Conspiracy Theories and Paranormal Phenomena, a blog created by Christian author Ilyan Kei Lavanway, offers opinions and perspectives that attempt to shed light on unexplained mysteries, conspiracies, and current events. The contents of this site do not necessarily represent the official position of any organization.
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Merry Christmas!
To answer one reader's perfectly valid concern, please understand this:
There is nothing about the LDS Church that would cause me to mention it on a conspiracy theories and paranormal phenomenon site, but there is a lot about the world that makes it imperative that I do so.
This article by David Kupelian at WorldNet Daily (WND) is a perfectly expressed and absolutely breathtaking perspective on our prodigal nation and the only way we can fix it. His article, dated Wednesday, December 19, 2012, should become part of the official curriculum in every American History class, and in every Bible Study class. Just read it. And share it.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/tribulation-and-redemption-in-obamas-america/
Can anyone defend these observations as inaccurate?
Top Ten - Only in America - By a Canadian
1) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund-raising event.
2) Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when they have a black President, had a black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black while only 12% of the population is black.
3) Only in America could they have had the two people most responsible for their tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
4) Only in America can they have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.
5) Only in America would they make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just "magically' become American citizens.
6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."
7) Only in America could you need to present a driver's license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.
8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. Oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).
9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a trillion dollars more than it has per year for total spending of $7 million PER MINUTE, and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money.
And Finally,
10) Only in America could the most productive people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who don't pay any income taxes at all.
"Where's the Line to See Jesus?" While at the mall a few years ago, Becky Kelly's then four year old nephew, Spencer, saw kids lined up to see Santa Claus. Having been taught as a toddler that Christmas is the holiday that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, he asked his mom, "Where's the line to see Jesus?" Becky's sister mentioned this to her father, Steve Haupt, who immediately became inspired and jotted some words down to the song in just a few minutes.
After putting music to the words, and doing a quick home recording, he received a great response from friends. Her father asked if Becky wanted to record the song to see what could happen with it. Becky listened to the song, made a few changes and headed to Shock City Studios.
It was at the studio where Chris Loesch, owner and producer, rewrote the second verse and part of the chorus. With goosebumps and emotions high, they all felt like they had something special and recorded the demo in just under two hours.
Two weeks before Christmas last year, her cousins decided to do a quick video to see what we could accomplish on YouTube. The first day it had 3,000 hits and it soared to a million from there! Becky received e-mails, phone calls, Facebook messages from people all over over the world asking for the music, CD's, iTunes, a full version, anything... they had nothing.
After a couple of meetings with Chris following the amazing response, the team got serious. They headed back into the studio this past spring... this time with guitars, drums, bass, pianos, choirs... the real deal.... and here it is today. Getting everything set up, a website put together, and loving that thousands upon thousands of Christians have come together... remembering the true meaning of Christmas.
Out of the mouths of babes come profound truths that many adults cannot understand.
Hopefully Spencer's observation will cause people all over to reflect on the love of Jesus, and that one day we will all stand in line to see Him. Becky is most thankful to our Heavenly Father to have this chance to share her music with you. Merry Christmas everyone.
Interesting facts:
A portion of the proceeds of CD sales will go to Christian Family Services in St. Louis and the good work they do finding homes for children in need.
The man playing piano in the video is Becky's father, Steve, who is also the main writer of the song and is the pianist on both recordings.
Gloria Estefan's bassist, Jorge Casas, is the bassist on this recording.
Recording credits:
Performed by: Becky Kelley
Written by: Steve Haupt & Chris Loesch
Produced by: Chris Loesch
Recorded at: Shock City Studios, St. Louis, MO
Video credits:
Directed by: Chris Benson
Cinematography: Chris Benson
Edited by: Gabriel Reed and Chris Benson
Produced by: Carlyn Graumenz, Chris Benson (Lamplight Films) and Chris Loesch for Shock City Producitons
Cameras and Lights: Heroic Age
December 21, 2012 has been touted as yet another day for the world to end. This day is peculiar because of its correlation with what many believe to be the end of the Mayan Calendar. The Mayan Calendar may not have projected any dates beyond today, but that does not mean the world will end today, or anytime soon.
Don't get me wrong. Just because we're still here is no cause to become complacent and suppose there is no end. There is. But not for several decades.
