"Binders Full of Women?" -- What About Obama's Binders?

Instead of "Binders full of women", let's talk about:

 

"Binders Full of Foodstamps" -- Obama's policies have expanded poverty in this country.

 

"Blinders on the Media" -- the Vainstream Media focuses on little phrases instead of the Big Failures of the Obama Administration.

 

"Bind of Unemployment: -- for four years and counting

 

"Binders full of Failure" -- Stimulus, Afghanistan, ObamaCare, Cap and Trade, Trillions of Dollars of Deficits and Debt

 

The 24-7 media circus cannot keep Romney in a "bind". He bound and gagged Obama’s bereft arguments in the second debate.

Berman-Sherman: Neither Toxic nor Rude

Mr. Jonathan Dobrer, professor of comparative religion at the American Jewish University in Bel-Air, has tossed in his two cents on the Berman-Sherman battle, which almost got physical a week ago at Pierce College, with Sherman grabbing Berman and saying “You Wanna Get into This?” . In an editorial  for the Los Angeles News Group (Daily News, Daily Breeze), Dobrer suggested that this contentious 30^th Congressional District race changed his original conception of our politicized animosity,  based on extremes pushing out the moderates. Instead of a “toxic partisan divide,” he believes the problem centers on “rudeness” among our candidates.

Dobrer wanted to extract from the Berman-Sherman tussle a  wider referendum on the declining politeness of our nation’s polity – an extrapolation too extreme, in my opinion. No – today’s politics are not nearly as toxic as Mr. Dobrer contends.

Since the two-party system emerged in the United States following the Washington Administration (1789-1796), a partisan divide has often wedged into this country’s political discourse. However, what we consider “toxic” today is nothing compared to the vitriol of campaigns long gone. During the election of 1800, diverse slanders exchanged between incumbent John Adams and his Democratic-Republican Vice President, who was running to unseat him. Charges of atheism, whoremongering, and outright national betrayal tarred the landscape. Fast forward a generation, and President Andrew Jackson threatened to duel anyone who slandered his wife or threatened him, once stepping aside at a political rally to brandish his pistols in case anyone in the audience wanted to “start something.”

I still remember from my eighth grade US History book how the political animosity grew so tense in Washington in the mid-1800s, from the Mexican-American War to the War Between the States, that Congressmen were bringing knives and guns to their chambers. In one infamous incident, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner railed against the Southern slavocracy with frequent insults and condescending remarks. The senators whom Sumner maligned, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, was not present. Instead, his nephew Preston Brooks beat him unconscious to the floor of US Senate with a cane. Sumner went on medical leave for three years.  Brooks received censure, acclamation, and reelection from his constituents.

Let us not forget the Party Machines of the Gilded Age – between the Civil War and World War I – in which the levers of power belonged to party bosses in urban areas instead of the men or voters who sent them to Washington. From Communist red-baiting in the McCarthy era to today, different interests, whether Tea Partiers or Occupiers to people who just want to occupy the party in play, and their political pandering and thundering have stirred up a lot of Sturm und Drang, but nothing like the salacious slanders or malicious attacks of those previous campaigns.

No – today’s national politics are not nearly as toxic as Mr. Dobrer contends.

But what is going on in the Berman-Sherman race which has elicited so much negative mail and petty character attacks and legislative sniping? Dobrer properly contends that “there is not much substantial difference between Berman and Sherman.” So, how do these candidates differentiate themselves? How do they persuade voters? Earlier in the campaign, Berman and Sherman were frequenting townhalls and pledging to look into local matters with greater scrutiny.  Sherman and Berman now have to reach out to Republican and Independent voters in order to get ahead. I believe that despite the unfortunate acrimony which has developed between the two liberal Democrats, the friction of two Congressman with so much alike has revealed a lot about the minute distinctions within the Democratic Party, an issue which voters knew nothing about, plus now they have to strive harder to get their votes for reelection.

So, I differ with Mr. Dobrer

If the voters in the Valley resent excessive negative ads, they can plead their case to the candidates. Why not set up this contest between Howard Berman and Brad Sherman with the remaining undecided voters: Whichever candidate can refrain from bad-mouthing, name-calling, or instigating with his opponent, he will in turn command the respect of the remaining undecided and clinch the election in November. Berman and Sherman do not have to have a “love fest”, but at least they could avoid the “fist-fight”.

About City Municipal Liabilities

Cities throughout the state of California are burdened by unfunded or underfunded pension obligations.

