The Average American Today Is Richer than John D. Rockefeller by Donald J. Boudreaux

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This Atlantic story reveals how Americans lived 100 years ago. By the standards of a middle-class American today, that lifestyle was poor, inconvenient, dreary, and dangerous. (Only a few years later — in 1924 — the 16-year-old son of a sitting US president would die of an infected blister that the boy got on his toe while playing tennis on the White House grounds.)

So here’s a question that I’ve asked in one form or another on earlier occasions, but that is so probing that I ask it again: What is the minimum amount of money that you would demand in exchange for your going back to live even as John D. Rockefeller lived in 1916?

21.7 million 2016 dollars (which are about one million 1916 dollars)? Would that do it? What about a billion 2016 — or 1916 — dollars? Would this sizable sum of dollars be enough to enable you to purchase a quantity of high-quality 1916 goods and services that would at least make you indifferent between living in 1916 America and living (on your current income) in 2016 America?

Think about it. Hard. Carefully.

If you were a 1916 American billionaire you could, of course, afford prime real-estate. You could afford a home on 5th Avenue or one overlooking the Pacific Ocean or one on your own tropical island somewhere (or all three). But when you traveled from your Manhattan digs to your west-coast palace, it would take a few days, and if you made that trip during the summer months, you’d likely not have air-conditioning in your private railroad car.

And while you might have air-conditioning in your New York home, many of the friends’ homes that you visit — as well as restaurants and business offices that you frequent — were not air-conditioned. In the winter, many were also poorly heated by today’s standards.

To travel to Europe took you several days. To get to foreign lands beyond Europe took you even longer.

Might you want to deliver a package or letter overnight from New York City to someone in Los Angeles? Sorry. Impossible.

You could neither listen to radio (the first commercial radio broadcast occurred in 1920) nor watch television. You could, however, afford the state-of-the-art phonograph of the era. (It wasn’t stereo, though. And — I feel certain — even today’s vinylphiles would prefer listening to music played off of a modern compact disc to listening to music played off of a 1916 phonograph record.) Obviously, you could not download music.

There really wasn’t very much in the way of movies for you to watch, even though you could afford to build your own home movie theater.

Your telephone was attached to a wall. You could not use it to Skype.

Your luxury limo was far more likely to break down while you were being chauffeured about town than is your car today to break down while you are driving yourself to your yoga class. While broken down and waiting patiently in the back seat for your chauffeur to finish fixing your limo, you could not telephone anyone to inform that person that you’ll be late for your meeting.

Even when in residence at your Manhattan home, if you had a hankering for some Thai red curry or Vindaloo chicken or Vietnamese Pho or a falafel, you were out of luck: even in the unlikely event that you even knew of such exquisite dishes, your chef likely had no idea how to prepare them, and New York’s restaurant scene had yet to feature such exotic fare. And while you might have had the money in 1916 to afford to supply yourself with a daily bowlful of blueberries at your New York home in January, even for mighty-rich you the expense was likely not worthwhile.

Your wi-fi connection was painfully slow — oh, wait, right: it didn’t exist. No matter, because you had neither computer nor access to the Internet. (My gosh, there weren’t even any blogs for you to read!)

Even the best medical care back then was horrid by today’s standards: it was much more painful and much less effective. (Remember young Coolidge.) Antibiotics weren’t available. Erectile dysfunction? Bipolar disorder? Live with ailments such as these. That was your only option.

You (if you are a woman) or (if you are a man) your wife and, in either case, your daughter and your sister had a much higher chance of dying as a result of giving birth than is the case today. The child herself or himself was much less likely to survive infancy than is the typical American newborn today.

Dental care wasn’t any better. Your money didn’t buy you a toothbrush with vibrating bristles. (You could, however, afford the very finest dentures.)

Despite your vanity, you couldn’t have purchased contact lenses, reliable hair restoration, or modern, safe breast augmentation. And forget about liposuction to vacuum away the results of your having dined on far too many cream-sauce-covered terrapin.

Birth control was primitive: it was less reliable and far more disruptive of pleasure than are any of the many inexpensive and widely available birth-control methods of today.

