Lack of Respect

The Bible commands women to respect their husbands.  It also commands men to love their wives.  The reason for these commands is that it is not natural for women to respect their husbands or men to love their wives as they should.  In other words, an effort must be made to obey these commands.

I can certainly relate to not being respected.  Despite having been married for over twenty five years, my wife respects me less now than she ever has before.  My opinions are always wrong.  My decisions are always bad.  Anything I do is always done wrong.  Even any facts I mention are not correct.  This makes marriage extremely difficult when one partner has such a low opinion of the other.  Then she has the gall to say she loves me.  How can you love someone that you do not respect? 

Marriage is a difficult situation.  Most successful marriages require considerable work to achieve that success.  But don’t misunderstand me.  I am not blaming my marital difficulties on just my wife.  Like I said before, men are commanded to love their wives and I am sure that I have considerable work to do in that area.

One thing I have noticed about this lack of respect is that the feelings that result will contribute heavily to other issues.  For instance, I am extremely lonely.  I find myself envying other men whose wives appear to love and respect them.  I suspect that this lack of respect contributes heavily to many divorces and adulterous affairs.  It puts men in a position where they are vulnerable to the kindness of other women.  I have to admit that I long for the early days of my marriage when my wife looked forward to seeing me come home from work to spend time with me and talk with me.

What makes matters worse is that my daughters now treat me the same way as my wife.  The three of them are very close so my wife’s attitude toward me is rubbing off on them.  This, of course, makes my loneliness worse.  It also encourages my kids to treat their husbands the same way which is wrong. 

You see, this is why God commands women to respect their husbands.  According to the Bible, marriage is supposed to be a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church.  My marriage is nowhere close to that picture.  I doubt many are close.  But this is what we should be striving for in our marital relationships.

In fairness to the women, I must mention that if a man is showing love properly to his wife it will be much easier for her to show respect for him.  This means that marriage is like a coin.  There are two sides and you cannot have one without the other.  It takes both partners striving for the same goal of making their marriage that picture of the relationship between Christ and his church.  If it is only a one sided effort then the marriage will eventually fail.

So please don’t be stubborn.  Value your marriage enough to put the proper effort into loving (men) and respecting (women) your spouses.  

Pete

Do Not Close That Loop Hole

I have been listening with great interest the debate in the media concerning the current economic problems here in the U.S. and even the world.  The democrats think that taking money from the wealthy and giving more hand outs to the unemployed will somehow stimulate the economy and cause businesses to start hiring.  This is completely illogical.  The republicans want to lower taxes so that everyone has more money to spend.  The idea being that if the wealthy have more money and businesses have more money, they will be more likely to spend it on hiring more employees.  This is a more logical approach, but it is still flawed.

We have a multitude of economic problems that need to be addressed.  They are all somewhat related, but should probably be addressed separately.  Lower taxes for individuals will provide additional funds that can be used to help stimulate the economy.  It can help increase demand for products and services.  This increase in demand will cause businesses to hire more people to meet the demand.  This is the approach that President Reagan took which worked beautifully.  This is the approach that the Tea Party and most conservatives prefer.  The problem with this approach is at some point the tax rate can get too low so that it can negatively affected government revenue despite the increase in people paying taxes.  Another drawback is the assumption that the additional money will be spent and not saved or used to pay down existing debt.  If the money is not spent then the increase in demand will not exist to stimulate the needed hiring.

Other economic issues that need to be addressed are the country’s debt and the trade deficit.  I am not a fan of free trade.  The concept of free trade will only work if the trade is equal on both sides.  Right now there is an imbalance in just about every trade agreement we have with other countries.  Some are in our favor but most are not in our favor.  For instance, any nation that can produce goods cheaper than we can will have an advantage.  They won’t have the demand for our expensive goods as our demand will be for their inexpensive goods. 

