Yes, you are absolutely stinking filthy rich. You are thinking about how much month is left when your paycheck runs out, or how that college tuition check nearly caused your pen to melt. Does it raise your ire a bit; that I might suppose to ignore your challenges and difficulties, and dismiss them by saying that whether you believe it or not, you are rich?
When Jesus said…
(Matthew 19:23-24): Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
…he was not thinking of people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Jesus was talking about you, and me, all of our family members, friends, and acquaintances. Indeed, even the poorest in this country; even the homeless in our cities are rich. For you see, there are millions on this earth that are truly desperate; dying of starvation and lack of clean water.
God does not “reset” the measure of wealth based on the boundaries of our nations. It is an odd fact, as difficult as it is to comprehend, that every person in the United States, and I dare say every person in the European Union are rich in comparison to many on this planet.
The point that Jesus was driving home was not that it is impossible for us to enter Heaven, but that as we are more capable of taking care of ourselves; the wealthier we are, the easier it is to depend on our own means to survive, it becomes difficult for us to depend only on God and his sacrifice through Jesus Christ for our salvation.
There is no means by which we can become reconciled with God by our own efforts. We cannot depend in any way on our ability to do anything that will grant us the ability to stand blameless before God. It is only when we admit that truth; when we cast away the misplaced faith in intellect, good works, and the fruits of our labors, and reach out instead to God’s outstretched hand that we become worthy.
There is not enough wealth in the entire world to pay the price for our redemption. It is a price that only God is capable of paying, and he did so by coming to us as one of us. Jesus – God the Son paid that price for us. He allowed Himself to be sacrificed; allowed his body to be broken and His blood spilled. He arose after three days from the dead to take his place in the Kingdom of God, waiting and preparing a place for each one of us.
So it is the great equalizer. We must stand with all else stripped away, whether we are the wealthiest man in the world or the poorest starving soul in Africa, and depend on God alone to save us. It is really that simple. As Jesus said, it is easier for the Camel to pass through the eye of a needle, and He was speaking to you and me.
Phil Harris
This coming November marks two years since Americans elected Barack Obama to be their president. That means that we have endured two years of catastrophic destruction and it also means that we have two long years to go.
Barack Obama’s judgment can be accurately gauged by his own public history. He is the man who lobbied hard to create a law in Illinois that would require abortion providers who, while attempting to abort a child ended up instead with a living baby, to lay that child aside until it was dead. Barack Obama was defeated in that effort, thank God!
Today he leads an overt attempt by the radical left to restructure the U.S. economy. The goal is to destroy the free-enterprise capitalist system that has made this country the envy of the globe, and replace it with a socialist central government system that has long ago proved to fail miserably wherever tried.
The only redeeming value that can be claimed from his election is to demonstrate that Americans are truly color blind. This is the absolute truth despite the rhetoric from the left and from desperate democrats, claiming that opposition to Obama’s radical left agenda is driven by racism.
Elections upcoming in November will be the first opportunity for Americans to rebuke the radical left. It is the opening salvo in the critical battle to stop the evil socialist scheme and begin the process of stabilizing this critically wounded nation. Failure to win this and coming battles will mark the end of the American dream, and I for one do not wish to see that day.
©2010 by Phil Harris
When an aircraft travels away from land across the open sea, a predictable event exists that everyone on the flight crew knows about. There is no arguing of its reality, no possibility to delay it by popular demand, and when it comes, the inevitable consequences are nothing less than raw truth.
Known and revered as The Point of No Return, it is that moment in time when it becomes impossible for the aircraft to reverse course and make it safely back to land. In addition, if no hope of reaching an outbound destination exists, then the point of no return will also provide a rare future knowledge of the time of one's own demise.
Such a point in time is approaching for America, and I hope you give the thought some real consideration before dismissing me as just another alarmist wing-nut. There is writing on the wall if you are willing to look, and we are collectively able to turn this thing around before the point of no return has passed.
Those in power today, the very liberal democrats who control Congress and the Presidency, have set us on a course to realign the very structure of the American economy. It is easy to become enamored by tales of injustice, and hardships that people endure, and it is within our very nature to believe that every difficulty can and should be righted by the Government.
The truth of the matter; however, is that the resources of the government only exist when the government takes resources from us in the form of taxes. These taxes are not always so obvious. Even though it seems logical that giant corporations making hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars should be able to spare more than enough to fund whatever our government needs, the truth is that corporations do not actually pay those taxes. Rather, the taxes are passed on to us, the customers of those giant corporations.
Our government has already committed to pay far more than it is capable of doing. The Social Security and Medicare systems were already scheduled to become bankrupt. Now the democrats have added nearly a trillion dollars in just the past year to stimulate the economy and create jobs. That is a trillion dollars we do not have, and worse still, the money did not create new jobs to replace those lost already.
Do you still have your job? An almost unprecedented number of Americans do not, with an official government unemployment rate around 9.5 percent. Because this rate only reflects those unemployed who are collecting unemployment benefits, the actual number of unemployed is far higher.
Indeed, the official Department of Labor report states in June 2010, that the number of Americans who are purely unemployed is 14.6 million. Americans who are involuntarily employed as part-time, due to cutbacks, or because that is the only employment they can find adds an additional 8.6 million. These are people who are not adequately employed.
Then we must add another 2.6 million people who are considered as marginally attached to the labor force. These are people who are not counted as unemployed, because they have given up and had not searched for work in the 4 weeks prior to the survey.