Of course, you adore precious-weacious little Rover, but your riches probably could not buy for Rover veterinary care of the sort that is routine in every burgh throughout the land today.

You were completely cut off from the cultural richness that globalization has spawned over the past century. There was no American-inspired, British-generated rock’n’roll played on electric guitars. And no reggae. Jazz was still a toddler, with only few recordings of it.

You could afford to buy the finest Swiss watches and clocks, but even they couldn’t keep time as accurately as does a cheap Timex today (not to mention the accuracy of the time kept by your smartphone).

Honestly, I wouldn’t be remotely tempted to quit the 2016 me so that I could be a one-billion-dollar-richer me in 1916. This fact means that, by 1916 standards, I am today more than a billionaire. It means, at least given my preferences, I am today materially richer than was John D. Rockefeller in 1916. And if, as I think is true, my preferences here are not unusual, then nearly every middle-class American today is richer than was America’s richest man a mere 100 years ago.

This post first appeared at Cafe Hayek.

Donald J. BoudreauxDonald J. Boudreaux

Donald Boudreaux is asenior fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a Mercatus Center Board Member, a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University and, a former FEE president.

One World Order vs. Natural Born Citizen

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As amateur armchair political strategists in the Tea Party debate which GOP candidate would be best for America, who is the most “constitutional” and who would lead our nation away from the One World Order globalization movement to eliminate United States sovereignty and security — many completely ignore the only three words in our Founding documents that prevent the United States from ever falling under the rule of foreign agents or dictators and international influences… “natural born Citizen.”

Contrary to popular belief today, the New World Order spoken of by George H.W. Bush in the post Reagan cold war era, a new global balance wherein the United States would be the only standing superpower, after the fall of the Soviet Union… is not the same as global communism under a One World Order backed by the United Nations, Bilderbergers, the Illuminati, the Muslim caliphate, Obama, Clinton and Sanders, all of whom are global communists masquerading as “progressives.”

The idea that numerous socialist secret societies have had their sights on the destruction of the United States since its birth is no secret. Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, people were determined to destroy it. Not all conspiracies are mere theory… some are quite real, indeed.

One World Order Conspiracy

A conspiracy theory (that is very real), the One World Order or OWO refers to the emergence of a totalitarian world government, global economy, monetary system and set of laws. It is global communist community organizing on the hoof, in politics, education, religion, economics and legal systems now abused by Common Law practices engaged in undermining the Constitutional Protections of all Natural Law Rights.

New World Order Theory (Bush Sr.)

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood alone in the world as an international economic and military superpower. Bush’s “thousand points of light” speech in which he used the phrase “New World Order” spoke of a new age of U.S. outreach and diplomatic effort to spread democracy to war torn parts of the globe via a “kinder-gentler” America than that of the WWI and WWII, military might era…

Later, conspiracy theorists melded the two terms, One World Order and New World Order to have the same meaning, allowing them to muddy the water by alleging these two once competing ideas were now one in the same agenda, and politicians of all political stripes are involved. This turned American on American, in an ongoing internal conflict between citizens who could no longer tell friend from foe…

Hijacking Words and Terms

I use the truth above not to defend daddy Bush, but to illustrate how the global One World Order folks advance their agenda by simply hijacking terminology, twisting old words and terms to have new meanings… that suit the global anti-American agenda.

They hijacked the word “progressive,” in an effort to convince unsuspecting young students that Marxism and Communism are “progressive” ideas of the future, instead of failed ideas of the past.

They recently hijacked the term “marriage” in order to destroy the foundation of every great society, the family unit. They hijacked the term “equality” for the purpose of justifying “inequality,” the new meaning, a different treatment under the law based solely on economic, racial and political interests — stealing from one individual to give to another in an ongoing effort to “fundamentally transform America” into part of a global commune through social engineering.

The millennials are nearly 100% indoctrinated now, the powerful young voting block behind both Hillary Clinton, a closet Maoist and Bernie Sanders, a proud open Marxist.

Because millennials have been raised by socialists in the unionized education system, they have no idea how these concepts have failed repeatedly throughout the world, destroying nation after nation and leaving hundreds of millions dead or living under self-inflicted oppression.