The U.S. debt is the biggest issue.  The current president and the democrats want to raise taxes so that they will not have to cut any of their pet projects.  They tell us that all they want to do is close some loop holes in the tax code that affect the wealthy.  Let’s think about that for a moment.  I lost my job last year.  I found another job about two months later.  This sounds good but the new job pays me 20,000 dollars less a year.  That is a huge decrease in pay.  I am just barely making ends meet.  If the president closes a loop hole that the oil companies use, then this will affect me.  It could affect me enough that I lose my home because I will no longer be able to make ends meet.  The oil companies will have to raise prices so that their profit margins will remain the same.  The increase in price will cause the local utility to have to raise their price of electricity.  The price of gasoline for my car will have to go up.  This will also affect the cost of food since it will cost more to transport the food to my grocery store. 

You see, closing a loop hole will not just affect the wealthy.  It will affect everyone down the line.  The democrats don’t understand this.  This is why the Tea Party exists.  They are regular people that do understand the true ramifications of these actions.  They are trying to stop these actions so that no more people have to lose homes, jobs or both.  Call your representative in Congress and encourage them not to agree to any tax hike.  We can freeze the tax rates as they are, but we cannot raise them even through closing loop holes.

Pete

Time For Debate Is Over

I have been watching and listening to this debt ceiling debate with great interest.  Both sides of the debate are very good at coming up with buzz words that make the general public think they want to do the right thing.  President Obama is using “balanced approach” as his catch phrase.  It sounds good and reasonable but it really means that he wants tax increases of some sort included in the deal.  The GOP keeps talking about “cutting,” “capping,” and “balancing” in exchange for an increase in the debt limit.  The problem is that the balancing won’t happen for 10 to 25 years.  Capping will only marginally help because it is based upon GDP which is not really an accurate number.  Finally, the cutting is not real because they are talking about cutting the amount of spending increase not the amount of what is actually spent.  This is not going to help get the financial house in order.

This is why so many people are saying we need to increase the debt ceiling.  If we actually froze spending levels and really budgeted using actual revenues, we wouldn’t need to raise debt limit.  We should be balancing the budget within the next year or two not 10.  If we need to borrow money to pay for entitlements, then we need to cut back the entitlements.  If we need to borrow to pay for government programs, then we need to cut back on the government programs.  This is not rocket science.  I understand people not wanting to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.  For those people that are currently depending upon these entitlements, we shouldn’t change them.  But for the future recipients, we need to modify the programs so that they can handle the load.

Large budgets should be built upon percentages not actual dollars.  In other words, the amount of money that goes to the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, and the Department of the Interior should be based upon a percentage of the total revenue not an actual dollar amount.  So let’s say we decide to give the DOD 10 percent of the revenue.  If the government takes in 3 trillion dollars, they would get 300 billion.  If the government takes in only 1 trillion, they would only get 100 billion and they would need to adjust accordingly.

This method would guarantee that we would stay in balance.  But, we do need to make explicit provisions for emergency borrowing.  I believe that the only reasons why we should ever have to borrow money would be to fund an actual war (not just any military action) and natural disaster.  So there is no borrowing of money to fund our participation in U.N. or NATO military action.  Congress would need to declare war before we could borrow money to pay for the action.  The natural disaster would include cleanup and aid as a result of hurricanes, wild fires, earthquakes, tornadoes and maybe even include oil spills and nuclear accidents but only for legal Americans on American soil.  So borrowing money to help pay for aid to Pakistan is out of the question regardless of the reason including natural disaster.

This debt ceiling debate has demonstrated the real problem with our government.  Congress enjoys spending our tax dollars.  The democrats love to make poor people believe that they are helping them by providing hand outs instead of providing opportunities for people to help themselves.  The republicans aren’t much better.  They are in favor of helping business in hopes that they will hire more people.  This is great, but what ends up happening is that their good intensions rarely provide the right kind of help for business.  So the people running the businesses end up profiting too much from the “help” and the poor don’t benefit enough.

Somehow we need to put politics, ideology and good intensions aside and use common sense and real logic to solve the issue.  But as long as we keep sending to Washington the same old politicians or people that have no practical experience, we will never properly solve the issues plaguing this country.

Pete

Bortz is ignorant

I was driving to work and listening to the local news station when they played a Neil Bortz minute commentary as a way of advertising his daily show.  Normally I don’t have much issue with the things that Bortz says in these commentaries.  This commentary was different.  He went way off in left field on this issue.

