free People.”

                                    --Declaration of Independence

 

Actually great great great great great grandfather, General Daniel Morgan, didn’t actually sign this document; but he would have if he’d been in Philadelphia.  Nonetheless, he was General Washington’s southern commander, organizer of the Virginia Sharpshooters.  Certainly would have taken a shot at King George III if he had had a chance. And I think we could bank on him to recommend the above articles of impeachment.  Those hotheads like George Washington, Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams would have been raising an army by now.

Journalists!!

So where do I get the idea that journalists are simply a bunch who know how to write and broadcast but know little about anything else?  And who infect each other with leftist politics?

Watching the Weather Channel this morning, I got an education of blowout preventers.  The bozo with the microphone told us that hardly anybody knew what a blowout preventer was until the BP oil disaster and that oil companies don’t like to talk about blowout preventers.  The gist of the article was about some guy who has invented an undersea cleaner to clean things dropped on the deep sea floor of mud and other contaminants.  Good invention.  But the author went on to say that the notion that things might be dropped under construction is hush-hush by the evil oil industry. 

Hunh?  Blowout preventers have been around since the 1920s.  They are the things that keep wells from spewing crude into the air.  Come to Oklahoma and talk to anybody who works on a drilling rig.  Or anybody in an oil company.  Or just about any casual citizen who lives around the oil industry.  Any lawyer, state regulator, or accountant who has ever seen an Income and Expense sheet for an oil and gas concern.  If you have a reservoir two miles deep and an overburden of rock that is at least twice as heavy as water, it’s like sitting on a water balloon and poking a hole with a needle through a bore hole straw.  Do you think the water will try to blow out the straw?  Same with an oil or gas well. So now as we approach the 100^th anniversary of blowout preventers with an entire competitive industry of well services, the journalists are clueless of their existence. 

Now it’s okay to be a layman and not know about the engineering, but to then to blame that your own stupidity on perniciousness of an industry is sort of telling about your own moral character.  Let me give another example.  The left has been fretting about how the Hobby Lobby decision will allow Big Companies to use religion to exonerate and extricate themselves from other things they dislike like taxes.  Indeed, I sit facing a cartoon that shows a tall building labeled as megareligion corporation and big headlines about how the company wants poor pay for women, no minimum wage, and no pensions, no taxes.  I have one little question.  Does the writer know anything about any religion out there?  Did Jesus say something about not liking minimum wage?  Did Buddha nix pensions?  Lao-tzu decry taxes? Maybe Moses wanted his sister Miriam to work for free.  Okay, so Islam might want unequal pay but that’s something for the Justice department to pursue.  The point is that the Godless Left knows so little about faith it’s laughable.  They spew airheaded manure and believe their own dung.

Finally came a supposedly serious article by AP, “Absolutely Pretentious” about how the US economy is just wondrously better than all the rest of the world, and immune to the problems that plague those other poor countries.  The author lists reasons why.  Employment is booming with 288,000 jobs created, entrepreneurship is just sky high, USA knows better than to cut spending much, and the stock market is glorious.  Hmm.  The jobs report for this month shows 800,000 part-time jobs created and 500,000 full-time jobs lost giving a net +288,000. But the loss of all those full-time jobs is troubling, by most any economist’s thinking.  USA has gradually stopped being a highly entrepreneurial country under the thumb of heavy regulation.  Before the 90’s, 13 to 14% of companies were less than a year old showing a lot of new enterprises starting—a statistic true for over a hundred years.  Today we are down to 6-8%, the statistic that reminds one of France and the PIIGS countries of the European Union.  Germany has more start-ups than USA.  Deficit spending has continued so long that debt service will become a devastating issue if the interest rate ever goes up—in other words, when the economy tries to improve.  So our national debt may be a drag on overall growth for years to come.  Finally stocks now trade at an average price-to-earnings ratio of 25.  Historically US stocks have traded at 10-16 P/E and whenever they have gone above 20, they won’t stay that way for long.  Either a crash or sea change of earnings increases has to take place. 

If anything, this AP article could be viewed as a strong indicator of a market crash, like Joe Kennedy, a week before Black Monday, listening to the shoe shine boy talk equities and concluding that things had come to a pretty pass and it was time to get out of the market.  Me?  I just think it is time to stop listening to the journalists.