The Only Three Words that Protect and Prevent

Our Charters of Freedom are three founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, all of which have been obliterated by our courts, congress and the Executive Branch for more than a hundred years now.

Throughout those three documents, there are only three words that are there to prevent an unsuspecting American electorate from ever enslaving themselves under foreign rule via democratic process. Those three words are “natural born Citizen” found in Article II of the U.S. Constitution as a requirement for the offices of President and Vice President.

After eight failed attempts to eliminate the natural born Citizen requirement in Article II through amendment process, between 2003 and 2008, the global left once again simply sought to hijack the term…

In order to hijack those three simple words, they first had to make that term appear to be ambiguous. They needed those three basic English words to appear to have more than one meaning, at least potentially.

Once they convinced the people that the term could have more than one meaning, they would convince them that they needed an “expert” to determine the true meaning of the term for them. They need a “constitutional scholar” to explain those three basic English words, that according to the experts, is a secret coded message from the Founders that no average American would ever be able to decipher on their own…

Enter the Wordsmiths

Let the hijacking begin… Now that the “experts” have been granted the power to define these three words for “the people,” the same experts who have been hijacking basic terms for decades now, will be able to hijack the term “natural born Citizen.”

Today’s electorate will say, “We need a court to rule on natural born Citizen,” as if the average American cannot decipher those three simple English words on their own, or take a few minutes to read our Founder’s commentaries on what those three words meant to them and why they chose to place those three words into Article II.

But those courts have been destroying the Constitution by way of hijacking Constitutional terms for decades. By “general welfare” in the Constitution, the Founders did not mean free Obama cell phones or food stamps. But that term was hijacked too…

As a matter of legal fact, there are only three ways for anyone to become a legal citizen of the United States…

  1. Natural Born Citizen – the natural offspring of a legal citizen Father, as a matter of Natural Law, inalienable to any man-made law.
  2. Native Born Citizen – someone born under the legal jurisdiction of the United States, but to foreign parents and presumed to be a “citizen at birth” under 14th Amendment “anchor baby” interpretations of existing U.S. Naturalization Laws. (aka basic citizen)
  3. Naturalized Citizen – someone born into known foreign citizenship who later seeks and acquires legal citizenship in the United States via U.S. Immigration and Naturalization processes. (aka basic citizen)

Every legal American citizen is one of the three and all of them will have United States documented authentication to demonstrate their citizenship claim. The three are distinct, not interchangeable. Two of the three are forms of “naturalization” which are possible only as a result of U.S. Immigration policies and Naturalization statutes, all of which fall under the 14th Amendment today.

If you have no U.S. documentation to authenticate which of the three you are, then you are not a “legal citizen” of the United States at all.

Only one of the three is eligible for the offices of President and Vice President under Article II, a natural born Citizen. The terms “natural born Citizen” and 14th Amendment “citizen at birth” are NOT synonymous or interchangeable, as the “experts” want us to believe.

Article I regarding Congress, allows any legal U.S. “citizen” who otherwise meets the eligibility requirements, to seek and hold a seat in Congress. Only Article II requires “No person except a natural born Citizen” for the Oval Office. President and Vice President are the only two political offices in all of the United States which requires “No person except a natural born Citizen.”

The focus of our Founders was actually upon the office of Commander-in-Chief. One need not be a constitutional scholar to grasp the true meaning of three simple English words, or to understand why our Founders were wise enough to make it impossible for anyone of foreign origin or allegiance at birth to ever seek or hold the office of Commander-in-Chief.

Believe it or not, most Americans are smart enough to grasp this reality, once informed, even though they may have already established an emotional connection to a candidate who set out to defraud American voters by their false claims of eligibility, backed by corrupted political parties, their “expert” legal buddies and even many unwitting Tea Party groups.

How “natural born Citizen” came to appear in Article II is RIGHT HERE.

What the Founders meant by “natural born Citizen” is RIGHT HERE.

