Merry Christmas

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe, who is the refulgence of his glory, the very imprint of his being, and who sustains all things by his mighty word.

Newtown Remembered

I continue to stand with those who remember the victims of all violent incidents, especially in America, including the horrific shooting in the Newtown Connecticut School. I am increasingly saddened by the tragic loss of life and by the struggle of those who survive. I am also saddened by this nation's reaction to these events.

I agree that the 2nd Amendment is an unambiguous right to own and carry firearms, although not specifically as a check against government malfeasance, as suggested by the gun control crowd. Its purpose is necessary to the security of a free State.

I'm not surprised that the recent news has upset people (again) and created yet another opportunity to speak out against gun ownership. Opponents of the Second Amendment press its defenders to produce evidence that law abiding citizens use guns for self-defense.

Although it happens almost every day these stories rarely make the news, and when it does opponents are reluctant to believe it. So, let's balance this latest news story: Recently, two armed homeowners captured two escaped fugitives, who killed two guards a week prior.

Yes ... an armed citizen brought their flight to an end. Our thanks go to the local, state and federal law enforcement officers who assisted in the manhunt ... but don’t forget the responsible use of a firearm by a citizen that made their capture possible.

You can outlaw bombs, guns, knives, trucks, clowns, fire crackers, and balloons, but that still won't curb violence.

Why is the focus still on the tools used during a crime instead of the underlying causes of crime? If you continue to let our nation’s leaders, the media, or anyone else distract you from the truth then you are part of the problem. Be part of the solution: Guns are just a tool, they are not the problem!

Thanks be to God

For the fruits of his creation, thanks be to God.
For his gifts to every nation, thanks be to God.
For the plowing, sowing, reaping,
Silent growth while we are sleeping,
Future needs in earth's safekeeping,
Thanks be to God.

In the just reward of labor, God's will be done.
In the help we give our neighbor, God's will be done.
In our worldwide task of caring, for the hungry and despairing,
In the harvests we are sharing, God's will be done.

For the harvests of the Spirit, thanks be to God.
For the good we all inherit, thanks be to God.
For the wonders that astound us, for the truths that still confound us,
Most of all that love has found us, thanks be to God.

Green Thing

Every time we go to the grocery store we're reminded about saving the environment. Before we had this "green thing" everyone returned their milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized, and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over: They really were recycled. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things like household garbage bags. Even better we used the brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks to ensure that public property (the books were provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling. We were also able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

Yes, we were already working "green": We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a powerful machine every time we had to go two blocks. We washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in a machine gobbling up energy: Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not something brand-new.

Yes, we were already living "green": We had one TV or radio in the house; not a TV in every room, and that TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a huge screen the size of a garage door. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do it for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we  used a recycled box and wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam peanuts or plastic bubble wrap. We didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn; we used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working and we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

Yes, we were already thinking "green": We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole thing just because the blade got dull. We had one electrical outlet in a room, or if we were lucky one electrical outlet on each wall, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen gadgets.

No, the problem isn't that older generations "did not care enough to save our environment for future generations". They took streetcars or busses, and their kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's SUV, which costs what a whole house used to. So the next time you use that computerized screen in your all electric vehicle to receive a signal beamed from a satellite 23,000 miles out in space in order to find your local grocery store, think about what you're doing.

Choose Hope

Mark Your Calendars

Ensuring the Continuity of our Species: It doesn’t look good for the home team. (Part 4 of 4)

The balance of nature

The egalitarian (1) and equitable (2) societies could produce sustainable civilizations and avoid collapse, even with a high ratio of non-workers. Social collapse was more likely after people overreached and depleted natural resources. Importantly, even without any social stratification, collapse can occur if a society exhausts its natural resources.

In the unequal (3) society, however, collapse is almost unavoidable. This is the scenario that mirrors our current globalized societies, even here in the United States.

The income gap

The researchers wrote, "The scenarios most closely reflecting the reality of our world today are found in the third group of experiments, where we introduced economic stratification. Under such conditions, referring to uneven wealth distribution, we find that collapse is difficult to avoid."

Other recent research backs up the authors' claims: A 2012 study from the journal American Sociological Review shows that the income share of the top 1 percent of Americans grew rapidly after 1980. We often hear that the top 1 percent now hold more wealth than the other 99 percent combined.

Meanwhile, the bottom three-quarters of the U.S. population has seen slow economic growth, with predictable results. A 2011 study published in the journal Psychological Science found that happiness, trust in others, and life satisfaction plummet when income inequality is high.