 Vallejo, then Stockton, Mammoth Lakes, and now San Bernardino have gone bankrupt-- When will this insanity stop?

Now Berkeley and Oakland are facing billions of dollars in liabilities. When will the public sector unions in the Bay area put the needs of the public ahead of the union and free up negotiations for health plans and pension funding?

When will the leaders in Sacramento demand not just pension reform but also limits on the collective bargaining rights of Big Labor? How about curbing the cowardice of our city  councils? So what if police, fire, and public workers go on strike? Call in the national guard to the work if necessary, just like Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge in 1919!

Redemption and Restoration and Promotion

I have lived in this country for many years.

I have served some interesting, odd jobs for the past few years. This has not been the best element for all that I had been through.

I remember how years ago I wrote about the desire to break free from the past.

The Blood of Jesus Christ has done exactly that for me! He died for all of  my sins, and by His death and Life all of my sins are transformed into more glory for God!

We need more than to be set free from the past. We need to be set from ourselves! We need to be delivered into a new life, and this life we find in Christ Jesus!

Now I am asking for the strength and the presence of mind to see the past as something that He is using to build a glorious present, not something that I have to ignore.

Your grace is greater than my past! The example of Joseph with his brothers is telling. Their betrayal led him from a trail of tears to portrayal as a father to the Pharoah of Egypt. The four women who are listed in the genealogy of Jesus Christ had sordid pasts, sordid identities, yet God used them.

Do not despise or run away from the failures of the past -- let God transform your gory to His glory!

Your grace is greater than anything and everything that I have endured in my life! Your grace rips the veil of tears into a gale of goodness!

No More Lawsuits Over No Power Plant

The brouhaha over the Redondo Beach NoPowerPlant.com initiative has turned into a war among voters, lawyers, and councilmembers.

One interest group wants to sue because the Redondo Beach City Council wants to take time to consider all the ramifications of placing an initiative on the ballot. The President of the Power Plant threatens to sue if the city council puts the measure on the ballot. This is crazy!

The state of California has to open up exceptions and channels for beleaguered city leaders who are already facing budget deficits, revenue shortfalls, and battles over property rights versus parcel taxes. Everyone deserves to have a say in how the AES Power Plant is closed, but eventually someone’s proposal will have to win out, and the opposing interests will have to accept the final arrangement.

City politics should never be so fraught with conflict!

Response to “Local Candidates for Assembly, Congress Promote Fixes” – Oct 18, 2012

The four candidates in South Bay campaigns, two for state Assembly, two for Congress, congregated at the Palos Verdes Peninsula Chamber of Commerce. Congressman Henry Waxman, the proud incumbent  Democrat, squared off against Independent Bill Bloomfield. Democrat Al Muratsuchi is facing off against Republican Craig Huey for the South Bay Assembly seat.

Every candidate trotted out their talking points from their commercials and townhall meetings throughout the current campaign. I understand that these candidates have to repeat their message over and over. However, with the 24-7 news cycle, instant access to information, telephone townhalls and advertising on the Internet, when will the candidates offer more than proposals, policies, and talking points, but particular steps toward solving our country’s problems?

I do not want to hear politicians talking about the laws that they passed years ago. Fewer laws would be better. I would prefer to hear candidates discuss the difficult choices that we need to make: entitlement reform,  curbing public sector unions’ power, and welfare reform that honors the individual and the national compact.  I am still waiting for a candidate to candidly discuss a voucher program for public education.

Better yet, I would prefer politicians who do not presume to have the answer to every problem. When will politicians admit that the individual citizen and private enterprise have better solutions that California needs? Instead, Candidates need to stress three simple principles: protect our natural rights, secure our borders, and release all other matters to our local governments or to ourselves.

"Enlightened Self-Interest" in Random Lengths News

Executive Editor James Preston Allen tells readers in his latest editorial that the voters in this country have a choice between“Bush-Cheney” and “New Deal.” Either choice spells “Big Government” and “Bad Deal”. Allen may as well have asked: “Do I want to be shot or hung, followed by what I want on my Tombstone?”

Of course, I do not see the choice in such stark terms. Romney is articulate, so is Obama. Romney is rich, so is Obama. Romney worked with a legislature dominated by the opposition. Obama has not. Romney has not run this country through four years of deficits with no leadership aside from running campaigns – Obama has. I am ready for hope, so I want a change – No more Obama.