Elder Boyd K. Packer, an apostle of Jesus Christ, stated the following in a General Conference address titled Counsel to Youth, October 1, 2011:
"I speak to the youth more personally than I usually do, comparing my youth with yours... Sometimes you might be tempted to think as I did from time to time in my youth: 'The way things are going, the world’s going to be over with. The end of the world is going to come before I get to where I should be.' Not so! You can look forward to doing it right — getting married, having a family, seeing your children and grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren."
That single explanation by a living apostle of Jesus Christ debunks every doomsday prediction about the end of the world for at least the next two or three generations. It also suggests an approximate decade in which the Savior will return. Of course, nobody knows exactly when that day will be. Anyone who claims to know the exact date of the Second Coming of Christ, or the exact date of the end of the world, is either lying or ignorant.
To put Elder Packer's remarks in chronological perspective, note the age group to whom he was speaking. While he was speaking to young people in general, he was specifically speaking to the youth.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the term "youth" refers to children 12 through 17 years old. Primary children are those younger than 12, and young adults are those 18 through 30 years old.
I am not going to spit out any numbers for you. You can do some math yourself.
Approximately how many years will it take for those who were 12 to 17 years old in 2011 to grow up, get married, and have children?
How many years will it take for those children to grow up, get married and have babies?
And then, how many more years until those babies grow up, get married, and begin having kids?
Jesus Christ will probably return while those kids, the great-grand children of the youth to whom Elder Packer spoke in 2011, are alive.
Read the Bible. There are many prophecies that must be fulfilled before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which is synonymous with what most people consider to be the end of the world. That is to say, the return of Jesus Christ to the Earth will be the end of the wicked upon the earth for a period of a thousand years, but the earth, as a planet, will remain intact.
I believe that those who sincerely watch for the signs of the times and make an honest effort to follow Christ will feel an increasing awareness as the Second Coming approaches. If you do these things, you are among the faithful servants who will not perish when Christ comes as a thief in the night, at a time when the slothful and the unbelieving are not looking for him.
The ongoing fulfillment of prophecies, when viewed in retrospect while simultaneously looking forward with steadfastness, may make it evident when we are in the decade of Christ's return, and then when we are in the year of his return, and then the month, and finally the week of his arrival. But, even in the week of his arrival, no one will know the exact day or hour until he actually arrives.
I cannot list every prophecy yet to be fulfilled, or predict how long it will take to fulfill any particular prophecy, but I will point out that one of the things that must occur before Christ returns is the Battle of Armageddon. As of this writing, that battle has not yet commenced.
The Bible suggests that the Battle of Armageddon will last about 1,260 days, that is three and a half years. During that time, the nations of the world will besiege and do battle against the nation of Israel.
Also, during that time, two prophets will testify. After their three and a half year mission is complete, they will be slaughtered and lay dead in the streets while the wicked inhabitants of the earth celebrate their demise.
Three and a half days after their deaths, these two prophets will be resurrected in plain sight and ascend into the sky before the very eyes of their enemies. This event will be broadcast to the world. As the initial shock and fear of such an astonishing event event fade, political and media efforts will attempt to downplay the truth, explaining it away as some trick or hallucination, or some phenomenon not yet in our vernacular. Some people will repent, but most will not.
After these two prophets are resurrected, Christ himself will end the Battle of Armageddon. The nation of Israel will be on the verge of utter destruction, and Christ will stand on the Mount of Olives and cause it to split, creating a canyon into which the nation of Israel will flee. At this point, Christ will personally defeat the armies of the world and save the nation of Israel.
The citizens of Israel will meet Christ and realize who he is. They will then be given ample years to become converted to Christ and receive the fullness of his gospel. This event is not yet the Second Coming of Christ in his full glory. This is a visitation of Christ to the Jews specifically. The end is not yet.
Ezekiel 39:9-16 describes a period of seven years during which the weapons of war are burned, following the Battle of Armageddon. That seven year period includes a specific seven month period during which the majority of the dead are buried.
There are many more events than these that must transpire before Christ comes in his full glory and burns all evil from the face of the earth. But, these two events alone cover at a least decade that has yet to come and go.
The best strategy is to prepare and live each day as if it is the day you will stand before Christ. Then, it does not matter so much when he comes, or when the end of the world as we know it happens. You will be okay.
Fished from a sea of divorce files at the Virginia Beach courthouse, Case No. CL11-3455 contains the usual affidavits and orders, the meltdown of a marriage chronicled in cold legalese.
Only hindsight makes this folder more haunting - that, and a single sheet of paper now resting atop the stack of documents.