Bortz decided that he needed to comment on the way an issue was handled by the GOP candidates in the recent CNN debate.  The issue he chose was abortion.  During the debate, the topic of abortion came up and there seemed to be a little bit of a competition among some of the candidates as to who was the strongest supporter of “Right to Life”.  I didn’t think much of it when I heard the candidates because most of them have verifiable records proving their position on the issue.  Romney did not weigh in because this is a difficult topic for him based upon the fact that he changed his position while he was governor.  Unfortunately, there is no real evidence to prove whether he really did change his mind. 

Bortz picked up on the competition that was really between Bachman and Santorum.  Both have solid records proving their support and they were both making sure that the audience knew their history on the issue.  Well, Bortz took off running with their response and drove off the deep end with it.  Bortz is obviously in favor of killing unborn babies.  He doesn’t understand that the so called fetus is really a human life.  Regardless of the circumstances surrounding the conception of this child, it doesn’t deserve to die. 

The argument is often made that abortion in the cases of rape and incest should be legal and left up to the mother.  But this is a flawed argument.  Allowing abortion under these conditions is like saying because my father committed a crime, I should suffer the punishment.  This is stupid.  Punish the guy that committed the crime but don’t execute the resulting child.  The child doesn’t deserve the death penalty for something their father did.  If the mother cannot deal with raising the child, then give the child up for adoption.  Suffering with the pregnancy and child birth is a small sacrifice to save the life of a child.

Murder is illegal in this nation.  Abortion is murder.  Therefore, the doctor and anyone else that participates in the termination of a pregnancy should be tried for murder.  This issue has nothing to do with the mother’s right to do what she pleases with her body.  If we were talking about an appendix, I would agree.  But we are talking about a human life. 

I have a sonogram of my first grandchild at 4 months.  She is facing the camera with a clear smile on her face.  You can see her fists, feet and can even tell it is a girl.  This is a human being.  To deny that is just being ignorant. 

Neil Bortz does not respect human life.  This is a result of his evolutionary worldview.  If you don’t believe that intelligent life created us, then you don’t believe we are accountable to anything.  Therefore, in the big picture our lives are meaningless and worthless.  This is why he can so easily make fun of people that understand that science has no proof of evolution.  That any scientist that looks at the evidence openly and without a pre-conceived position always concludes that there was an intelligence that created life. 

There are a lot of issues that I agree with Neil Bortz on.  But on this issue he is just plain ignorant.

GOP Candidates Galore

With Mitt Romney officially entering the race this week, I feel the race for the White House in 2012 has officially begun.  Since Romney has been pretty much the front runner since Obama’s victory three years ago, until he or Mike Huckabee joined officially I didn’t feel the race had truly begun. 

There are some interesting choices that are officially running.  Herman Cain did very well in the South Carolina Debate and has officially join the race.  I watched the debate and was impressed with Cain.  My only concern with him is his lack of experience with foreign affairs.  This is a hard area to have real experience in prior to winning the presidency so it isn’t a huge concern.  His approach on the other issues sound pretty good right now. 

Tim Pawlenty has officially joined the race.  He has a reasonably solid record as a governor.  This is a major positive for him.  He just lacks the natural charisma that Herman Cain or Mike Huckabee possess.  He is also fairly unknown to most the nation.  I have to admit that I know very little about what he accomplished as governor. 

Newt Gingrich has officially joined the race as well.  I personally think that Gingrich would make a terrific president.  The problem with him, though, is he has a tendency to stick his foot in his mouth.  This is a major negative for a presidential hopeful.  Also, he may be too likely to play politics.  Not that he would stand up for certain principles, but he may be more likely to compromise on some things that the general public would rather him stand his ground.

I don’t know if Ron Paul has officially announced, but based upon an interview I heared with his son I believe he is running.  I don’t give him much chance of winning, though.  His position on the military is a major problem.  Fighting terror from a defensive position means the war will be fought in America and that is unacceptable.  The only way to combat terror is to be offensive.  His other positions are fine.  I personally agree with him that the Federal Reserve needs to be abolished along with the Central Bank.

Everyone else that is mentioned have yet to officially join the race.  Of the names that are typically thrown out, several would make good presidents.  I think Palin, Bachman and Perry would all make good presidents.  I think Mike Huckabee would make the best president but I believe him when he says he will not run. 

