Stimulus

The "Economic Stimulus Package" being rammed through Congress today might better be called "The Pay Voters to Re-elect Me Bill."

Thank goodness we have Congress to rescue us as the economy teeters precariously on the brink of less aggressive growth. Before it is over, you can count on the Democrats to load up the bill with more spending items which would not pass on their own merit.

The "Stimulus Package" is founded on one of the great ideas which brought down the Soviet Union: the notion that the centralized government has a big panel of buttons and dials before it, that simply need to be manipulated in the proper sequence in order to "jump start" or "stimulate" the economy.

The best thing Congress could do for the economy is get out of its way. Make the tax cuts permanent, cut government spending way back by eliminating all spending items outside of the scope of the Federal Government as specified in the Constitution, cutting corporate taxes, reducing regulation, and letting the free market generate wealth without the encumbrance of an overreaching government.

Will it happen? Not a chance. So you might as well send me my $600 check.

Why not Huckabee?

I have gotten a number of inquiries in response to my endorsement of Mitt Romney. Most of them are of the form: "Why are you not supporting [some other candidate]?"

Liberals tend to ask why I am not supporting John McCain. That fact speaks for itsself.

But by far the most common response was "Why are you not supporting Mike Huckabee?"

I like Mike Huckabee. I think that he has brought a lot of interest to the race, and has had a positive impact on the debates and the candidates, forcing them to raise issues which might never have come up if he was not present. He is smart, eloquent, funny, and says a lot of the right things.

However, his record is not nearly as stellar as his rhetoric. Based on what he actually did as governor of Arkansas, it is hard to describe him as a conservative. Conservatism is based on principles of limited government, the rule of law, and seperation of powers. Huckabee seems to see government as the solution to every problem.

Huckabee's economic policy was best described as populist. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee repeatedly increased or expanded the sales tax; hiked the corporate income tax; imposed an income-tax surcharge on individuals and domestic and foreign corporations; raised the tax on gasoline and diesel fuel; taxed admission to theme parks and other tourist activities; taxed snuff, cigarettes, mixed drinks, private clubs and retail sales of beer; and so on. Now, in fairness to Huck, part of the tax increases were forced due to a court order to balance the budget and increase school funding. But a large part was used to increase the wealth redistribution programs that liberals love so much.

Huckabee is not only weak on foreign policy, he has said some dangerously ignorant things on the subject, leading me to question the wisdom of putting him in charge of the State Department and the US Military. Huckabee's talk about the War on Terror sounds a lot like Bill Clinton's policy during his eight years: If we are nice to them and talk with them and appease them, they will be nice back to us. It was disasterously misguided then, and it is even moreso now. Read this article as an example.

Huckabee's record on illegal immigration is also wrongheaded. As governor, Huckabee supported government-funded scholarships for illegal immigrants. To be very clear about what this means, Mike Huckabee not only wants people who are breaking the law by being in this country to be able to attend state universities, he wants to force law-abiding taxpayers to subsidize their tuition.

The case of rapist and murderer Wayne DuMond who was released from Arkansas prison with Huckabee's approval, and went on to kill two more women, has gotten some attention, but it is not the only case. Huckabee earned a reputation among Arkansas criminals as an easy mark: if you get a pastor to vouch for you, Governor Huckabee will pardon you.

Huckabee's Christianity is his strongest selling point. I appreciate his boldness and unequivocal answers to questions about evolution and his faith in God. However, it seems to me that Huckabee fails to grasp the distinction between Christian principles applied by individuals and the policy of a nation's government. Huckabee applies principles of grace, forgiveness, and charity by pardoning violent criminals, subsidizing college educations for lawbreakers, and dialoging with terrorists.

In a number of cases, Huckabee talked about "forgiveness" as he pardoned criminals. Aren't Christians supposed to forgive? Seventy times seven and all. But Huckabee is not the one who needs to forgive a murderer or rapist, because he was not the one who was wronged. Forgiveness means that I decide to not hold the fact that you hurt me against you. It does not mean that all consequences are removed. That was a key mistake in the impeachment of President Clinton: liberals in the media kept saying "Shouldn't we forgive President Clinton?" As if forgiveness meant that the consequences specified by the law would no longer apply. The job of a President or Governor is to uphold the law and protect society, not to act like a priest dispensing forgiveness.