“The policies that we know have worked before. . .” I will join you in condemning the eight years of borrow, spend, expand and expend under “W”. Yet what about “FDR’s “Raw Deal”actually worked? The United States government spent an unprecedented billions over twelve years. Even Roosevelt’s own Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau admitted in his diary that it didn't work. After slaughtered livestock, burning fields, FDIC, and only World War II followed by cuts in taxes and spending revamped the economic recovery in this country. “These policies worked before. . .?” Obama's policies were the same policies as the Bush Administration!

About Bush-Cheney – I could not agree more. “W” was Lyndon Baines Johnson with an (R) after his name, the same airhead who said “We must suspend the rules of the free market in order to save it.” Then there was FDR, who maintained the suspension of “laissez-faire” as his interventionist predecessor Herbert Hoover. FDR then said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,”followed by seizing the nation’s gold,

My answer: “Fear Big Government." Under FDR, E pluribus unum became L’Etat, c’est moi, with progressives since then eagerly lining up for the top post in Washington, including Barack Obama.

I'm voting for Romney because least he’s not Barack!

Al in Wonderland (His Election Waning in the Looking Glass)

The California Democratic Party just published and mailed a “children’s book” smearing Craig “Mad Hatter” Huey as the “Master of Ceremonies” of an extreme right-wing “Tea Party”. This latest attack to “inform” the voters then claims at the end: “Thank goodness for Al Muratsuchi.” However, nothing screams “condescending desperation” than this cataloge of lies and distortions in a “child-like” print. Do the Democratic operatives really believe that the voters in the South Bay are a bunch of lily buds waiting for a Mommy Flower to direct us in song? Either someone has been smoking the hookah with the Caterpillar, or they really all are “mad” down there.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or spill me tea and crumpets when I saw the ad. “A very merry un-birthday to you,” Mr. Muratsuchi!

First, the mailer alludes that Huey is an anti-choice, anti-woman bigot, an elder abuser who wants to kick grandpa off of Medicare and out the door.  Huey has a documented and award-winning legacy in his business, with nothing but empty innuendo connecting his firm with the failings of other mailings or marketing firms. He is a proud husband and father, both of sons and daughters.   Mr. Muratsuchi has outlined nothing that will stave off the pension and benefits obligations which are bankrupting this state. Or is “Al in Wonderland” going to pass the cake first and worry about cuts later, like Alice at the Battle of the Lion and the Unicorn?

Muratsuchi seems to be changing the size and shape of his attacks. First he says “Eat Me!” when he claims that he will defend Prop 13, but no one is biting, since he has refused to sign the “Protect Prop 13” Pledge. Then he says “Drink Me!” when he talks up his tenure on the Torrance Unified School Board defending the interests of the schools against the crippling cuts which the major party – his Democratic “Tea Party” – yet he also refuses give back the money from the same public sector unions which have blocked meaningful tenure reform, to expedite the removal of immoral and incompetent teachers, or to enact comprehensive pension reform, which every public sector union opposes. No one is drinking the Muratsuchi cup of tea, and his election chances are getting smaller by the minute.

He also claims that because of his training and experience as a state prosecutor, he will stand up to the special interests in Sacramento and protect our tax dollars. We can attribute the same trust of Al and our money just as the oysters trusted that the Walrus and the Carpenter were just going to read them a story about “cabbages and kings.” We do know that they ate very well, and certainly Muratsuchi will enjoy the high-life in the Capitol, but why should we permit him to consume our livelihood and financial future of our children with tax increases? Al can tell all the tales he wants to, but the voters are not going to sit and wait to hear the rest of the sad story, which ends with our state and our future eaten away.

Mr. Muratsuchi wants to give the impression that he is independent, yet with hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Democratic political machine, plus the partnership with Congressman Henry “Cheshire Cat” Waxman, his claims are evaporating quickly, like the “Was it a cat I saw” on the tree, with nothing but his menacing glee remaining. Waxman and Muratsuchi have PAC money coming out of his ears, like the long-range March Hare, still eating his bread and drinking the same party life of tax and spend now, and save  . . . whenever! If any two were more alike than Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, look no further than the policies and positions of Waxman and Muratsuchi, a sad similitude enough to dissuade voters from promoting more liberal-statist rubber stamps at the state and the federal level.