Technology won't save you

For those who believe that there must be a technological fix to all this despair and destruction, the researchers found that the historical record provides "testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent.

The authors wrote that “It may be reasonable to believe that modern civilization, armed with its greater technological capacity, scientific knowledge, and energy resources, will be able to survive and endure whatever crises historical societies succumbed to.

But [our] brief overview of collapses demonstrates not only the ubiquity of the phenomenon, but also the extent to which advanced, complex and powerful societies are susceptible to collapse."

All is not lost

The authors suggest that, “If societies can moderate the two factors that contribute most to social meltdown, 1) the exploitation of natural resources, and 2) the uneven distribution of wealth, collapse can be avoided and the society can reach equilibrium.

To accomplish this, the per-capita rate of depletion of nature must be reduced to a sustainable level, and resources must be distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.

Given the above suggestion things are not looking good … you’d better repack that Bug Out Bag!

Psych Ward

A Handy Tool

Ensuring the Continuity of our Species: It doesn’t look good for the home team. (Part 3 of 4)

As you can see, there's never been a shortage of doomsday scenarios. From the dreaded Mayan Apocalypse of 2012 to the havoc wreaked in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow," people have been predicting the end of civilization for as long as there has been a civilization.

The trouble is … sometimes they're correct: The Roman Empire fell spectacularly, as did the Mayan civilization, the Han Dynasty of China, India's Gupta Empire, and dozens of other once-mighty kingdoms.

So then how, exactly, do powerful empires collapse and why? Researchers now believe they've found an answer, one that has troubling implications for today; because this country is clearly on the road to ruin.

To begin with, societal collapse is actually more common than you think. The researchers' first task was overturning "the common impression that societal collapse is rare, or even largely fictional," as they wrote in their report published in the journal Ecological Economics.

In fact, they argue the rise and fall of great social structures is so common a theme in human civilization, recurrent throughout history and worldwide in scope, that it's more the rule than the exception.

Most studies of a society's collapse have looked at the specifics of how one civilization declined, citing individual causes such as a disaster (earthquake, flood), loss of resources (soil erosion, deforestation) or human conflict (war, uprising) that led to the particular society's downfall.

But the researchers, funded in part by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, College Park, cast a wider net. They aimed to create a useful mathematical model that could help analyze how any society might fall, including our current global, technically advanced, interconnected societies.

The model they arrived at takes inspiration from the classic notion of predator vs. prey, sometimes referred to as the "balance of nature." You know how it works: When a deer population grows the wolves that feed on those deer reproduce more successfully, too, and so the wolf population grows.

Everything is fine until the wolves become too numerous, eating so many deer that there isn't enough venison to go around. Then, as the number of deer plunges the wolf population drops due to famine, until equilibrium is reestablished and the cycle begins anew.

A handy tool

Informed by this paradigm, the researchers developed a relatively simple formula with four factors influencing social collapse: 1) nature and natural resources, 2) the accumulation of wealth, 3) the elite, and 4) the commoners. The team calls their model Human and Nature Dynamics, or HANDY.

The researchers used the HANDY model to analyze three different social scenarios: 1) an egalitarian society with no elite class; 2) an equitable society with workers and non-workers (students, retirees, disabled persons); and 3) an unequal society with a robust class of elites.

Control Your Fears

Doomsday Revisited

Ensuring the Continuity of our Species: It doesn’t look good for the home team. (Part 2 of 4)

Nostradamus, 1999

The heavily obfuscated and metaphorical writings of Michel de Nostrdame have intrigued people for over 400 years. His writings, the accuracy of which relies heavily upon very flexible interpretations, have been translated and re-translated in dozens of different versions.

One of the most famous quatrains read, "The year 1999, seventh month / From the sky will come great king of terror." Many Nostradamus devotees grew concerned that this was the famed prognosticator's vision of Armageddon.

Y2K, 2000

As the last century drew to a close, many people grew concerned that computers might bring about doomsday. The problem, first noted in the early 1970s, was that many computers would not be able to tell the difference between 2000 and 1900 dates.

No one was really sure what that would do, but many suggested catastrophic problems ranging from vast blackouts to nuclear holocaust. Gun sales jumped and survivalists prepared to live in bunkers, but the new millennium began with only a few glitches.

Antarctic, 2000

In case the Y2K bug didn't do us in, global catastrophe was assured by Richard Noone, author of the 1997 book "5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster" (Three Rivers Press). According to Noone, the Antarctic ice mass would be three miles thick by May 5, 2000, a date in which the planets would be aligned in the heavens, somehow resulting in a global icy death

While it may have been responsible for a lot of book sales, global warming must have kept the ice age at bay.