Huckabee appealed to the idea of charity to support his policy of subsidizing the college tuition of illegal immigrants. This is not much different from liberals who want us to be beholden to their kindness and generosity for funding wealth redistribution programs. The problem is that generosity and charity ought to be with your own money, not with someone else's.

I wouldn't mind having Mike Huckabee as a pastor. I think I would enjoy sitting down and having lunch with him and discussing various topics. I'd happily go to hear him speak on current issues or on spiritual topics. But I don't think that he would make a good President.

"None of the above" isn't an option

This is the moment you have been waiting for. The historic announcement, anxiously awaited with hushed anticipation, of my endorsement for President.

I've got to start out by saying that there is no candidate who is 100% to my liking.

But some are significantly better than others. There are several candidates who I seriously considered supporting, most notably Huckabee and Thompson.

Huckabee is an interesting candidate. His Christian principles appeal to me a lot, and the guy is very likeable, funny, and eloquent. But his policies on taxes, spending, crime, immigration, and foreign policy convince me that he is not the right person to lead our nation. He staked a lot on winning South Carolina, but couldn't pull it off. In addition, he has failed to attract voters from outside the evangelical Christian community, so I don't think that he could win the election.

Thompson, on the other hand, is a true blue conservative. His positions are spot-on, across the board. From taxes to immigration to foreign policy, I can't think of anyone better grounded in conservative principles of limited government and separation of powers. Unfortunately, I don't expect him to still be in the race by March 5 when Texans have our primary. He has yet to win a primary, or come close for that matter. I believe that people gave up on him too soon, and for all the wrong reasons, due largely to media influence. We criticized Bill Clinton for being too slick. Fred's downfall was not being slick enough.

There are also a number of candidates who I believe would be particularly harmful to elect President. At the top of that list, of course, would be the two Democrat candidates, Mrs. Bill Clinton and B. Hussein Obama. The good news is that I don't consider either of them to be electable. Neither one has any experience actually running anything. Both are real rookies with just a few years in the Senate, making them some of the least qualified candidates in recent history. Hillary points out that she spent 8 years in the White House. Yeah, well so did Clinton's pastry chef. Obama can't even claim proximity to executive leadership. Hillary is dearly beloved by those Democrat party loyalists who thought that Bill Clinton was god on earth. This may be a large enough block of voters to secure the nomination, but it won't carry her to victory in November. Among the general voting public, Hillary has a 51% negative rating. No one whose negatives were higher than 45 in January of election year has ever been elected President. So I really hope that the Democrats pick Hillary as their man.

Moving over to the "Republican" side, there are several candidates who I would strongly oppose in the primaries. If one of these candidates got the nomination I would hold my nose and vote for him, because any one of them would be better than Hillary. Rudy is a pro-abortion, pro-gun control New York liberal Republican. He did a good job as mayor of New York City, but I could not support him in the primaries. Fortunately, his candidacy seems to be self destructing.

John McCain, on the other hand, seems to be on the up-swing. I voted for McCain for Senate back when I lived in Arizona, but since then he has decided to chase after liberal votes. This has made him every Democrat's favorite Republican, but it makes us see him much as Democrats see Joe Lieberman. He always seems to be teaming up with liberal Democrats to undermine conservative principles in one way or another: infringing on free speech, blocking originalist judicial nominations, opposing tax cuts, granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, drinking the hysterical global warming alarmism Kool-Aid, opposing drilling for oil in ANWR, and the list goes on... McCain seems to be gaining traction, propelled by a fawning media and their myth that he is the only Republican who can beat Hillary.

The race for the GOP nomination seems to be coming down to a long, drawn-out battle of attrition, in which the outcome may not be clear until very late, possibly even until the convention. I find this to be delicious. The last thing I want is a coronation where the outcome is determined by New Hampshire and a few other early primary states. I expect that soon it will be clear that this is a fight for delegates between Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Which brings me down to my endorsement. As a matter of principle, I will support the most conservative viable candidate. There is no question in my mind that Mitt Romney is that man. His track record, both in the private sector and as governor of Massachusetts, indicates that he is capable both of winning the election and serving as an outstanding President. I am not bothered by the allegation that years ago he took a "pro-choice" position on abortion, because he clearly corrected that mistake a decade ago. His business experience and his economic policy indicate that he is more than up to the task of countering the Democrat's strategy of running on the economy. His track record proves that he will not appoint liberal activist judges, but will instead appoint judges who will stick to their duty of interpreting what the Constitution actually says. I even hold out some hope that he will bring some fiscal restraint to Washington. As the only candidate to use the term "War on Islamofascism" I believe that he understands the importance of defeating Islamic extremists who seek to murder and destroy in their quest to spread lawlessness and tyranny.