Al has fallen down the Rabbit Hole, apparently, where the same mad cohorts that accosted the little girl in Wonderland are now pandering to his vanity, that the right amount of money and lies will give him the Assembly Seat. “Off with his head!” they cry, attempting to drive Huey’s reputation into the ground with vapid mud-slinging. Then there is the Red Queen, played by the California Democratic Party, which has threatened vested interests throughout California if they support Craig Huey’s campaign for Assembly. They want nothing that will prevent their spend-thrift party from having the two-thirds majority dominance that will give them Carte Blanche power to enact tax increases. Who needs the Knave of Hearts with Democratic dominance in the Statehouse?

The voters in the South Bay do not need some “White Knight” coming to our rescue in Sacramento. Less government, lower taxes, and fewer regulations sound like the order of the day. Craig Huey is more like the White Rabbit, yet unlike the leaping leporidae, Huey is not too late, and the voters in the South Bay can make sure that he gets to Sacramento on time.

Jesus and His Righteousness -- The Cure for Homelessness

Patch.com did a wonderful service for Venice readers in reposting "What does the Bible say about homelessness?"

The Central theme of the Bible is not ourselves, not wealth or poverty, and not just God, but Jesus Christ! He demonstrated this to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

"Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:

“Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?

“And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 23: 25-27)

"Himself" is more than some fictional character, more than some moral hero, but God made flesh. More about Himself:

"Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

“For by him were  all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and  invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or  powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." (Colossians 1: 15-17)

Jesus Christ Himself is the very Person who holds this Universe together. He is now seated at the right hand of the Father, ministering righteousness and justification to all mankind. Yet this Person is completely committed to living and moving and having His being within every one of us! All you have to do is. . .believe:

"Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." (John 6: 29)

The problem is that we spend way too much time focusing on ourselves, focusing on our circumstances. Yet the righteousness, the complete justification which we crave yet cannot create on our own, we find in Him. Righteousness means that we are totally OK with God, that there is no more enmity between Him and us!

Here's the Good News: The debt has been paid! You need not carry any shame, for all of yours sins are paid for in Christ!

I am convinced that many people are poor and down-and-out because they think that they deserve it. They trust in themselves, convinced that they have to. They live in a world that either shames them for their poverty, or worse pities them. Too many people are using other people as a prop for their own emptiness. This is what I meant when I castigated the hollow idea that homelessness is "artistic" human beings are not props for some twisted vision of art! They need to hear the Good News! Whatever harm they have done, whatever sins they have committed, all their sins are forgiven, and in Christ they never need sense that they are alone and empty and without hope!

But God so loved the World, that He gave His Son, that whosoever believes on Him will not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

This same God is all about prospering us, too:

“For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers;

“Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.” (Romans 1: 9-10)

Paul’s first prayer was about. . .having a prosperous journey.

One of the last prayers in the New Testament prayers for the same thing:

“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” (3 John 2)

Prosperity starts on the inside, then works its way out through His Spirit!

For so long, I was focused on the outside, but now He is prospering me from within!

Now, homelessness is a part of poverty, and poverty is a curse. A curse that Jesus Christ died to expunge from our lives, for He died on the Cross, on the Tree, taking our curse!

No one breaks free from bondage through shame. Granted, the ministration of condemnation had its glory, but the last thing that we should be doing is shaming people because they do not have a place to live. It is a travesty to shame people for being poor or homeless! Let us tell them the Good News, that in Christ, all their sins are forgiven! His life will enter into them, and by His Spirit He will cause everyone to prosper and be in health! Otherwise, we can give people food and drink, and those need to be provided, but nothing will cause a man or woman to prosper like knowing the Truth that sets them free! (John 8: 32)

I am all for people having a home to live in, but let us make sure that they know that they live under God’s grace, that in Christ they find Life and that more abundantly! (John 10: 10). We prosper by walking in the Truth – Jesus! -- and He will quicken us to prosper in all that we do!

Everyone Can Have the Truth -- in Him!

"Everyone has their own truth," some people claim, refusing to challenge anyone on anything.

This cannot be true, for if everyone has their own truth, then there can be no truth, for truth by its very definition, by its very nature, does not depend on me, or you, or the opinion of anyone else!

There is one Truth, the Man and the Glory, and through Him we receive the righteousness and the peace and the joy that we so much need in our lives!

Everyone can have the truth, in Christ! Otherwise, all of our learning cannot bring us any closer to the truth!

Truth means nothing without Love.

Love means nothing without Acceptance.

Acceptance means nothing without Freedom.

Freedom means nothing without Security.

Security means nothing without Righeousness.

"But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:" (1Corinthians 1: 30)