Filed Nov. 18, 2011, it notifies the court that Deborah and Robert Wigg will not be pursuing their divorce. Both parties, it explains, are "now deceased."
There is no hint of the shocking violence behind that statement.
Not a glimmer of the rage and terror that enveloped the last moments of their relationship.
And no clue that Debbie and Rob were part of a record cluster of murder-suicides.
Eight times last year in South Hampton Roads, a man used a gun or a knife or his bare hands to kill a woman he once loved - and then he killed himself.
Half of all marriages end in divorce.
Why do some end in two funerals as well?
The brick rancher sits on a quiet street in Suffolk, a modest house in a modest neighborhood with basketball hoops, neat shrubs and folks who wave to each other.
Grove Avenue seems an unlikely place for murder-suicide, an act that turns children into orphans, devastates at least two families, and speaks to our darkest fears.
Debbie Wigg moved there in hopes of finding refuge. Her roots were in small-town Suffolk - her childhood and her parents. College took her to Norfolk.
Smart, pretty and petite - 5-foot-1 and barely 100 pounds - she enrolled at Old Dominion University, became a cheerleader and met Rob. He was athletic, intelligent and outgoing. They married in 1995.
For 15 years, Debbie and Rob seemed to live the American Dream. She found a good job as an accountant in Norfolk. He went to work at Southeastern Elementary in Chesapeake, where he taught fifth grade for four years.
When Debbie became pregnant with their first son, Rob left teaching and launched a lucrative business, buying and installing ATMs in convenience stores. They bought a big house with a pool in Chesopeian Colony, a high-end neighborhood in Virginia Beach. They threw block parties and entertained friends. Debbie gave birth to another son.
One year ago, their marriage collapsed. Debbie filed for divorce in February, saying her husband had become someone she couldn't live with. According to her complaint, Rob had started using drugs - cocaine and crack - and admitted he'd been unfaithful. Some evenings he didn't come home, and when he did, he was wrung-out and aggressive, badgering her until the wee hours of the morning.
Debbie moved out, retreating to Suffolk, where she and her boys holed up in her late grandmother's house on Grove Avenue, just half a mile from her parents' place. As the divorce trudged on, the bitterness escalated.
Rob accused Debbie of trying to keep him from his sons and ruin him financially. Debbie accused Rob of being an unfit husband and father.
Tensions exploded in April. Debbie said Rob attacked her while she was picking up the boys at his house, slamming a door on her head, pulling her hair and knocking her to the ground.
When their oldest son, a 10-year-old, called 911, Rob yanked the phone cord out of the wall. Debbie escaped the house and flagged down police.
Chesopeian Colony isn't accustomed to flashing blue lights. Neighbors watched as Rob was taken away in handcuffs.
"I am in fear for mine and my children's safety and welfare," Debbie wrote in her complaint. "My husband does own a handgun..."
Debbie was granted a protective order, a legal document instructing her husband to stay away from her.
Rob was charged with assault, but with no criminal record to hold him, he was released from jail that night.
His 9 mm pistol, carried for protection as he serviced his ATMs, was left in his hands.
No one tracks the country's murder-suicides. In the few reports that do exist, Virginia is often mentioned - not for our private tragedies but for our most public one: the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, a massacre that, in the end, was murder-suicide.
Most are family affairs, a toll told in smaller headlines on inside pages: "Two found dead in home."
The Violence Policy Center in Washington scours the Internet for those news clips, and estimates that 1,000 to 1,500 people die that way in the nation every year.
Weighed against regular homicides (about 18,000 annually) or even traffic fatalities (30,000), the body count for murder-suicide is relatively small. Yet we'd be hard-pressed to name a death that's more deeply disturbing.
"The family unit is regarded as a crucible of peace and love, not violence," said Jack Levin, a Northeastern University professor who's considered an authority on murder-suicide. When one occurs, he said we all feel unsafe, wondering "who could be next?"
Virginia is one of the few states that keep murder-suicide statistics, as part of its participation in the National Violent Death Reporting System, a project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to a decade's worth of data collected by the state medical examiner, Virginia averages around 18 a year. In the Tidewater District, an area far larger than just South Hampton Roads, the average is less than three.
But in 2011, South Hampton Roads alone had eight, the most ever recorded.
There is no simple explanation for the spike, particularly since crime overall is down. Some blame the economy; unemployment and foreclosure can tip the already-troubled over the edge. In a recent CDC survey of 9,000 women, one-in-four said they'd been attacked by husbands or boyfriends.