God's Church, 2008

According to God's Church minister Ronald Weinland, the end times were upon us, again. His 2006 book "2008: God's Final Witness" (The-End.Com, 2006) states that hundreds of millions of people will die, and by the end of 2006 "there will be a maximum time of two years remaining before the world will be plunged into the worst time of all human history.

By the fall of 2008, the United States was supposed to have collapsed as a world power, and no longer exist as an independent nation. As the book notes, Ronald Weinland placed his reputation on the line as the end-time prophet of God.

Harold Camping, 2011

In May 2011, radio preacher Harold Camping drew international media attention with his predictions that Judgment Day would come on May 21, kicked off by earthquakes around the globe and a rapture of the faithful. According to Camping, this dreadful day would be followed by months of torment and the end of the world on Oct. 21.

When May 21 passed quietly, Camping retreated from the limelight for a brief time before announcing that Judgment Day had, in fact, come and gone on that date. Instead of physical earthquakes, Camping wrote on the website of his radio station, Family Radio, May 21 brought spiritual earthquakes as God completed His judgment of souls.

Camping continued to contend that the end of the world would indeed come on Oct. 21, albeit quietly and without fire and brimstone.

I Told You So

Doomsday

Ensuring the Continuity of our Species: It doesn’t look good for the home team. (Part 1 of 4)

When it comes to apocalypse and planet-wide destruction, there seem to be no shortage of details on the when and how and why the world will come to a halt, with some "prophets" even predicting the exact day of the final event.

Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common is that, so far, they haven’t come to pass.

The Millerites, 1843

A New England farmer named William Miller, after several years of very careful study of his Bible, concluded that God's chosen time to destroy the world could be divined from a strict literal interpretation of scripture. As he explained to anyone who would listen, the world would end sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.

He preached and published enough to eventually lead thousands of followers (known as Millerites), who decided that the actual date was April 23, 1843. Many sold or gave away their possessions, assuming they would not be needed: When April 23 arrived and Jesus didn't the group eventually disbanded. Some of them went on to form what is now the Seventh Day Adventists.

Halley's Comet, 1910

In 1881, an astronomer discovered through spectral analysis that comet tails include a deadly gas called cyanogen (related, as the name implies, to cyanide). This was of only passing interest until someone realized that Earth would pass through the tail of Halley's comet in 1910.

Would everyone on the planet be bathed in deadly toxic gas? That was the speculation reprinted on the front pages of The New York Times and other newspapers, resulting in a widespread panic across the United States and abroad. Finally even-headed scientists explained that there was nothing to fear.

Pat Robertson, 1982

In May 1980, televangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson startled and alarmed many when, contrary to Matthew 24:36 ("No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven ...") he informed his "700 Club" TV show audience around the world that he knew when the world would end.

"I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world," Robertson said.

Heaven's Gate, 1997

When comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997, rumors surfaced that an alien spacecraft was following the comet, and that there was a cover up by NASA and the astronomical community. Though the claim was refuted by astronomers (and could be refuted by anyone with a good telescope), the rumors were publicized on Art Bell's paranormal radio talk show "Coast to Coast AM."

These claims inspired a San Diego UFO cult named Heaven's Gate to conclude that the world would end soon. Unfortunately, the world did end for the 39 of the cult members who committed suicide on March 26, 1997.

Founding Fathers

Leadership Threats

Chaos is at our Door: Why a dangerous world is closing in. (Part 5 of 5)

It is time to face the reality that we are living in dangerous times. While an open southern border, disease, guns, drugs, illegal aliens, and terrorists are being used as a diversion,  our government is attempting the cover up of scandals too numerous to mention.

Shameless attacks on traditional values and religious beliefs; the legal slaughter of millions of unborn children; attempts to legalize suicide and drugs; and the attacks on freedom are the very real threat of tyranny.

When Americans can no longer trust their leaders and when they realize that the government can’t or won’t protect them, they have no choice but to trust in themselves. Nothing provides individuals more immediate, undeniable, and irreplaceable protection than the 2nd Amendment. It is the one freedom that guarantees our lives, the one freedom we can count on to protect ourselves when no one else will or can.

Imagine your world blanketed in darkness: Everything from radio, TV and cell phones to air defense radar, to police, fire and EMS frequencies gone; no internet, no public water or sewage treatment, no banking, no gas; no emergency response from hospitals or police. Who would protect you or your family?