I hesitated to support Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon, and we have vast differences in what we believe about God and who Jesus Christ is. But I have come to recognize that we can disagree on that without it making him any less capable of being a great President.

So today I proudly announce that I support Mitt Romney for President of the United States.

Still too many

The Guttmacher Institute, the propoganda branch of Planned Parenthood, America's biggest abortion provider, reports today that the number of abortions performed in 2005 was 1.2 million, the lowest level since 1974, and down 25% from the peak of 1.6 million in 1990.

To put this number in perspective, 1.2 million people is roughly the population of Dallas, Texas, the ninth largest city in America.

It breaks down to 3,287 abortions a day. In other words, abortion kills more people here in America each and every day of the year than the 19 terrorists killed in the worst terror attack in history, when they crashed airliners into the two towers of the World Trade Center, and into the Pentagon.

Every 26 seconds another baby is killed, sucked into a garbage disposal, and thrown away.

In the 36 years since the Supreme Court invented a "right to privacy" making abortion legal, 54 million babies have been aborted in America.

While 1.2 million is somewhat better than 1.6 million, it is still 1.2 million too many.

Georgia on my mind

Last week the boys were out of school so we went to Atlanta to see family.

Going to Georgia means driving through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. At some points in there I thought I was in a different country. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a Waffle House, and most of the billboards are for casinos or other gambling establishments. I stopped at a gas station in Alabama, and as I was going in, a redneck with 3 teeth and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon was coming out. He eyed me and my wife suspiciously and said “Ya’ll ain’t from ‘round here, is you? [multiple sic]” I’m not sure what gave us away.

Atlanta is a contradiction of a city. Huge, jammed with traffic far worse even than Dallas, loaded with history and culture. They have the best aquarium I have ever been to. They are rightfully proud of Martin Luther King Jr. We visited his home and Ebenezer Baptist Church.

They are proud to have hosted the 1996 Olympics. They are also inexplicably proud of Jimmy Carter. I stood outside of the Carter Library and tried to get people to sign a petition to require that any sentence containing Jimmy Carter’s name also include the word “hapless.” It didn’t go over well. I guess that if you only have one president from your state, you take what you can get. Kind of like Arkansas, only they kicked the guy out.

But for all their pride in MLK, if you drive 15 miles east from downtown Atlanta you come to Stone Mountain, where the 90-foot-high figures of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E Lee, and Jefferson Davis are carved into the side of the mountain.

The carving was started by members of “The United Daughters of the Confederacy” in conjunction with the Klan (who regularly hold rallies there), and completed by the “Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Advisory Committee” with the stated purpose of “honoring our heroes and preserving our legacy”. I never did figure out what is honorable or heroic about guys who divided a nation and fought a war which claimed 620,000 American lives in their attempt to perpetuate and expand slavery, but one certainly gets the feeling that they can't wait for the South to rise again and win the rematch in the Northern War of Aggression.

They would do better to honor their liberators: Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln.

In fact, there are plenty of people from Georgia worthy of honor: George Washington Carver, Eli Whitney, Clarence Thomas, and of course Newt Gingrich. I would certainly applaud a decision to dynamite the existing statue and replace it with the figure of Martin Luther King Jr.

Either that, or they could add the hapless Jimmy Carter and rename it “Georgia’s Hall of Shame.”

Got some change in my pocket

"We talked about change when we were up; we talked about change where we were down. This change thing must be catching on." -- B. Hussein Obama

"I am the candidate that can bring change." -- Mrs. Bill Clinton

"With Bill Richardson, you get change and you get experience. You have to have experience to change things." -- Bill Richardson

"My friends, I am most proud of the change that I brought about..." -- John McCain

"There's a tide of change sweeping New Hampshire and America" -- Mitt Romney

I can change my clothes.