Back to Mitt Romney.  He is the front runner and, in my opinion, appears the most presidential.  I not ready to fully back him because of his flip-flop on abortion and his approach to health care he took at governor.  I am also concerned about what his approach is towards taxation.  But, I feel that I could support him if he wins the nomination.  He is light-years better than Obama. 

The race has now begun.  Let’s just hope that whoever wins, will be able to beat Obama in the general election.

Compatibility of Religion and Science

I was listening to a podcast recently where one of the topics concerned an article by an atheist stating that religion and science were not compatible.  The podcast host was a Christian that agreed that the two are not compatible but for a different reason.  As I listened to the podcast I couldn’t help but disagree with both the host of the program and the writer of the article.

The article writer was not truly comparing religion to science.  He was actually comparing religion to evolution.  The problem with most evolutionists is that they have convinced themselves that everything scientific must be viewed from an evolutionary perspective.  This causes a bias that will ultimately distort any true scientific results.  All scientific experimentation should be performed without a pre-conceived evolutionary or religious bias.  This is the only way to get the truth from any experiment.

The host of the podcast discussed the historical attempts by various people and groups to interpret the Bible in such a way that evolution would not appear to contradict the Bible.  He condemned these attempts and so do I.  The Bible is the word of God and science has not proven anything in it to be wrong.  The Bible is not a science book so there are verses that when taken out of context can appear to be making a scientific statement.  For example, when the Bible uses the term “sunset” or the phrase “setting of the sun”, it is not claiming that the sun rotates around the earth.  It is an expression based upon the human perspective and observation.  In fact, we still use that same kind of terminology even though we know the truth.  The few times that the Bible has referred to scientific phenomena it has been correct.  For example, the Bible mentions the earth not being perfectly round and hanging in space as if on a string.  It made mention of troughs on the ocean floor long before they were discovered.  I believe Ray Comfort wrote a book that contains 101 scientific facts in the Bible.

The problem I had with the point of view of the podcast host was that he was using the terms evolution and science interchangeably.  There is no scientific evidence that supports evolution.  For something to be classified as scientific fact it must be observable and repeatable.  We cannot observe or recreate any of the evolutionary claims.  No fossils have been found that connect various species.  No simple cell has ever been observed becoming a complex cell containing new information.  Therefore, evolution can only be considered a theory at best. 

Various categories of the scientific community have done a wonderful job of proving the accuracy of the Bible.  Because science has yet to disprove anything in the Bible and instead has produced proof of its historical and prophetic accuracy, we have to maintain that it is most likely correct concerning the beginning of the Universe.  Once something is found to be wrong in the Bible, then the evolutionists can question the Genesis account.

Einstein said that it was the job of science to discover the mind of God.  Science has historically been a friend to those people that put their faith in the Bible.  Therefore science and true Biblical religion are not only compatible, they are complementary.  It is evolution that is not compatible with the Bible. 

Come on people let’s get our terms properly defined so that our arguments make sense and are true.

Stephen Hawking Is Illogical

I was told a long time ago that Stephen Hawking is one of the smartest, if not the smartest, human alive.  But recently, I have come to seriously doubt that claim.  In fact, based upon a book he recently published, I would say that he is too illogical to be considered to be smart at all.  I am talking about the recent articles concerning his opinion that everything in the Universe could exist without anything creating it.  In other words, he has decided that self-generation is not only possible, it is probable. 

I am no genius, but self-generation is completely illogical.  How can anything generate itself, if it doesn’t exist?  Something cannot come into existence from nothing.  No matter how much time passes, nothing will ever become something.  Therefore, self-generation is impossible. 

The problem that current scientists have is that they cannot explain how everything began.   They are convinced that God does not exist.  Because they assume that God doesn’t exist, they need to come up with an alternative explanation for creation.  Instead of letting the truth from their scientific data lead them, they instead are desperately trying to explain away their findings.  The perfect order of creation points to something intelligent as a creator.  If there wasn’t perfect order in creation, then science would be a waste of time.  You cannot discover anything repeatable and useful from complete chaos.  If something other than intelligence created everything, then creation would be chaos and not ordered.

