ABM - "Anybody but McCain"

My favored political candidate, Fred Thompson, has dropped out of the race. So have the two people I was most likely to support if Thompson quit - Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo. Now I'm stuck with choosing among a field of "lessers" - McCain, Romney, Huckabee, Guilliani, Paul, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.

Forget the Democrats. There hasn't been a Democratic contender I'd be willing to vote for in the last four Presidential elections. I'm not too happy with the Republican candidates, either. In a time when we need a Madison, Lincoln, or Truman, we get McCain, Romney, and Clinton II. What a trio of buffoons.

I'll probably end up voting for one of them - the lesser of two bad choices, as I've had to do in all but a couple of elections since I first cast a ballot 42 years ago. The lesser of two bad choices is still a bad choice. We can only hope that it won't be so horrible a choice we'll have to resort to force to undo the mistakes that person makes. That brings us to John McCain.

McCain has proven over and over that he is the "candidate of mistakes" - McCain/Feingold, immigration, judges, tax cuts, and a half-dozen other major issues where he's been on the wrong side. If there's an option, I'd prefer Romney over McCain, and any Republican over either Clinton or Edwards. I don't have a good feeling about Barrack Obama, either, but I don't know enough to weigh his negatives, other than he's an idiot on foreign policy, and not too sharp on domestic policy.

This nation has failed, over the last decade or two, to attract and support top-level political leadership, especially for President. I fear we will face some truly difficult times ahead because of that failure.

"A German's point of view on Islam"

I received this from a friend of mine two days ago, and wondered if I should post it. After careful consideration, I decided I could not NOT post it and be true to my own beliefs. I wish I had a link, but so far I haven't been able to find one.

by Dr. Emanual Tanay, Psychiatrist

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War ll owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

'Very few people were true Nazis 'he said,'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority', the 'silent majority', is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China 's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War ll was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And, who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.

This is all over the Internet, but I can't find a source for the original information - the original German quote. Dr. Tanay is indeed a noted psychiatrist, and even won a very prestigious award in 1984.

In the beginning, God...

Genesis 1:
1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Thus begins the saga of how God created the universe, and all that is within it. What few Christians, and almost all non-Christians, refuse to admit is that God DID create ALL the universe, and all that is within it. That means many different things that few today acknowledge, but that Solomon understood and admitted to in Ecclesiastes.

3:14 I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.
3:15 That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.

8:17 Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.

I don't consider myself a wise man, but I do consider myself a child of God. I have asked God to explain to me what is true, and right. I feel I have received an answer, which I will put forth here. I don't expect or require that any man agree with me, but to ponder, and ask God if this is right and true, and listen for God's answer.

Two problems exist: the first is that Mankind assumes that the times referred to in Genesis are Man-time, instead of understanding that it is God-time, which is something quite different; and the second is that there is little difference between what we call "religion" and what we call "science". Let me try to explain what I mean by these.

God is Eternal. He has no beginning, and no end. Also, as Solomon so wisely stated, for God, all things are NOW (literally, "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been;"). God-time, then, cannot be related to Man-time. For God, a second could be equal to half of eternity for Man, or half of eternity could be equal to a second. We all need to understand that, and understand that God works SOLELY on God-time.

When God dictated the Bible to man, he did it to pre-industrial, almost pre-agricultural nomadic herders. If God had tried to explain to them particle physics, the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics, guess how far He'd have gotten. Instead, He used terms that the authors could understand, and could relate to others. "Fundamentalist Christians" demand, however, that we equate the works of Genesis not in God-time, but in Man-time. The patent absurdity of this is found in Genesis itself, where planets and moons were not created until the fourth day.

God created the entire universe. That also means that instead of chaos, His creation is an ORDERLY universe that obeys the "natural" laws He created to operate in it. This brings us to point two above, that "religion" and "science" are but two sides of the same coin. "Religion" attempts to establish "who" and "why" the universe was created, while "science" tries to discover "what", "where", "when", and "how". Neither should (or can) distract from the other, for both magnify the glory of God's creation. The more details we learn about the events that led to our presence here today only go to prove what Solomon said: "Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.".

No single scientist, no group of scientists, can know ALL that God has created in this universe. There will always be things that bedazle and amaze us, and pique our interest to learn more. Our knowledge shouldn't cause us to reject God, but to understand more fully His omnipotence - and attention to detail. Nor should anything Man learns force us to "choose between God and Science", because both are one: God created ALL "scientific principles" when He created the universe. Just because we learned about God first, and we're a bit slow picking up the physical manifestations of His handiwork shouldn't detract from the fact that they are His creations.

Nor should scientific explanations of our world's past cause us to be forced to choose between God and Man: the universe is probably 16.5 billion Man-years old, and that doesn't change the fact that it was created by God in six God-days. The two have nothing in common. One is a measure of how WE, the inhabitants of this piece of real estate, measure time: the other is how God defines the processes of His actions. Remember again Solomon's words: "and God requireth that which is past.". The history of our universe, and our planet, are "required by God".

Everything God does has a progression. Nothing was created before its time. Everything built toward where we are today. There would be no oil or coal for man to use if God hadn't created it over a long period of time, beginning millions and millions of years ago. The more we learn about our universe, the more we see an orderly progression from very minute sub-atomic particles to very complex systems including billions of galaxies. This is all the handiwork of God, and the more we know about them, the greater should be the awe of His magnificence.