I got change for a twenty.

Hey buddy, got some spare change for a cup of coffee?

My change can beat up your change!

We got some changin' goin' on over here.

What the heck does "change" mean?

It is a worthless platitude. Any politician who uses it automatically drops a couple of notches in my book. It is a way of playing on people's fears that things are going the wrong direction without having to name anything specific that you would do differently.

What are you going to do? Change!

What does that mean? Anything different than what we are doing now.

Didn't Hitler change Germany? What makes you think that change is automatically a good thing? More importantly, what makes you think that any kind of change is equal to any other kind? Are we supposed to be impressed by your arguing about who is "the candidate of change?"

In 1992, Bill Clinton used the mantra of "change" extensively, but after 8 years as VP, Clinton clone wannabe Al Gore also campaigned on a "change" platform. I fully expect to see the incumbent proclaiming herself to be the candidate of change in 2012.

Don't hide behind this empty word!

Come on, give me some substance. Tell me specifically what you are going to do. What is your vision for America and what policies are you going to implement to get us there?

No Right Angles

Following Mike Huckabee's controversial television spot in which he spoke openly of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, while attempting to subliminally suggest a Christian message by standing in front of a book shelf, the ACLU (Anti-Christian Liberal Union) has filed an injunction in Federal Court barring the inclusion of any right angles in political advertisements.

An ACLU representative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “We simply can not have God sneaking into our political dialogue through the use of right angles. Left angles would be just fine, but right angles certainly are excluded by the ‘separation of Church and State’ clause in the US Constitution.”

The ACLU lawyers who participated in drafting the injunction reported that they went through several iterations before arriving at a satisfactory definition of “right angles”. They settled on language which permits angles only if they are less than 70 or more than 110 degrees. Previous language was rejected when it was discovered that it would preclude the use of both the “hammer and sickle” logo and the “star and crescent” symbol, icons of the Hillary Klinton and B Hussein Obama campaigns respectively.

In search of global warming

Last week, the MS Explorer took to the seas with 154 passengers to search out signs of global warming.

Today, the ship rests on the floor of the Arctic Ocean, spewing oil and diesel fuel into the pristine polar environment, miring an untold number of helpless baby seals and polar bear cubs and creating a carbon footprint that rivals Al Gore's.

Fortunately, all of the passengers and crew were rescued before the ship sank last Friday.

The media headlines read "Cruise ship sinks". None are fretting about the ecological impact of this shipwreck. There are no estimates of the number of thousands of gallons of petroleum leaked into the ocean or the number of fish, seals, or whales killed. In fact, the media was strangely silent about the fact that this cruise ship was owned by Al Gore's buddy and fellow environmental wacko Bruce Poon Tip.

Tip, CEO of G.A.P. Adventures, regularly offers cruises to the Arctic Ocean to observe the melting polar ice resulting from global warming.

Of course the media does not reveal the most ironic aspect of the sinking of the MS Explorer. What caused the gaping hole in the side of the Explorer which caused it to founder and sink as they searched for signs of melting polar ice? They hit an iceberg.

Scary movies

In America, Halloween is ranked second among all of the holidays in dollars spent on holiday celebrations.

That puts Halloween ahead of Easter, when we celebrate Jesus victory over sin and death, ahead of Independence Day when we celebrate freedom and liberty, and ahead of Thanksgiving when we express our thanks to God for the innumerable blessings he showers on us.

So what is the significance of this last day of October? What is the compelling message that leads Americans to consider this day a higher priority than Jesus resurrection? The message is simple: "Boo!". Yeah, that's it. "Boo!"

It is traditional to watch a scary movie today. Blood, gore, a guy with blades on his fingers jumping out and making you scream, psychos, evil villains, undead, zombies, chainsaws, hockey masks, and people meeting an untimely demise are common themes in these films. I don't watch many of these films, but I do admit to enjoying "Silence of the Lambs" and "Psycho".

Tonight, in keeping with this tradition, I am going to watch a real bone-chiller, perhaps the most frightening movie of them all: Waco: Rules of Engagement.

What makes it particularly horrific is that the sequel is apparently on the way.

Your tax money at work

Dallas City Hall is launching a new billboard campaign against saggy pants.