These are pretty basic and simple observations.  The logic is basic and straightforward.  It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that the assumptions that Stephen Hawking is starting out with are flawed.  This is why the big bang theory doesn’t make sense.  For there to be an explosion, something had to already exist to interact and ignite.  Therefore, the big bang could not be the beginning of creation.   

Another flaw that scientists like Stephen Hawkings have in there thinking is the argument claiming that everything was created by chance.  Obviously they don’t understand the meaning of chance.  Chance doesn’t exist.  It is a term used in mathematics to describe a mathematical occurrence or probability.  It has no creative power of any kind.  Therefore, it cannot create anything or cause anything to be created. 

People like Stephen Hawking know better.  They are just so desperate to eliminate the possibility of God, that they will go to any length no matter how illogical.  What a shame.  Science should be trying to explain how God did things instead of trying to prove He doesn’t exist.  Stephen Hawking should be ashamed of what he published.

America The Former

America is great no more.  It will never be great again.  The world is spiraling into a state of chaos, fear, and pure evil.  The Bible predicted that in the end times the world would be even worse than it is now.  With each passing year we move closer to the state that the Bible predicts. 

The best we can hope for is to remove the three stooges from office and replace the idiots that are currently in Congress with people that have some semblance of morals and ethics.  People that actually care about this country enough to do what is in the best interests of the majority of Americans.  But they will not be able to bring us back to a state of greatness.  That time has past and will not return.

I always thought that the biggest flaw in the American system was greed.  But I don’t think that is correct.  I now believe that our biggest issue is laziness.  We have had it so good for so long that we no longer appreciate the sacrifices that were made so that we could reach this level of accomplishment.  Too many people now expect handouts instead of doing what is necessary to work for what they want and need.

The unions in this nation used to fight so that the working conditions of their members would be conducive to more productivity.  Now they fight for unreasonable and unwarranted pay and benefits.  They protect the lazy and incompetent workers instead of rewarding the best of the best.  As a result, we produce lower quality products for a higher price.  The teachers unions have made it so that our children can no longer compete with the rest of the world intellectually.  They have lowered the standards so that the worst of teachers can keep their jobs.  This has encouraged our children to be intellectually lazy.

Things will not get better.  Our laziness has allowed people who hate America to now rule America.  Once our military is adequately handicapped, we will be taken over by outside forces.  We will be ruled by the United Nations and the World Bank.  They hate America as well so we are doomed.  Once America is adequately destroyed, then the rest of the world will be reduced to a dictatorship.  This is when Christianity will be against the law.  This is when another Jewish holocaust will most likely occur.  This is when, I hope, Jesus Christ will return.

Until Christ returns, we will continue to get worse.  The true reason for the downfall is sin.  This is what happened before God sent the flood.  The world was pure evil.  Morals no longer existed.  People did what they thought was right in their own eyes and ignored the morals of God.  This is happening again.  Only this time, there won’t be another flood.  God will destroy the earth with fire. 

Sin is a fact.  Jesus is the only truth.  Relative truth does not exist.  God exists and will judge each of us.  He will judge every action, thought, and intention.  He will not compare us to each other.  He will compare us to his perfect law.  Without Jesus no one would survive the judgment.  If you are not living for Christ, you will not survive the judgment.  Repent and turn your life over to Christ and live for eternity.

Socialism Equals Poverty

The more involved our government gets in our lives, the more socialistic we become.  Every issue and every crisis does not need to be solved through a government agency.  Take the gulf oil issue as an example.  The best thing that our government could have done to help that situation would be to temporarily suspend the regulations that were making it more difficult to skim the oil.  Instead, our government decided to be involved by pointing fingers, holding hearings, and refusing the help we needed to skim the oil.  They made the situation worse.  This is always the result when our government tries to be the solution instead of just removing the obstacles so the private sector can solve the issue.

The bigger our government gets, the more socialistic we become.  It is unconstitutional for our government to take over any industry.  The take over of GM was unconstitutional.  Giving the company to the auto unions made it even worse.  It was unconstitutional for our government to take over all that land on the Mexican border in Arizona.  The more the government takes from us the poorer we get.