The truth is, there are more than 25.8 million Americans who are jobless or inadequately employed. It is an astounding figure, and it makes any boast of jobs growth to the tune of a hundred or two thousand jobs seem utterly ridiculous, if not absolutely insulting.
Economic conditions seem to be improving somewhat, but unlike recoveries of the past, this one is occurring without a simultaneous improvement in available jobs for the unemployed. That means that companies that have survived the difficulties of the economic recession have stabilized and may have even increased output slightly, but they are not expanding.
Without private sector expansion, there are no significant new jobs. This is on top of an already serious shortage of employment opportunities that exists for a variety of reasons. Some of these are hidden in that unspoken territory that average Americans never get to consider, because biased news agencies do not want to work counter to the liberal big government agenda.
The bulk of new jobs that are reported, pitiful in number anyway, are in the public sector, not the super job-spawning private sector. When the enormous economic machinery of American small business is in gear, jobs are created like wildfire.
But the uncertainty created by the Obama Administration’s gargantuan health care reforms, the lack of capital available from a scared banking and investment industry, and the ongoing threat of new and higher taxes has placed the American Small business machinery in neutral at best, and in many cases in reverse.
Continue reading "America’s Last Gasp – 25.8 Million Jobless" »
A principle benefit of living in a free society governed by laws is the expectation that one should be able to live day to day without fear. By creating such a government, and by granting that government the authority and responsibility of law enforcement, we should be able to live with a substantially reduced fear of property loss, bodily harm, or violent death.
In fact, that expectation is the bottom-line reason for government. Absent the accomplishment of this mission, there is no sane reason individuals should agree to become subservient to a government. It is the give we expect, in the give and take which exists between the governed and the government.
There is a criminal offense, extortion, which is defined as follows:
EXTORTION
The use, or the express or implicit threat of the use, of violence or other criminal means to cause harm to person, reputation, or property as a means to obtain property from someone else with his consent. USC 18
The Hobbs Act defines "extortion" as "the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right." 18 U.S.C. S 1951(b)(2).
Those who practice this criminal method attempt to get something of value from victims by threatening that core sense of security. The message comes in many forms, but in essence, it is always... “if you don’t do this, we will do this to you, or we will allow this to happen to you.”
President Obama has signaled this threat. He and his administration want something, in this case a liberal change in immigration policy. To get what he wants the President has signaled to Border States, Arizona in particular, that he will not take sufficient additional steps to seal the border with Mexico until his political demands are satisfied.
The evidence is clear that the result of the unsealed border allows countless numbers of violent people, thieves, sex offenders, drug traffickers, and even foreign terrorists to enter on a daily basis. They are so emboldened now, that not only do they threaten citizens, but they threaten our civilian law enforcement personnel directly.
Many illegal border crossers are simply looking for what they perceive to be a better life, but allowing them to enter this country illegally makes them criminals nevertheless. Their ever growing presence does in fact cause loss of property and liberty for citizens, because they require government resources on a scale that threatens to bankrupt cities and states that are bound to protect them and educate their children. Those who arrive in this country through legal means assimilate into the society that serves them, and they participate directly to support that society.
The federal government has the natural and mandated responsibility to maintain the integrity of this country’s borders. Clearly, the job of securing the border and preventing the crime of illegal entry is in a state of failure, not withstanding the fact that the border patrol is working hard to do so. The job is far larger than their ability to accomplish it, and that failure will continue until the federal government takes direct steps to correct the mismatch.
President Obama has said (paraphrased) If I secure the border, my political opponents will have no desire to give me what I want in immigration reform.”
That clearly says to those concerned that he will allow the threat of bodily injury, death, and criminal activity against citizens to continue unless he gets what he wants. Such is common practice in the world of organized crime and perhaps for Barack Obama, the fact that he comes out of the criminally incestuous world of Chicago politics has blurred his better judgment.
There should be no holds barred in our effort to tell Barack Obama that Extortion is Extortion, and that we as citizens will not stand for it. To allow citizens of this nation to suffer under criminal threat for the purpose of political or any other gain is criminal and immoral.
©2010 by Phil Harris
ICE Director John T. Morton has taken failure to enforce to a new level, by flat out saying he may not accept illegal immigration detainees from Arizona law enforcement officials.
Federal Law provides for the capture, processing, and prosecution and/or deportation of people who are in violation of our nation's immigration laws. There is no murky question about it.
To deliberately refrain from carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the office that law-enforcement and national security officials hold, either by election or by Senate confirmation, seems to clearly be in violation of law, and in direct opposition to the sworn oath these people take to defend and uphold the Constitution.
Wikipedia's discussion of High Crimes and Misdemeanors:
High crimes and misdemeanors is a phrase from Section 4 of Article Two of the United States Constitution: "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
"High" in the legal parlance of the 18th century means "against the State". A high crime is one which seeks the overthrow of the country, which gives aid or comfort to its enemies, or which injures the country to the profit of an individual or group. In democracies and similar societies it also includes crimes which attempt to alter the outcome of elections.
...and so, by deliberately not waging appropriate war on those who violate our borders, how can anyone pretend that this is not giving aid and comfort to our country's enemy?
Further, it seems clear to me that those aiding and comforting foreign invaders of our borders are seeking compatriot allegiances with individuals and groups for the purpose of affecting the outcome of future elections.
You can attempt to dress it up any way you please, but when you blow away all the chaff, this is what you are left with. The buck in this case starts with John T. Morton and if he fails to take corrective action, the buck rests finally and firmly on the shoulders of President Obama.
Copyright ©2010 by Phil Harris
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