Men are almost always the perpetrator of murder-suicide, especially the kind that claims intimate partners.
"Then again, murder in general is a masculine pursuit," Levin said. "Ninety-one percent are committed by men."
Women who do commit murder-suicide tend to kill their children, but not their husbands or boyfriends. Men might target the children as well, but the woman is almost always among the victims.
The phenomenon knows no bounds. It strikes in gabled homes, middle-class suburbia, rusty trailers. And while the lack of survivors can make it tough to piece the story together, motives often fit distinct categories.
Florida, with its large elderly population, has more of what experts call "altruistic" murder-suicides: an aging husband who can no longer care for his feeble wife decides to take their fates into his own hands.
A sense of love, although twisted, can also fuel the "family annihilator" syndrome: a psychotic father who really believes his family is better off dead.
The most common pattern, however, is defined by rage, revenge and obsession, and divorce is often the catalyst. Killers tend to be possessive, domineering, lonely, paranoid and depressed. And when the woman makes a break, she's viewed as the source of all his pain.
"Control is a big thing here," Levin said. "He's lost it, and this is his way of getting it back."
Neighbors don't want their names used in this story, and the families can hardly bring themselves to talk about what happened.
A call to the Virginia Beach home of one of Rob's relatives was answered by a man who explained it this way: "We just want to go on with our lives and try to be at peace with it."
From his home in Florida, Debbie's brother, Wade Brown, acted as her family's spokesman: "On behalf of my Mom and Dad, I can tell you it's... so terrible, you can't even imagine it."
The only good that can come from reliving it, Wade deduced, is that a stranger might be spared: "If you see a woman going through this, don't dismiss it. Be aware. You think this kind of thing only happens to other families."
Wade knew his sister's marriage was in trouble, but he never thought she was in danger.
"We were all surprised," he said. "I mean, I had known Rob for 15 years."
In Chesopeian Colony, residents were stunned as well.
"I think Rob was hanging out with a rough crowd," said a neighbor who lives near his house, "but he was not an evil person. He was friendly. He was involved in the community. When Debbie and the kids still lived here, he used to wait at the school bus stop for his son every day."
Brandon Ziegler, Rob's divorce attorney, would only say a few words about his former client: "Obviously, he was the person who did this, but that's not who he was."
George Christie, Debbie's attorney, saw a darker side of Rob.
"On a number of occasions, he made veiled threats as we were leaving the courtroom," Christie said.
As pressure mounted to divide assets, Rob unraveled.
He fell behind in his mortgage payments and child support. He didn't show up for a hearing on his assault charge.
At one point, he told the court he was working for the FBI. When word surfaced that his drug use had led to an armed robbery at his house, the judge cut off Rob's visits with his children and ordered him to enter rehab.
"There were times when Debbie could have put him in jail, but she didn't," Christie said. "We decided that would only further enrage him."
In an attempt to convince the court he was stable, Rob had himself evaluated by "a licensed clinical psychologist with a doctorate degree," Christie said.
The conclusion:
"He didn't think Rob was a threat," Christie said. "Now if a guy like that can't tell - if he can't see it - how in the heck are you and I supposed to?"
Suffolk was shrouded in fog on Nov. 8, 2011, the night Rob drove his red pickup to Grove Avenue.
Debbie heard him banging on her door around 11 p.m. In a panic, she called her parents. They told her to dial 911, then hurried to their car to race over.
Suffolk police refuse to release the tape of Debbie's 911 call. According to reports, she was on the line with a dispatcher when Rob kicked in the door. A "loud struggle" was heard before the phone went dead.
That's when Brandon, a 19-year-old neighbor who doesn't want his last name used, pulled into his driveway, accompanied by his twin brother and a friend.
"We heard her screaming," Brandon said. "She hadn't been living here long, and she mostly kept to herself. But I knew her story, what she was going through. She'd told me to call police if I ever heard anything over there."
But it was too late.
"She came running out of the house, and he shot her in the back," Brandon said. "I pulled out my knife - it was all I had - and me and my brother ran over there. She was down, and my brother tried to cover her, tried to crouch down behind her to shield her.
"I got as close as about 10 yards to him - I was gonna gut him - but he shot at me. A 9 mm with a silver slide and black handle.
"Bullets went right by my head. Then he went back over to her and shot her a second time. He said, 'She'd better be (expletive) dead.' And then he left."
