Resurrection Sunday

Today is a day filled with hope. Our eternal life is dependent on a Risen Savior. What was it Paul said?

13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:

14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.

16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:

17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.

18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.


And I believe that Christ rose again.



But for some reason today I'm feeling, well, in a funk. Seems like none of the things I would like to be doing are happening, finances are a continuing struggle, and I'm not looking forward to a new week of the same old, same old.

Sorry for the whining, I really don't have anything important to say, and if I talked about some of the garbage that is going on in our state politics/government, I'd probably get angry, so I think I'll avoid that as well.

So that's it. I got nothing and I'm not particularly in a good mood either.

Later.

Your comments on this?

From The Sunday Times (London)
March 16, 2008
Royal college warns abortions can lead to mental illness
Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor

Women may be at risk of mental health breakdowns if they have abortions, a medical royal college has warned. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says women should not be allowed to have an abortion until they are counselled on the possible risk to their mental health.

This overturns the consensus that has stood for decades that the risk to mental health of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy outweighs the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion.

MPs will shortly vote on a proposal to reduce the upper time limit for abortions “for social reasons” from 24 weeks to 20 weeks, a move not backed by the government. A Sunday Times poll today shows 59% of women would support such a reduction, with only 28% backing the status quo. Taken together, just under half (48%) of men and women want a reduction to 20 weeks, while 35% want to retain 24 weeks.

Some MPs also want women to have a “cooling off” period in which they would be made aware of the possible consequences of the abortion, including the impact on their mental health, before they could go ahead.
Related Links

* An embryonic disaster?

More than 90% of the 200,000 terminations in Britain every year are believed to be carried out because doctors believe that continuing with the pregnancy would cause greater mental strain.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends updating abortion information leaflets to include details of the risks of depression. “Consent cannot be informed without the provision of adequate and appropriate information,” it says.

Several studies, including research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2006, concluded that abortion in young women might be associated with risks of mental health problems.

The controversy intensified earlier this year when an inquest in Cornwall heard that a talented artist hanged herself because she was overcome with grief after aborting her twins. Emma Beck, 30, left a note saying: “Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum. I want to be with my babies; they need me, no one else does.”

The college’s revised stance was welcomed by Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP campaigning for a statutory cooling-off period: “For doctors to process a woman’s request for an abortion without providing the support, information and help women need at this time of crisis I regard almost as a form of abuse,” she said.

Dawn Primarolo, the health minister, will this week appeal to MPs to ignore attempts to reduce the time limit on abortion when new laws on fertility treatment and embryo research come before parliament.

Dr Peter Saunders, general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: “How can a doctor now justify an abortion [on mental health grounds] if psychiatrists are questioning whether there is any clear evidence that continuing with the pregnancy leads to mental health problems.”

How do you really feel??

Part of my wages each year is 2 hogs and a beef. We are talking USDA certified Grade A Black Angus corn-feed prime beef. The kind of beef that you would pay $35 or $40 dollars for at quality steakhouse. Well marbled, tender, succulent beef.

The steer is taken to a local locker to be processed, hangs in the cooler for about 10 to 15 days, and then cut, wrapped and packaged. Last week we got our 1/2 of a beef from the locker. We usually get a half a beef at a time cause we don't have freezer space for 800 to 900 lbs of frozen beef.

Now the locker where this is done is a private business which serves a local clientèle. Most of the animals he processes are directly off of the farm, done for the family that raised the animal. Sometimes he will process meat which a customer buys from the farmer. In any case, he works with quality meat, for customers who want the very best.

Be patient, I'm getting there.

Iowa is known for having some large deer, as well as a very large deer population. The first weekend in December often sounds like rural Iowa is a war zone with all the gunfire in the distance. If you don't hunt deer you're considered to be some sort of freak. A lazy worthless, good for nothing couch potato, who fails his civic duty to help lower the suicidal quadruped population. When the act of hunting has become a sporting event in which the goal is not really to kill something and eat it, rather to kill something and stop the long legged varmits from reproducing. What one does with the animal after successfully ventilating said animals hide, is a secondary question in many peoples thinking.

Their actions follow along this general train of thought. Kill Bambi = good. Less car accidents, less danger to mankind, fun activity to do only a Saturday, and also an excuse to get very drunk. Only after Bambi has assumed room temperature does the typical hunter consider what to do with the carcass. Some literally leave the animal lay in the woods, these are the type that consider anything that moves to be a fair target, and would never make the effort to do anything other than pull the trigger.

The second group like to eat venison, consider the opportunity to hunt, a way to put cheap meat on the table, and I might add would eat kangaroo and anything else that moves, if given the opportunity. These hearty types generally process the deer themselves, because as well as eating something like venison, they are also a little on the penny pincher side, in other words, their cheap. They would eat bad tasting venison even when they could go to the locker and buy some home raised beef, cause it's cheap.