When we keep getting job reports that show that most of the new employment is coming from the government, we have a serious problem.  The bigger the government, the more revenue it takes to sustain it.  That means higher taxes.  Taxing the rich sounds fair but it really isn’t.  The more we tax the rich, the less money the rich have to employ people.  The fewer people that are employed, the fewer people there are to pay taxes.  The fewer people there are to pay taxes the less revenue the government makes to pay for the socialistic services and large numbers of employees.

The fewer people that are employed, the more pressure it puts on the government to provide a means for these people to survive.  The greater the need for government social services, the poorer our nation is gets.  A stronger private sector means lower unemployment.  Lower unemployment in the private sector means more people paying taxes.  The more people that are paying taxes, the greater the revenue will be to the government.  Also, the more people that are privately employed, the less the need is for governmental services like welfare, universal health care, and unemployment coverage.  This means that our government does not need as much revenue to operate.  It also means that more people will have more wealth.  When the government is bigger, more people will have less wealth because more people are unemployed. 

Redistribution of wealth sounds fair but will ultimately hurt us all.  It will mean that everybody will be poorer.  The rich will have their wealth stolen from them by the government and distributed to the poor.  Yes the poor will have a little bit more but not enough to even be considered middle class.  The redistribution of wealth will make the rich poorer, the poor a little wealthier, and will eliminate the middle class as a result of the redistribution.  Overall, we will end up with a significantly smaller wealthy class and a significantly larger poorer class.  This is the end result of socialism.  This is where our president and all his left wing friends want to take this country.  Why?  What is it about our capitalistic republic that is so offensive to these people? 

We need to stop these people from destroying our society.  If they like socialism so much, they can move to one of the many other countries that are currently socialistic.  Capitalism provides the motivation necessary for our society to thrive.  Socialism is depressive and will make us poor.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to depend upon the government to survive and I don’t want to be poor.  Let’s stop this take over of our society before it is too late.

Kerr Wins and The Golf Channel Blows It

I can’t believe it.  It finally happened.  For the first time an American is ranked number one in women’s golf.  Cristie Kerr not only won her second career major and her second tournament this season, she took over the number one spot on the Rolex Rankings.  Finally, we have an American that is successfully competing with the South Koreans. 

Cristie has been one of my favorites for years.  She has also been one of the few shining lights for the Americans.  Cristie and Paula Creamer are the only two American women who consistently compete for wins on the LPGA tour.  Periodically, another woman may compete, but these two compete in just about every tournament. 

I did watch the tournament this time.  Since I knew the outcome before it was aired on television.  Yes, an American finally wins and The Golf Channel shows it taped delay.  This ten year deal that the LPGA has with The Golf Channel is the worst thing that they could have done.  This was a major tournament and it was shown tape delay.  The Golf Channel treats the LPGA like an after thought.  The men get round the clock coverage for their tournaments whether The Golf Channel is broadcasting it or not.  This was a terrible slap in the face for the LPGA.  Plus, to make matters worse, the tournament this week is not being shown at all.  This is terrible for the LPGA.  Now watch another American win and we won’t have the luxury of being able to watch it happen.  It is also terrible for the city that is hosting this tournament.  Without television coverage, the money for charity will be significantly less. 

The Women’s U.S. Open is coming up soon.  Hopefully, The Golf Channel will be smart enough to broadcast it live.  What would be better is if one of the major networks actually broadcast it instead.  I would much rather hear commentary from Johnny Miller than the current crew that The Golf Channel is using.

With the right kind of coverage, the LPGA could really take off.  Yes, it may never reach the popularity of the PGA.  But it is certainly a viable product that can be profitable for both the television network and the LPGA family.  Especially if the American women are going to be competitive week in and week out.  Paula is back from her surgery and Cristie is playing better than ever.  Morgan Pressel and Brittany Lincicome are starting to play better.  Plus, if Juli Inkster and Michelle Wie could put together four solid rounds they would be a factor as well. 

There is some hope for the LPGA but they need some help.  They need the American women to start playing more consistent golf and they need The Golf Channel to start treating them with the respect that they deserve.  These women are professional golfers.  This is not a second rate tour.  We are not talking about the Cactus Tour or the Hooters Tour.  This is the women’s equivalent to the PGA and should be treated as such. 

Thanks Cristie for providing us with some hope.  I hope this is the start of a long run at number one for you.