Drunken Mystic

Okay, so I watched this video and it is excellent … yes, there is a little pro-McCain message at the end, but the first five to seven minutes are amazing.  Do the fact checking if you don’t believe what they’re saying.

The rhetoric that the Bush “failed economic policies” had anything to do with the current crisis is an outright lie.  That is a strong word, but it’s true.  Anyone who knows anything about business and business practice knows that this kind of crippling doesn’t happen in a few years in one administration.

Watch video here if interested in the facts behind current economic crisis.

Peace.

From Douglas Adams in Mostly Harmless …

“you are as as you think you are.”

Peace.

A story surfaced a few days ago based on a recent survey looking into racial views in light of the first African American presidential candidate in the US.

Right off the bat, I think the survey is valid and timely. Either way, we will have the first black male president or female VP. It’s been a historic race so far, and I for one am glad of the progress. How we view people of other race and genders, especially in our media savvy nation, comes into play.

The survey found that most whites, Republican, Democrat and independent, have negative views on African Americans. They see them as complaining, lazy, irresponsible and likely to commit a crime. Registered Republicans were more negative and less positive than Democrats, but even white Democrats had similar predjudices. Independents were, predictably, in the middle.

I believe this survey was pretty accurate. I wasn’t surprised but fairly disappointed. I believe, if we’re honest, when most white people read the list of negatives above, it went right along with our current views on people with a darker skin color.

Part of Martin Luther King’s dream was that men would not be judged according to the “color of their skin but the content of their character.” This cannot be legislated and hasn’t been fully realized.

Paul the Apostle wrote that in Christ, these distinctions are gone, all external distinctions. God does not look at the external but the heart.

If we have Christ in us, we should be above this.

I don’t care if you meet 99 black people in a row that act like gansters, give you attitude or commit a crime in your full view, that doesn’t give you the right to have any of those expectations for #100.

And this goes for all races we tend to make snap judgments about. As Christians, we’ve been given the mind of Christ, and weapons of grace to pull down strongholds in our “imaginations” that “exalt itself against the knowledge of God.” This is a biggie. Every human being is “fearfully and wonderfully” created, fashioned by the hand of God Himself. Each deserves the right to be treated as an unique individual, regardless of how they dress or look or speak.

Picture a suburban neighborhood mostly white. Minorities, especially African American, begin to move in. What happens? Do the whites welcome the new additions, reach out to them, feel glad that maybe their standard of living is improving? It might happen. I’d like to think I would. Mostly what happens, though, is the white people move out, farther from the urban areas, try to create a new suburban safe zone, and all with excuses of “it’s too crowded” or even negative ideas of “lower property values” or moving to a “safer” neighborhood for their kids or better “education”.

I think this is racism. If someone of a different skin color moves into your neighborhood and you move out based on negative perceptions associated with that race, it is racism. What’s even worse is when whole fellowships of Christians do this.

And most Christians who act this way vote Republican.

If we’re honest (we being white people, myself included), we’re more afraid of being CALLED racist than actually thinking racist thoughts. For Christians, this shameful. Again, we follow a God that looks at our heart, not at what people perceive of us.

The Church is still one of the most segregated groups, by race, in this whole country. Shameful.

My agenda here isn’t to generalize white people either. Let me be clear — my challenge is to all Christians to get rid of ALL racial, political, national, or cultural profiling and treat every person like God does: as an amazing creation worthy of his time and love.

Peace.

PS

In fairness, something the article didn’t point out, is that you will also find among some African Americans a certain feeling that they should vote for Obama becuase he is black. Every person votes for their own reasons and that is their right, but to vote for someone because he is black is just as racist as NOT voting for him because he is black. Both belie the attituded that the pigment of your skin makes that much of a difference.

If you vote for a candidate based on the content of their character, even if you don’t vote for the black man, you’ll take part in realizing MLK’s dream.

In keeping with some upcoming and recent posts, we’re gonna deal a little with Ronald Regan this week.

The Regan years were interesting, especially if you lived through them consciously like I did. Regan was wildly popular (the election in ’84 was a historic landslide and some even talked of changing the constitution in ’88 so he could run again), but he was under constant criticism and attack from an increasingly liberal media and a Democratic Congress.

While I don’t have this perfect image of Regan, he should go down in history as top 5 president at least. Unfortunately, the modern liberal media (CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and most newspapers) is currently doing their best to rewrite history and slam him.

Today I’m going to tackle what was derisively called “trickle-down economics”. Even this term, to me, was used as misinformation. Regan’s economic plan, while having elements of “trickle down” to it, was bigger in scope than just being friends with the rich. This isn’t what the left will feed you, so let’s look at it.

To explain: Regan inherited probably the worst American economy since the great depression. Unemployment in double digits, high inflation, a real recession (not the panic driven one we’re going through now … not actually a recession). His solution was not to bail out the economy with tax dollars but to cut taxes across the board, rich and middle class and poor and even business. The result? The economy boomed, millions of jobs created and the the stock market soared. Also, the US government INCREASED their tax revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars.