The third group is where we get to the crux of the matter. Often times the third type, shoot the Bambi, then have a discussion with themselves about what to do with the thing. "Dude, I don't what to cut it up, you do it". Or "lets take it to the local locker and have a professional cut it up". So I have seen literally hundreds of deer carcasses piled up outside the locker.

The owner of our local locker does not appreciate this kind of customer. First they often really don't want the meat anyway, so they wind up giving the a meat to charity or some such thing. Second they sometimes do not pay the bill for processing Bambi. Leaving the locker owner with a pile of meat he can not sell. It is illegal to sell venison harvested in open season. And he used his valuable time cutting up Bambi instead of focusing on the normal customers who would not consider venison worth the time to eat, they want corn fed beef.

So in honor of his disdain for the deer hunter population, and the Bambi they bring to his shop to be processed, the local locker owner has placed in a prominent place, just inside the front door, this visual devise to show his contempt for Bambi.



Insert your own caption here.

Barack Hussein Obama, "The Audacity of Hope, and Steven Phillip Kazmierczak

UPDATE:

Maybe Kazmierczak was putting his hope in the 72 virgins theory. Sounds to me like he was getting a little help from some less than friendly jihads'.

from Debbie Schlussel


For those who have never been here before, don't blame me, I read the idea here.

Mary Mitchell

Now I have a few thoughts on the subject as well, but I'm confident that my take on the subject is much different than Ms. Mitchell's.

First a little about Barack and Hope

Much has been said and written in the last few weeks about Barack Obama's appeal to the voters in the election cycle. He wrote a book last year entitled "The Audacity of Hope" in which he suggests that Americans need to again have hope in the future, believe that change can come, that a spirit of optimism is essential to the American dream. Some on the right would suggest that Mr. Obama's fervored speeches are little more than empty pablum filled rhetoric. I'll leave that for the reader to decide. I want to concentrate on hope.

American Heritage Dictionary
hope (hōp)
v. hoped, hop·ing, hopes

v. intr.

1. To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.
2. Archaic To have confidence; trust.


v. tr.

1. To look forward to with confidence or expectation: We hope that our children will be successful.
2. To expect and desire. See Synonyms at expect.


n.

1. A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.
2. Something that is hoped for or desired: Success is our hope.
3. One that is a source of or reason for hope: the team's only hope for victory.
4. often Hope Christianity The theological virtue defined as the desire and search for a future good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God's help.

Since I have not read Mr. Obama's book, we will assume here that he uses the term hope in either the verb or noun form, most likely definition #1 in each, and most likely uses both. So hope is a wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of it fulfillment or a wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment. In the speeches by Mr. Obama which I have heard he refers to hope, that we can end the war, suffering, and a long list of other things, "if only we have the audacity to hope".

Now hope can be a good thing, I hope my children grow up to be responsible, God fearing adults, who want to live in a manner pleasing to Jesus Christ, and that they have a personal relationship with Christ which is sincere, fruitful and eternal. I can hope those things. But if I never do anything more than hope, well, it's highly doubtful that this hope will be realized, why, because in my world, hope requires action on my part. I can hope to win the lottery, but since I believe that games of chance are not something that God would have me be involved in, I never buy a lottery ticket, my hope is useless, because you have to play to win, right?

And according to Ms. Mitchell our culture is suffering from the "The pain of hopelessness".
And the question is why? Is it because we lack in material goods? Is it because we lack a political system that "cares" about us? Is it because we have crime and poverty and violence on our streets and in our homes?

Or is it because we have lost the true meaning of hope, and/or we confuse success in life with things which are in reality things which lead to hopelessness? We'll come back to this in a moment.

Lets think about Mr. Kazmierczak for a moment. What would lead a young man, an intelligent, well educated, well liked,he even had a girlfriend, to kill 5 other humans and then shoot himself? Doing some searching about Mr. Kazmierczak on the internet, one soon finds some disturbing things.

Mr. Kazmierczak

and from his girlfriend


if you read through all that, here's a short list,

he was confined to an asylum after he started cutting himself,
he was taking psychotropic drugs to control his "schizophrenia",
who joined the army in 2001 but had to be discharged soon after for psychological reasons,
got a job in a prison but suddenly stopped going to work.
his mother died two years ago,
He was a co-author of an academic paper called “Self-Injury in Correctional Settings: ‘Pathology’ of Prisons or of Prisoners?” which examined why inmates might hurt themselves with behaviors like cutting their skin.
he had begun to get tattoos which included "- and he had disturbing tattoos inked on to his arms; one of a character from the horror movie Saw, one of a skull with a dagger through it and one of a satanic pentagram."
and one of the last things he sent to his girlfriend was "a paperback edition of 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Anti-Christ," a book he had been reading recently, according to sources."