Chaos is an ever present danger today, especially when you factor in the undercurrent of social unrest, and frustration with government leaders. We live in an age when preparing to survive whatever comes our way is a simple fact of life or death.

Prudent leaders prepare their nation. Prudent people prepare themselves. The police cannot always be there to protect you and the government can’t or won’t.

It’s time to re-listen to the words of an old Bob Dylan song, “Gather ‘round people, wherever you roam, admit that the waters around you have grown, and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’ then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone. There’s a battle outside and its ragin’, it’ll soon shake your walls, for the times, they are a changin’.”

If there is a battle cry for this age, it must be: We will not be left defenseless. We will not give up our freedoms. We will not surrender our safety to the lies of leaders who promise everything and deliver nothing. It’s time for all of us, as individuals and as community, to stand up and speak up!

Media Distractions

Media Threats

Chaos is at our Door: Why a dangerous world is closing in. (Part 4 of 5)

When you consider all the threats encroaching on our country, one fact is clear: We live in an age when preparing to survive whatever comes our way is a simple fact of life (or death). It’s simply the most prudent way to survive. Prudent leaders prepare their nation. Prudent people prepare themselves.

And millions of NRA members and gun owners know the truth: The police can’t always be there to protect you. The government can’t, or won’t, protect you, either. Only you can protect you.

And nothing provides individual citizens more immediate, undeniable and irreplaceable protection than the Second Amendment-protected right to keep and bear arms. It’s the one freedom that guarantees our lives and our freedoms with force. It’s the one thing we can count on to protect ourselves when nothing else will or even can.

Now, you can bet the media will pounce upon and ridicule gun owners for talking about these dangers and preparing for the worst. They’ll call us paranoid, fear-mongering, reckless and ill-advised. They did the same thing after Sandy Hook, when the NRA said that shielding our schools with police or certified trained armed security was the only proven method to protect them.

Since then, schools everywhere have done exactly what we suggested. They’re giving their kids the first deterrent and last failsafe defense against armed madmen who murder without fear. Because they understand, as we all understand, that there are surely more madmen out there, planning their attacks on the most vulnerable among us, even now.

We were right, history proves it, and the American people know it. Men and women who care about their safety will never let themselves be shamed, ridiculed or accused of being “unreasonable” for defending their God-given right to defend life and limb.

We’ve proven it over and over again, and we’ll do it again on Election Day. So let this be a declaration to America’s leaders: You have no right, no reason and no authority to deny us the protection that the Second Amendment alone guarantees.

We will not be left defenseless. We will not give up our freedoms. We will not surrender our safety to the lies of leaders who promise everything and deliver nothing. We will defend our right to defend ourselves because we have no other choice. We will vote our guns! We will vote our freedom! And we will prevail!

Easter

Christ Our Light

Dying He destroyed our death
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who
believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
John 3:16

Rising He restored our life
"I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
John 11:25

Any Questions

Gang Threats

Chaos is at our Door: Why a dangerous world is closing in. (Part 3 of 5)

It’s not just enemy state actors, like foreign terrorists, but also foreign and domestic drug cartels and criminals that are responsible for the growing threats faced by Americans. America’s police community knows that every U.S. city of any appreciable size already has a serious, established, drug-funded Mexican drug-cartel presence.

The Justice Department admits: Mexican drug gangs are operating in more than 1,000 U.S. cities; 20,000 gangs with at least a million members are embedded coast to coast; more than 100,000 street gang members have been documented in Obama’s hometown of Chicago alone.

Add to that volatile mix the thousands of hardened, dangerous criminals that are being released from prisons all over America. When states can’t or won’t spend the money needed to imprison their criminals, and those prisons become overcrowded, the courts say to set them free. So now the floodgates are open as our nation’s prisons are purged.

The U.S. Justice Department is releasing federal felons, and in California inmates are being released early. And consider this: Terrorists have known for 25 years that our southern border is so porous and unprotected that crossing into the U.S. is like crossing the street. Drug smugglers, kidnappers, human traffickers, and criminals of all kinds can invade our country from the south every day.

Where all these released criminals end up, no one knows. But you can bet on this: They’re among us, embedded throughout our society. For all you know, you pass them in your car on your way to work.

Even if you take terrorists and criminals out of the picture, chaos is an ever-present danger to Americans today, especially when you factor in the undercurrent of social unrest that seethes beneath the surface of much of our society.

How many times have we seen peaceful protests in this country degenerate into riots, looting, shootings, arsons and worse? And not all protests are intended to be peaceful.

How many times have we seen crowds turn into angry mobs after court decisions they didn’t like, sports team defeats they felt were unfair, or natural disasters that collapsed civil order?