Brandon said his mother tried to give Debbie CPR, "but she died, right there in our yard. I couldn't sleep for days after that."
After Rob left Debbie's, he drove to her parents' house. It's likely he crossed paths with them as they sped toward Grove Avenue. Christie believes that Rob intended to kill them, as well.
"But when he got there and they were gone," Christie said, "he decided to take his own life."
Police and Debbie's parents converged at her house at about the same time. Her 4-year-old son was asleep in bed. The 10-year-old was hiding in a closet.
Debbie is the second client Christie has lost to murder-suicide.
"She did everything she was supposed to do," he said. "She had a protective order. What else can you do?"
Violating a protective order is a crime, but "if someone is willing to die," Wade said, "they'll walk right through it."
At the prosecutor's office in Suffolk, Shavaughn Banks has been handling domestic-violence cases for eight years.
"It's heartbreaking," she said. "Horrifying. What could Deborah have done? Short of shooting back at him, nothing."
Paul Speece doesn't believe that was a realistic option. Speece is a partner at McPhillips, Roberts & Deans, the downtown accounting firm where Debbie worked for 15 years.
He's also the president of Samaritan House, a Virginia Beach shelter with a focus on domestic violence.
And, as improbable as it seems, he has been through this before: His own brother committed murder-suicide six years ago in Cincinnati, despite Speece's efforts to protect his sister-in-law.
"We brought her down here to get her away from him," he said. "When she went back, he was stalking the house waiting for her."
Should Debbie have gotten a gun? Would it have done any good?
"I guess that depends on whether you can bring yourself to pull the trigger," Speece said. "That's the father of your children, and the children are in the house. By the time you're sure he intends to kill you, it's probably too late."
Debbie, he said, "was a very sweet girl. There wasn't a mean bone in her body."
Speece said he tried to warn her.
"I sat her down and told her point-blank, 'I see a lot of the same patterns in Rob that I saw in my brother.' I offered up Samaritan House. Had she wanted to, we could have made her disappear."
He thinks the system should do more to protect women like Debbie.
"Rob should have been arrested when he missed his hearing on the assault charge. And someone should have confiscated his gun. Sure, he could have gotten another one, but let's at least make it harder."
The Violence Policy Center is pushing for a national surveillance system that would keep an eye on murder-suicide trends and collect details from each case. Right now, says Northeastern's Levin, psychologists and criminologists are at a loss.
"People do drugs, people endure nasty divorces every day, but they still don't hurt anyone," he said. "We're really not yet in a position to predict this hideous crime."
He advises women to look for red flags early on.
"In the dating process, a man who's jealous and possessive may seem cute - even flattering to a woman. But that's behavior that can transform into something extremely dangerous."
Wade, Debbie's brother, said 600 people attended her funeral in Suffolk. No obituary could be found for Rob. Their boys are being cared for by Debbie's parents. McPhillips, Roberts & Deans is collecting donations for their future expenses.
Wade said the older boy is in counseling: "He's aware of what happened, but he doesn't really understand it yet. And I know it could have been worse. Rob could have killed the entire family, including my parents. I'm just grateful that my Mom and Dad have a strong church family. I don't know how anybody who doesn't have faith gets through something like this. It's incredible, the trickle effect one person's ex can have on so many. And it will go on for a lifetime."
Speece is still haunted by his brother's crime.
"I feel for Rob's family," he said. "They will feel some guilt, like I do... a sense of failure. Everyone walks away from this with that."
I just received this story in an email. I don't know who wrote it, and I don't know if it is true or not, but even if it is nothing more than a clever urban legend, it makes a valid point:
"A Harley Biker is riding by the zoo in Washington, DC when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion's cage. Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the collar of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.
The biker jumps off his Harley, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch.
Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly. A reporter has watched the whole event.
The reporter addressing the Harley rider says, 'Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I've seen a man do in my whole life.'
The Harley rider replies, 'Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger and acted as I felt right.'
The reporter says, 'Well, I'll make sure this won't go unnoticed. I'm a journalist, you know, and tomorrow's paper will have this story on the front page... So, what do you do for a living and what political affiliation do you have?'
The biker replies, I'm a U.S. Marine and a Republican
The journalist leaves.
The following morning the biker buys the paper to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on the front page:
U.S. MARINE ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH
...and THAT pretty much sums up the media's approach to the news these days..."