Granted, wearing your pants down on your hips with your underwear sticking out looks dumb. But of all the things they could spend our tax money on, why that?

Seriously.

What makes the Newsboys so good?

Last weekend we drove down to Austin to see the Newsboys in concert. The Newsboys are a Christian band from Australia who have been around for just about as long as U2. Unlike U2, they have not lost their original greatness, as they continue to add to their 6 gold records. Their name sums up who they are and what they are about. "Gospel" means "Good News" and their purpose is to spread the news of Jesus Christ.

So what is it that makes the Newsboys so good?

They are extremely talented musically. Watching Peter Furler go from guitar to bass to drums, all while singing in his own gravelly style is remarkable. But there are lots of talented acts out there.

Their concerts are lots of fun. The high-tech lighting and video make it an amazing experience. And who can argue with upside-down dueling drums and Captain Crunch fights? But their greatness is not just in their entertainment value.

In my opinion, what makes the Newsboys uniquely great is one man who does not even appear on stage. His name is Steve Taylor, and he writes most of the lyrics. I listened to Steve Taylor's solo work way back in the day. He was something of a firebrand, belting out confrontational lines such as "You're so open-minded that your brain leaked out." My favorite song from his solo career is called "Bad Rap", and it includes this verse:

You save the whales, you save the seals,
You save whatever's cute and squeals.
But you kill that "thing" that's in the womb
Would not want no baby boom
Good, bad, laugh and scorn
Blame yourself for kiddie porn
Convenience is the law you keep
And your compassion's ankle deep.

Who ya tryin' to kid, kid?
Wrap it in a fine philosophy.
Who ya tryin' to kid, kid?
But your bottom line still says "me, me, me"
Got your heads together now?
Got a way that's better now?
Who ya tryin' to kid, kid?

Steve Taylor has written dozens of songs for the Newsboys, and I wish that I could share a whole bunch of them with you. We could discuss how he uses a song about Breakfast to show how we don't mourn like those who have no hope, or how he uses plays on sounds and names in a song about how our lives and words must point people to Jesus. But to really do them justice, you'll have to sit down with the lyric sheet, listen to the music, and get lost in the wit and genius of a great songwriter, but most importantly appreciate how he uses his gift to bring glory to God.

Circular arguments

Scientists say that they have "taken a baby step in trying to answer the cosmic question of where we come from. "

Their answer: dust.

"In the end, everything comes from space dust," said Markwick-Kemper of the University of Manchester in England.

But where does the dust come from?

The Spitzer Space Telescope was used to address that question. Astronomers used the telescope to find and identify a large amount of recently-formed space dust in the wind bursting out of a massive black hole 8 billion light years from here. They used the wavelengths of light coming from the quasar to determine the makeup: glass, sand, crystal, marble, ruby, and sapphire.

Ok, so where do black holes come from? They are the remnants of massive stars which have burned themselves out and collapsed under their own gravitation into a dimensionless point.

And where did the original star come from? Well, from space dust of course. It's that old chicken and egg problem all over again. You need dust to make stars and you need stars to make dust, so where did it start in the first place?

When science starts with the assumption that there is no God, it rejects the only possible first cause. Science, in its true form, is an investigation into the creative work of God. The Bible says that "you are dust, and to dust you shall return," but it also says who made the very matter of the dust out of nothing. God made it, and until scientists acknowledge that fact they are only running in circles.

The Pledge

Fifty Boulder Colorado High School students walked out of class today to protest the Pledge of Allegiance and it's phrase for which this blog is named: "one nation under God".

I could go into a rant about public education and the fallacy that the Constitution includes a "separation of Church and state." But I'd rather talk about that phrase which engenders such controversy. Saying that we are one nation under God is not a religious statement, and it does not depend in any way on one's personal opinions or beliefs. It is a simple statement of fact, and its truth doesn't change if you refuse to acknowledge it. It is true whether I believe in Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Diversity, Wicca, Mother Earth, Harvey the Rabbit, or Darwin. How can that be? Simple. Truth is not a function of what I think. It exists independent of my opinion or belief. Regardless of how sincerely or fervently I believe that the Earth is flat, that doesn't make it so.