The importance and value of those three simple words is much greater than any one politician seeking political power at any given time in history. Those three words are the only words in our Founding Documents that prevent the American people from enslaving themselves under foreign rule… and if the natural born Citizen term is allowed to be hijacked, that will not only open up the Oval Office to foreign rule, it will kill all Natural Law Rights as well.

The American people simply MUST wise up fast… and reject any candidate who seeks the Oval Office via a fraudulent claim of eligibility… In 2008 and 2012, that candidate was Barack Hussein Obama…

Today, the two frauds in the race for the White House are two freshman Senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. They MUST be removed from the race and held fully accountable for their actions… or there is no Rule of Constitutional Law and no way to protect the sovereignty and security of the United States.

Natural born Citizen is directly connected to all of the Natural Rights which were endowed by our Creator, and all foundations for national sovereignty and security. These concepts are inseparable. Lose one and you lose them all…

PUBLIC NOTICE

The North American Law Center now has a weekly two-hour Radio Show on 94.5 FM and 960 AM in the Michigan listening area, which is also LIVE STREAMED on the Internet at PatriotVoice.net/TNALC every Sunday evening at 5:00 PM ET…. That show is co-hosted by myself and TNALC.org lead counsel and constitutional attorney Stephen Pidgeon.

The upcoming Sunday February 28, 2016 broadcast will be dedicated to the most important issue in the 2016 election cycle, protecting and preserving our national sovereignty and security by upholding and enforcing Article II natural born Citizen requirements for the Oval Office.

Unlike Mark (the great one) Levin who challenges others to open debate on his show and then will not allow anyone who disagrees with him to appear on his show for that purpose, TNALC Radio is openly inviting Mr. Levin to call into the show next Sunday evening and learn what a natural born Citizen really is… All shows are available ON-DEMAND via podcast HERE.

Bill Clinton launches ‘Johns for Hillary’ campaign

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After Hillary Clinton’s win in Nevada, due in part to the Hookers for Hillary (HfH) initiative, Bill has decided to launch the Johns for Hillary (JfH) campaign.

In a press release former President Clinton stated:

I am pleased that Hillary did so well in Nevada. I believe that we need to reach out to all those who are involved in the prostitution business. Not just the hookers but also their customers. There are many registered Democrats, Independents and Republicans who have used the services of the ladies of the night and they need a strong voice in a Hillary Clinton administration.

This is our chance to cross party lines!

Their needs must be addressed by those who have spent their hard earned money paying for a woman’s affections. When Hillary is elected president we will propose subsidizing prostitution, particularly for the poor working class men in America. We believe that by doing so we will reduce the number of rapes of women by men and the divorce rate in America.

By giving men an outlet, to be covered under Hillarycare 2.0, we will see everyone satisfied both those lying down and taking it and those dishing it out.

I am proud to announce the the Executive Director of the Johns for Hillary campaign is our good friend and seven term New York Congressman Anthony David Weiner.

Anthony Weiner takes reporters questions during a Johns for Hillary news conference. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Anthony Weiner in a press release noted:

I am honored to lead the Johns for Hillary campaign. As an expert in ‘sexting’ I plan on using social media to reach out to those men, who like my mentor Bill Clinton, have urgent special needs. Please like our Facebook page, join our Twitter effort #JohnsForHillary, hookup with us on LinkedIn and add us to your Google+ circle.

My wife Huma has for years prostituted herself for Hillary, its time men do the same. Johns of the world unite for Hillary! Together we will return the Clinton’s to the White House, which will have its doors painted red after Hillary’s inauguration.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) has endorsed the effort to protect prostitutes vaginas and has joined with Planned Parenthood to make available condoms available to every John, their sons and grandsons who join JfH. NOW and PP will be handing out free condoms at the Democratic National Convention being held in Philadelphia on July 25-28, 2016. NOW and PP in a short statement wrote, “HfH/JfH are now, no pun intended, part of our effort to stop the Republican war on women. Keep government out of whore houses, and other unspeakable locations on the female body.”