People give Regan a hard time for increasing the military budget while he was president (hold on, History Lesson #4) and being responsible for the spike in the national debt. But if you look at the actual numbers of the Federal Budget during those years, domestic spending on welfare programs increased way more than military spending. Why? Well, Regan made deals with the Democratic Congress (they ran both houses through the ’80′s) and overall spending through the ’80′s by the government skyrocketed. Welfare programs were just as responsible for the deficit, if not more so.

These are facts, numbers you could easily check me on. The “trickle down” aspect that the left so criticized in their attempt to foster class warfare was the idea that if businesses (and therefore, the “rich”) have more money, they’ll use it to invest and grow their business … yes, because they eventually expect more profit. That creates more jobs … which in turn creates more jobs … which takes more people off of government dependence and they pay taxes from income they generate, which raises the government’s tax revenue.

But Regan lowered taxes for everyone. And that put more money into everyone’s pocket … and that gives people more confidence to spend and invest which creates more jobs … which … well, you get the idea.

This is exactly what happened.

Things weren’t perfect in the ’80′s. I mean, the Flock of Seagull’s haircuts alone should tell you that, and I don’t want to hail Regan as some messianic standard for the presidency or that this is necessarily a fully Christian ideal. But in this, he was right. The economy improved. People’s standard of living improved. And it is definitely un-Christian to lie about that.

Now, Regan didn’t invent this. This is a law of economics, even before capitalism, throughout history. Cutting taxes, especially burdensome ones, improves economic conditions for everyone and increases state tax revenue. Raising taxes to an oppressive degree produces recessive conditions. An overtaxed people will rebel — just look at China’s history … or what’s been going on in Europe now as “conservatism” is on the rise and people see the failings of socialism.

As an example, JFK sought lower taxes for these very reasons. Why don’t we laugh at him or put him down for such silly economic ideas? Oh, right, he was a Democrat.

If the economy presents a major concern for you and you want the government to have more money to play with at the same time, vote for the candidate who will lower taxes, not raise them.

Peace.

Doing a final (is there such a thing?) edit and rewrite on the book … might get a post out tomorrow … enjoy this video in the meantime.

Some of you have seen this, some have been forced to see it, but for those who have not, enjoy … my only comment, between fits of laughter, is just … wow.

“Jesus is my friend … he’s like a mountie, he always gets his man …”

Peace.

Last night, the E-man was tooling around on the internet and found that someone had hacked into Sarah Palin’s personal email account and posted a bunch of her private stuff.

Assuming this person was at least a moderate liberal wearing a free “yes we can” Obama t-shirt, aren’t they supposed to believe in this “right to privacy” thing they keep throwing up everytime people question the legality of unborn babies? You don’t have that right if you’re a conservative, I guess.

Like I said, it’s just gonna get worse over the next month or two.

Other quick predictions: if McCain wins this election (even more likely than it was before), two things will happen. One, the choice of Sarah Palin will be seen as one of the most influential VP choices in American history.

Two, the reaction by the media (with the exception of Fox) and the left will be utter despondency. You think ’04 was bad? It was hilarious watching the guys from ABC, CNN, CBS, and NBC just at their wits end while Bush won one of the most convincing victories in recent times. They will be horrified if Obama loses. Some will even go so far as to suggest , that he lost “because he was black”. It will be bad, even though McCain is way more moderate than Bush is.

Peace.

I had an idea today and thought I’d share.

I think it would be interesting, per so many Christians who have become fervent Obama supporters, to have a discussion-type podcast or a blog exchange between two Christians who each are voting for a different candidate. If done with civility, it could be an interesting exchange, where two people each have to support why, as a Christian, they feel comfortable voting for that particular candidate.

While I don’t agree with everything he might say or stand for, I feel fairly comfortable being a Christian and voting for John McCain. Any Obama supporters out there willing to have an honest exchange of ideas on these issues? I think, if done right, it would be healthy for people to hear (or read) two individuals who believe in Jesus but have different political views and support why they might vote differently in an election.

Any takers? We could do a sit down audio discussion and post it online for people to download. Or we could set up some sort of writing/ response structure that could also be very interesting.

Just an idea.

Peace.

Yesterday was Micah’s b-day … wow. He’s three already! He’s such a little boy, and I got a little emotional last night remembering how awesome it was to just bring the little guy home and share him with such an amazing community at the Hospitality House.

For those of you that were there at that time, Micah had some amazing uncles and aunts waiting for him.

He has several now, as well, people who love him and I can just trust their influence in his life. Micah has been every bit the blessing we prayed for him to be, and he just continues to amaze as he grows up and learns things …

His latest thing has been learning sign language. Micah and I were at the library last weekend. We got some books for him, some for me, and then we stopped by the DVD section where I was going to look for some stuff he likes … Thomas, Bob the Builder, Clifford … Micah grabbed this DVD and was like, “this is the one I want!” He didn’t even know what it was, but he was adamant about it being his. It was a kids DVD that taught toddlers sign language using songs and stuff.

We took it home, and with his elephant-like memory, Micah asked to watch it when he got home. We did and he loved it. He loves trying to make the letters and numbers and learning new signs.

Of course, his daddy is trying to get him to watch Greatest American Hero and sing “Believe it or not”, but whatever.

Just an example of how cool kids can be, Micah especially.

The scripture says that children are a blessing and Becca and I have found the Bible to be true, as it is in many things.

Peace.