"One nation under God" is much more of a statement about God than it is about America. We are under God because God is over all, not because we are somehow special or better or more deserving than any other nation. Ultimately, every nation is under God, and the time is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. But why wait? Those who acknowledge God and honor Him experience the blessing of being in His will, while those who defiantly refuse to acknowledge God's sovereignty are missing out on that blessing and instead will experience God's wrath and judgment. Each of us has that choice: life or death, blessing or cursing. Which are you picking? For me, I choose life. And I pray that America makes the same choice.

Flatland

In 1884, an English clergyman and teacher wrote a fascinating little book called Flatland, telling the tale of a resident of two-dimensional Flatland, mathematician A. Square. Mr. Square describes what it is like to live in a two-dimensional world and details the workings of their society, where women are thin, straight lines, the lowliest of shapes, and men have various number of sides, depending on their social status. Irregular shapes are looked down upon as inferior, with sharply pointed triangles being the lowest form for a male. These dangerously-shaped men are suited only for life as a soldier, the most degrading of occupations. Regular polygons are highly respectable members of society, the more sides, the better. Mr. Square tells about how these inhabitants of Flatland recognize each other and interact as they go about their lives without any concept of a direction that is "up, but not north".

Then one day, A. Square encounters something he has never seen before: a shape which has no sides at all, but appears to curve smoothly. Even more remarkably, it seems to grow larger or smaller and sometimes disappear entirely, only to reappear somewhere else. As Mr. Square interacts with this amazing creature, he comes to understand that it is a sphere, a three-dimensional creature existing outside of the plane which had defined his entire existence. Mr. Square tried to explain this third dimension to the other inhabitants of Flatland, but they derided him as crazy. This third dimension was beyond their experience or ability to understand, so they concluded that it could not exist.

It occurred to me that trying to understand God is like an inhabitant of Flatland trying to imagine a sphere. God exists outside of time and space. After all, he created them. He pre-existed this universe, and He will continue on after it comes to an end. Just as the sphere could look down on Flatland and see what was happening inside a closed room, God is not bound by the constraints of time and space as we are. He is all-present in time just as He is all-present in space. He does not need to look ahead to see the future. He is already there.

As humans we try to impose our tiny vision and short-sighted wisdom on God, saying "If God were good and loving, he would do things MY way." How foolish of us to think that we know better than God! How presumptuous to think that we can wrap our finite minds around His infinite being. It is unsettling to not fully understand why God acts as He does, but sometimes we must accept that while we don't know the reasons, we trust God and know that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and that He is ultimately in control.

Britney is lame, the sky is blue

There is some kind of big uproar because Britney Spears crashed and burned in her performance at the VMA. I was just curious enough to watch the video of her "disastrous" performance. I have seen her perform before, and each song consists of a meaningless hook repeated a zillion times while she undulates around the stage in almost no clothing. In her VMA performance she repeated a meaningless hook a zillion times while she undulated around the stage in almost no clothing. Her pop star status clearly has a lot less to do with any alleged musical talent and more to do with her trademark belly-button wiggle move. What I fail to grasp is not why this performance is considered to be bad, but rather why it is any worse than any of her other performances.

Marry your cellmate?

A friend directed my attention to a web site which claims to "Assist those following the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages for their Daughters." The site, which I will not draw further attention to by naming, lists underage girls "for sale" as brides. They say that the idea is for parents to list their daughter, her age, photo, and description along with a "bride price". Men can click the "Propose" button to offer to pay the family for the opportunity to marry the daughter. They list Bible references mentioning arranged marriages and paying the "bride price" to the father in exchange for the daughter's hand in marriage.

So essentially you have a web site trafficking in underage girls sold for sex, claiming to be a Christian operation.

But as I looked at the site, there were several red flags which screamed "fake!"

The listings themselves appear to be written to entice pedophiles. The photos couldn't possibly be real -- they look like photos from a teen model contest. And the testimonials are just far too outlandish to be real.

Here is one sample ad, name removed to protect the innocent.

*****’s grandmother married at 13, her mother married at 13, and ***** has decided she wants to keep the tradition going. She would prefer to stay close to her large extended southern family and loves farm or at least rural life. She got an A in Home Economics and has read up on what else would be expected of her as a wife and is looking forward to it.

Notice the thinly-veiled reference to this child being eager for sex. In most of the ads, sexual availability is implied, although carefully never stated.