Join military leaders, troops, patriots, and concerned citizens as we "demand that Congress defund the Office of the Attorney General until Attorney General Eric Holder appoints a special prosecutor to independently investigate the murder of the U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans by terrorists in Benghazi, Libya."
The following was forwarded to me in an email. I took the liberty of adding hyperlinks to emphasize the insightful and uncanny accuracy of the author's perspective. I do not know who the original author is, but whoever wrote this echoes my sentiments with perfect clarity. I could not have said it any better. Please share this with every American.
We Have Lived in the Best of Times:
I thought for sure that given such a clear choice, Americans would vote for love of country over revenge.
I was wrong.
I thought, that just as every presidential election in my lifetime, the bad economy would be hung around the incumbent's neck, sinking him.
I was wrong.
I thought that even those few Americans who were fortunate enough to still be fully employed (not counting those leeching off the public system) would be cognizant of how much pain their neighbors were in and elect someone who would at least try to make improvements.
I was wrong.
I thought that now that FINALLY some of the disturbing truths about our first black president had come to light, voters would reject a man so dangerously at odds with the American experience.
I was wrong.
I thought the 2010 elections and the Tea Party meant something.
I was wrong.
I thought the enthusiasm on display at Romney/Ryan events, contrasted with the lack of same at Obama/Biden events meant something.
I was wrong.
I thought Americans would never sell their liberty for the sake of trinkets like cell phones or even big shiny lies like 'free health care'.
I was wrong.
Never in a million years would I have supposed that America would support a president who left his (our) people to die at the hands of our enemies overseas without lifting a hand to help, then lie about what he watched in real time for over two weeks, then lie about the lie for another month.
I was wrong.
I thought Americans could tell a hawk from a handsaw.
I was wrong.
We were offered the clearest choice we've had since 1980, where we had malaise and a misery index on one hand and a shining city on a hill on the other. Back then, we chose the city on the hill. This time the choice was between a man who says 7.9% unemployment and $4.00 gas is the new normal and a guy whose entire career has been about fixing broken entities.
Maybe, I'm wrong about the ramifications of this choice. Maybe, windmills will actually turn out to be a viable energy source. Maybe, America diminished will be loved overseas. Maybe, a nuclear Iran won't be a threat. Maybe, Israel is over reacting. Maybe, western civilization was always over rated. Maybe, life under sharia is fun. Maybe, when the rest of the world realizes that we have no intention of ever paying back that $16,000,000,000,000.00 (and counting) that we've borrowed from them, they won't devalue the dollar, causing hyper inflation here at home. Maybe, China will just keep on giving us money and not demand our hearts, souls, national monuments and marriageable daughters as payment.
I've watched my candidates lose elections before, but I've never felt the way I did November 06, 2012 when this one was called for Obama.
It wasn't bitterness or sadness or even disappointment. It took me a while to figure out what it was. Then it hit me; it was horror!!
Not because of Obama, but because of what it says about us, the American people, that we chose this.
It shouldn't have even been close. Faced with the choice between taking charge of our destiny and tackling our financial problems, we opted to get high and have sex. We re-elected a guy who doesn't understand that a growing economy that creates more tax payers will bring in more revenue than higher taxes. A Commander in Chief who doesn't know our military still uses bayonets. A man who wants to control the economy without even knowing the difference between bankruptcy and liquidation. It was one thing to elect an unknown quantity, buying his line of 'Hope and Change'. It's something else to deliberately choose his failed policies over someone who has actually achieved success in life. I never dreamed America would do that.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, Hello Idiocracy!
Goodbye, recovery.
Goodbye, energy independence.
Goodbye, religious liberty.
Goodbye, liberty and justice for all.
Goodbye, American dream.
It profits a man nothing to lose his soul for the whole world, but we threw ours away for cell phones and birth control pills.
In the twentieth century (the American Century), we stepped up to the plate three times and saved the rest of the world from fascism, nazism and communism. We were the cavalry, always riding to the rescue.
Now, we've gotten rid of our horses, spent all our money on windmills, alienated our allies, bowed to our enemies, cut ourselves off from our own natural resources thrown away our children's birthright and spent their inheritance.
And, we did it on purpose.
When the wolf is at the door (and he's coming, yelling 'Allahu Akbar') we're going to find out that there is no one out there to come to our rescue.
On the bright side maybe, it'll all turn out great?
After all, I don't know anything!
The words of Martin Niemoller, German evangelical church during Nazi regime:
"They came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up."