Who among us can say with certainty that we’d never face that same kind of out-of-control mayhem and brutality in our own city or hometown?

Dont Panic

Cyber Threats

Chaos is at our Door: Why a dangerous world is closing in. (Part 2 of 5)

An EMP attack is far from the only way of wreaking havoc on America’s infrastructure or blacking out our power grid. Cyber-attacks through the internet, for example, are a new and growing danger to our nation’s most sensitive government, military and financial operations.

Many experts worry that they could shut down our nation’s financial system, locking up bank accounts, freezing credit cards, and putting our economy into a tailspin.

Worse, according to 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, the danger of cyber terror is even more immediate and deadly. “Hackers can threaten the control systems of critical facilities like dams, water treatment plants, and the power grid.” Being able to remotely control a dam, pumping station or oil pipeline could unleash large-scale devastation.

Terrorists could deliver a knockout punch with more conventional means as well. Last year, in what was called “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred,” unknown individuals used rifles to disable 17 electrical transformers near San Jose, Calif.

It took technicians almost a month to get the facility back online, and that was just one substation. What if terrorists did the same thing in coordinated attacks all across the country? According to Wellinghoff, they could disable the grid and black out much of the United States.

Whether it’s through an EMP, a massive cyber-attack, another 9/11, or just isolated sprees of murder and mayhem, military and homeland security officials agree it’s just a matter of time before the U.S. faces some kind of terrorist attack.

It might be along the lines of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, where terrorists launched a dozen coordinated attacks, gunning down innocent victims at hotels, a bar, a train station, a hospital, and a movie theater. In all, they killed 164 innocent people.

Or it might be like the attack on Westgate Mall in Kenya last year. Four armed terrorists linked to al Qaeda were able, thanks to Kenya’s strict anti-gun laws, to spend four days torturing, mutilating and gunning down shoppers with almost no fear of reprisal. They killed 63 innocent people and wounded 175 more before they were stopped.

So ask yourself: Could suicidal terrorist mass murderers try to bomb an American hotel, an American train station, shopping mall or movie theater? Don’t think that a group of terrorists aren’t smart enough to pull it off, eventually, or that a single determined person with an agenda isn’t going to be successful.

Chaos

EMP Threats

Chaos is at our Door: Why a dangerous world is closing in. (Part 1 of 5)

Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President, recently wrote, “You won’t hear about this from the mainstream media, and few politicians dare to discuss these things openly”. His comments were not meant to be intentionally alarming or apocalyptic, but the reality is that we may be living in some of the most dangerous times in human history.

Does that sound like some crazy exaggeration to you? Well, consider this: Recently, in The Wall Street Journal, former CIA Director James Woolsey warned that “the most significant threat to the U.S. in the world” is the threat of catastrophe caused by an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. And that danger appears to loom larger every year.

Even if no blast, shock or fallout reaches the ground, the cascading avalanche of infrastructure failures caused by an EMP can create a national catastrophe; because an EMP is designed to destroy the electronic equipment upon which so much of modern life is built.

In the short term, an EMP will drown out radio communications, like radio, TV and cell phones, to air-defense radar systems, to police, fire and EMS frequencies. Over the long term, an EMP blacks out the power grid, plunging much of the continental U.S. into darkness and chaos lasting for months, if not years.

Collapse of the power grid, in turn, would have a domino effect on the infrastructures Americans depend on most for survival. Landline telephone and cell phone systems, the internet and all the vital signals the internet carries, military command and control, banking and financial systems, gas pipeline and gas stations, nuclear power plant safeguards, hospital and emergency room functionality. Public water and sewage services, perhaps our most urgent and immediate life support systems of all.

This isn’t some feverish, paranoid fantasy. It’s not some fabrication from “Doomsday Preppers.” It’s the kind of scenario that the most informed national security experts in the country, including military commanders, emergency response planners and scientists have been warning politicians about with increasing urgency for more than a decade.

China and Russia have considered limited nuclear-attack options that employ EMP as the primary or sole means of attack, and in 2004 Russian military officials warned U.S. government investigators that North Korea’s military had recruited Russian scientists to develop nuclear EMP weapons.

Designs for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter century. Yet, while the media should be alerting the public to this danger, and our nation’s leaders should be setting up systems to protect us, we get adolescent media gossip about the latest celebrity tweet.

If this all sounds inconceivable to you, the government’s own congressional EMP Commission reports that within a year of a national blackout, as much as 90 percent of the population of the U.S. could die due to starvation, disease and the collapse of civilization as we know it.