Here is one of the "Testimonials"

My mother thought I was getting ‘too frisky” and that I had to get married right away before I lost my purity to some high school boy. They found me a husband and my parents were able to keep their house and pay off my mother’s medical bills. I was so glad I could help them, and being married at my age (I'm 16 now) has a lot of advantages, like my own credit card!

Again, suggesting that these girls are just dying to have sex with some older man.

As I looked further through the web site, it mentions that only men living in the United States can use the service. Supposedly this is because they need to follow up on the satisfaction of their customers, and it is just too hard to do that outside of this country. More likely, they only have jurisdiction in the US so they don't want to deal with men in other countries.

They specify that only adult men may "Propose", and all of the girls listed are underage. It is clearly set up to create an illegal situation, but the "Frequently asked questions" list says that it is all legal.

But here is the real ringer.

The web site's html code includes "search engine fodder" designed to bring in traffic from people searching for certain phrases. These key words are inserted into the web page source by the creators in hopes of attracting certain people to their site. So what does this sites key words indicate about who they are hoping to bring to their web site?

Here is a partial listing of the key words:

forced child slave prostitute hooker whore escort teen sexy sex childwatch naked abuse pervert preteen toy buy money sold young single horror polygamy rape slavery hot blonde brunette redhead 13 14 15 16 17 underage illegal teenage delinquent juvenile foreclosure virgin escort

It does not exactly prove that this is a sting operation, but it does prove beyond any doubt that the intentions are not Christian in any way, even in the misguided sense that they claim. It may be a Department of Justice sting operation, or it might be a site trafficking in underage girls for money. I'm leaning towards thinking that it is a sting, but I reported the site to the DOJ Center for Missing & Exploited Minors just to be safe. But either way, what bothers me is that they claim to run this sick operation based on the Bible. The Bible does not command or even endorse arranged marriages, and it absolutely does not condone violating societal standards or laws regarding the proper age for marriage or sexual relations, and the concept of selling a daughter is completely reprehensible by Biblical standards.

So if it is a sting, please don't claim to use the Bible in your operation!

Update: This web site was a hoax, not a sting or a real operation.

I won the lottery!

There is the old joke about the guy who keeps praying that God will let him win the lottery, and he doesn't win and doesn't win. And finally God tells him "Help me out here. Buy a ticket."

My stand is that if it is God's will for me to win the lottery, He has no trouble providing the ticket. Buying a lottery ticket is a loosing proposition, and therefore is poor stewardship of the money that God has blessed us with.

Today the news reports that four people won the $330 million MegaMillions jackpot, including one person here in Texas. A $330 million payoff on odds of 1 in 176 million sounds like a pretty good deal. What you won't hear them trumpeting so loudly is that no one of those people will walk away with anything remotely close to $330 million. The cash value of the jackpot is $190 million. Split four ways, they each get $47.5 million. But the government, as they hold out that money with one hand, grab back 28% of it with the other hand in taxes, leaving $34 million, or about ten percent of the advertised payout. Spending a dollar for a 1 in 176 shot at $34 million doesn't sound like such a great deal, does it? Not that $34 million is anything to sneeze at. But when you consider that people spent $600 million chasing that jackpot it seems like a case of mass hysteria.

The real winners are those who didn't buy into it. Like me.

Vick finds Jesus

"We all make mistakes," said Michael Vick. "Dogfighting is a terrible thing and I reject it ... I found Jesus and turned my life over to God. I think that's the right thing to do as of right now."

I'm not going to speculate here about whether this is a genuine decision or a calculated sympathy ploy. The timing is suspicious, but that's a matter known only by God and Mr. Vick.

What I can say with complete certainty is that it came a bit late. No one is beyond the reach of God's grace. Just look at Saul, who hunted down and killed Christians before meeting Jesus and being transformed by God into a great missionary. But if Vick had been similarly transformed a year or two ago through a genuine, life-changing encounter with the Living God, his life would be very different today.

Some people think that being a Christian is just about going to heaven when you die, but they are missing out on the fact that eternal life starts the moment you accept Christ as your savior, and at that moment God takes your old messed up life and supernaturally turns it around into something exceptionally good. Living life today in fellowship with God is just as much a benefit of salvation as going to heaven when I die.