So in summary, Ms. Mitchell was right, "We are living at a time when depression seems to be as common as a cold or flu. Yet what is depression but an impenetrable cloud of hopelessness?"

Here was a young man without hope. But not the hope which Barack Obama is pushing. Because this young man was a part of the the culture of hope. His plan was to help those in the criminal-justice system. He was concerned about his fellow man. He was a good person. He had every reason to hope, right?

All this leads to something which the media, the culture and even the church has failed to tell people. Hope in not found in politics, hope is not found in a college education, hope is not found in popularity or fame. From the definitions above,
"4. often Hope Christianity The theological virtue defined as the desire and search for a future good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God's help."

Hope, real genuine hope is found in Jesus Christ, God the Son.

Romans 15:13
Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

Galatians 5:5
For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

Colossians 1:5
For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;

1 Thessalonians 2:19
For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?

1 Thessalonians 5:8
But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

1 Timothy 1:1
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope;

Titus 1:2
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;

Titus 2:13
Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;

Hebrews 6:18
That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us
Hebrews 6:19
Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

1 Peter 1:21
Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.

I think you'll are smart enough to get the point. The hope that Barack is selling and the hope that Steven Kazmierczak could not find are both false hope, empty hope. True hope is found in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the Cross of Calvary. Through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have the hope of forgiveness of sins in this life, and the hope of life eternal. Real hope.

Do you have that hope?

Vote for McCain? Never!

Just participated in a poll on whether I would vote for John McCain.

BTW, I highly recommend the Andrew Napolitano speech on YouTube linked below.


I never voted for George W. Bush, I didn't buy his "compassionate conservatism". I will not under any circumstances vote for John McCain. He is far more liberal than Bush on almost all issues.

Start with the Constitution.

First Amendment, McCain/Feingold was one of the most egregious violations of the Constitution in the last 20 years. In any other universe than this one, a member of Congress who writes a law, in fact champions to this day a law, which attempted to supersede the words, "Congress shall make no law" , would be impeached. Period, end of story. The man is an enemy of the Constitution.

Second Amendment, John McCain along with Joe Lieberman introduced a bill, S.890, in 2001, which would have outlawed the private sale of firearms and strictly limited the ability of gun owners to buy guns and gun accessories at gun shows. He receives an F- rating from Gun Owners of America.

Fourth Amendment, John McCain voted for the Patriot Act. See this YouTube speech by Andrew Napolitano. This is a fascinating lecture on the erosion of our civil liberties. If you are really interested you should find all 4 parts of the lecture. This is just part of the lecture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SU0zuUzrSg

Fifth Amendment, John McCain is not pro-life, read this statement from August "1999, which he repeated on more than one occasion as recorded by a liberal web-magazine, Slate. He would allow abortion to continue unchecked, I quote, "I'd love to see a point where Roe v. Wade is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations." John McCain is in favor of depriving the right to life from the unborn by never repealing Roe vs. Wade.

http://www.slate.com/id/2139775/

Fourteenth Amendment, John McCain does not understanding the meaning of the words, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof", so he considers all babies born on US soil to be citizens even though that is directly opposed to what the author of the original wording of the 14th Amendment had to say about it. Quote Jacob Howard "Absence of owing any allegiance to any other foreign power, which in return allows the United States to exercise full and complete jurisdiction over the person." and Senator Lyman Trumbull quote "“It is only those persons who come completely within our jurisdiction, who are subject to our laws, that we think of making citizens…" birthright citizenship for illegal aliens is a direct violation of the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment and John McCain supports birthright citizenship.

http://federalistblog.us/2007/09/re...risdiction.html

Sixteenth Amendment, John McCain does not understand that the "first fruits" of a mans labor do not belong to the government but to the person who earned the money. One can make a Biblical case that God is entitled to the "first fruits" but never is the government entitled to them. Senator McCain does not support the repeal of the 16th Amendment, which is an immoral taking of the property of the private citizen.

http://www.mises.org/etexts/rootofevil.asp

Senator McCain has stated in previous campaigns that he has no personal problem with women in the military. I personally find that indefensible.
He has also stated that he would not support a return to the former policy of excluding all homosexuals from the military.

He does not support giving the oil companies the freedom to drill where ever it is economically viable including ANWAR , and off the western and southeastern coasts. Therefore he would rather fight a war in the middle east than pump our own oil here at home.

John (Al Gore) McCain is a supporter of the global warming hoax.

John McCain says that he would keep troops stationed in Iraq for 100 years. How many generations is that? Your children"s grandchildren will still be there?

I could go on. It won't do any good. Too many of you are lacking in principle. You claim to love this nation and the freedoms we enjoy. You claim that our rights come for God. Yet you do not have the backbone to stand in opposition to a man like John McCain who would willfully, with malice and forethought, deprive you and your fellow citizens of those same God given rights.

Freedom is not free. Are you willing to pay the price?