I am thankful that God saved me when I was young, because He spared me from many of the stupid choices that people make when they try to live without Him.

The truth about Michael Vick will be seen in his life ten years from now. But how much better would it be if he had turned his life over to God ten years ago, and not had to lose so much to be forced to "find Jesus" in prison, watching his NFL career crumble before his eyes?

It is wise to learn from other people's mistakes, because it helps you to avoid making them all yourself. Perhaps Michael Vick could have avoided this calamity in his personal life by learning from other people's experience. And maybe you can learn from Michael Vick's experience. Don't wait until your life is ruined to turn to God. Do it now. Ask Jesus to be your Savior and Lord, and allow Him to turn you into a new creation. Do it today.

Bush did it

President Bush is to blame for a lot of bad stuff that has happened in the past years.

He pulled some strings to get Katrina to hit New Orleans, right in the spot where a bunch of environmentalist wackos prevented the Corp of Engineers from building a better sea wall. And if that's not enough, Al Sharpton says that Bush actually put dynamite under the levies to make sure that they would fail.

Bush caused the I-35 bridge to collapse into the Mississippi river in Minneapolis.

And Bush lied and got all of our dumb troops stuck in Iraq to profit his contractor buddies. That certainly was not about terrorism -- after all, Bush was behind 9/11 too!

But this one tops them all.

Now we have the bombshell revelation that President Bush got a 20-year-old pregnant and denied her the entitlement of drinking mai tais on a tropical beach.

A 20-year-old Illinois college student is whining because she won’t be able to vacation in Costa Rica, because she got pregnant, because she couldn’t get birth control anymore, because it cost $20-a-month more at the university clinic, because its federal funding was cut, because President George Bush signed the Deficit Reduction Act.

I can't make this stuff up, folks. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that

Last spring, 20-year-old pre-med student Elizabeth Harris had only Costa Rica on her mind. She was hoping to wine and dine there while taking a few biology courses.
But the Waukegan native and University of Illinois at Chicago junior had to skip her trip. Having gone off birth control, Harris found she was pregnant. She said she quit when the cost of her prescription at the UIC clinic more than doubled. "[The price] steered me away," said Harris. "I don't blame them [UIC], but I might not be in the situation I am in now."

The cost of Harris’ birth control -- NuvaRing, a monthly contraceptive, at the UIC clinic was $35, up from $15. “She said that even though UIC provides free condoms she would only use them ‘once in a while.’ Other times she and her partner were feeling spontaneous and ‘it just happened,’ she explained”.

The story portrays Harris as the helpless victim of Bush's budget cuts and makes the case for more Federal funding of birth control: “Harris, coming from a low-income home, said she cannot afford to pay so much more for birth control.”

Sure. And what is the cost of the cell phone she was shown holding in the newspaper photo? She could afford a trip to Costa Rica, but couldn't afford $35 for birth control? Maybe if she can’t afford to protect herself, she should -- perish the thought -- abstain from sex.

How does anyone get the idea that taxpayers are required to pay for her birth control? That spontaneous sex excuses reckless behavior? That extra-marital sex is no problem, ethically or morally?

This is not just a case of one girl publicly sticking her foot in her mouth over her irresponsible behavior. It reflects a society which has lost its mind.

Two years

Two years ago today I launched "One Nation Under God" onto the internet with great fanfare. Since then, I have taken the blogosphere by storm, accumulating almost a dozen avid readers. In memory of the two year anniversary of this blog, I am going to repost the guiding principles I laid out two years ago. I believe that they apply now as much as ever, and I believe that each of the 161 posts in this blog have worked to advance these principles.

1. America is great in spite of its government, not because of it
2. The earth is not fragile. Capitalism is not a threat to the environment.
3. Without the Second Amendment, the rest of the Bill of Rights is meaningless.
4. Budget deficits are caused by excessive spending, not insufficient taxation.
5. Parents are responsible for raising their kids, not villages and certainly not Hillary Clinton or the Federal Government.
6. Entrusting your retirement to the stock market is less risky than entrusting it to Congress.
7. Terrorism is an evil which must be wiped out, not appeased.
8. Most of the things that Congress does are outside of its Constitutional authority.
9. Free Market forces are better at improving society than government regulations.
10. Subsidizing irresponsibility is a very bad policy.