The “Johns for Hillary” initiative, has drafted a four point platform:

  1. Protecting health care reform – Hillary Clinton, as part of her husband’s administration, envisioned health care reform in the 1990s. Left out of that health coverage, a so called donut hole, is single payer (no pun intended) medical coverage for Johns. Johns for Hillary will be working to provide free condoms, lower the cost KY Jelly and provide government subsidized sex toys, including whips, chains and selected electronic stimulation devices.
  2. Foreign policy experience – As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton gained invaluable experience negotiating with the 49 foreign leaders whose governments have legalized prostitution such as: Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Kyrgyzstan and Latvia, many of whom have donated to the Hillary in 2016 campaign.
  3. Support for agencies that protect the public’s health – men need protection,  from widespread diseases carried by whores. It is important that Johns be given Medicaid coverage should they contract herpes, HIV and other venereal diseases.
  4. Prevention of a return to supply side economics – Bill Clinton presided over the most prosperous time for Johns. It is now time for some tax relief for Johns. Johns for Hillary will be pushing for a universal tax deduction for prostitutes and related sexual services at places such as the Bunny Ranch in Nevada. This tax deduction will help jump start the moribund economy.

Hundreds of Johns for Hillary will be out in force this weekend in support of Clinton. Among them will be noted personalities who have solicited a prostitute including: Tiger Woods, Hugh Grant, Charlie Sheen, Jerry Springer, Eddie Murphy, Ted Haggard, Danny Bonaduce, D’Angelo, Wayne Rooney and Lamar Odom.

“This eclectic group of men show how deep, no pun intended, the Johns for Hillary movement truly is,” noted Weiner.

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire appeared in numerous magazines such as Hustler, Playboy and the Islamic States Inspire magazine.

Find out which Presidential Candidate you agree with most

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Take this ​​short ISideWith.com political quiz. You might find out that who you think you want for the election may not be who you agree with. Your answers when analyzed might surprise you a little!

I didn’t say it would help you pick a candidate because by November 2016 many of them won’t be around. However, this is an interesting test of Presidential Candidates you prefer. This is really good—Try this quiz! Who should you vote for?

This will clarify some of your ideas​ and help you to choose a candidate for President. ​​This is cool— you may learn something​ about yourself. You may be surprised. I was.

Be sure to move the ​”​importance​” spot on the left for each question and select the right side for most important and the far left​ for least important or anywhere in the middle areas for each question.

Try this short quiz to see which candidate you agree with on various subjects. It is very well done.

TAKE THE ISIDEWITH.COM POLITICAL QUIZ

​P.S. There are additional choices besides Yes or No when you expand the “Other” section.​

Open Letter to Pope Francis

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Dear Pope Francis,

Fanciscus, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of Apostles, Pontifex Maximus of the Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop of the Dioceses of Rome, Sovereign of the Vatican State, Servant of the Servants of God.

You called out Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his views on U.S. immigration policy as “not Christian.”

Are you really wanting to take on this political battle?

Would you be referring to all the Muslim men between the age of 18 and 45 trying to get into our nation, as they have in Europe, to rape and slaughter Christians and Jews? Do you think we, the U.S. tax payers of the United States, should be a dumping ground for Muslim migrants who have no intention of assimilating into our Judeo/Christian culture?

Muslims who want to take our Churches land to build mosques. Muslims who think its permissible, according to the Qur’an, to marry 9-year old children and stone women to death? Are these the people you speak of while bashing Mr. Trump?

Hmm, perhaps maybe you are referring to the Mexican criminal gangs, like MS 13, and other miscreants that sneak across our borders to rape our women, sell drugs and kill and maim Americans. We pick up the tab for that too.

The sovereignty of the United States has been pillaged since Jimmy Carter opened up the flood gates with his Refugee Act of 1980. We have had enough.

The question to ask is how many Muslim refugees has the Vatican taken in? Lets hazard a guess at ZERO.

You also stated on your flight home from your visit to Mexico:

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

The Vatican is a walled in city. Its the most protected city in Italy. You are inside a fortress, a compound. No bridges. No Muslim or South American refugees. I have been there. I met with Pope John Paul II in Saint Peters Basilica in 1990 right before Desert Storm started.

So before you start criticizing others, first take the plank out of your own eye so you can see clearly to remove the speck of dust from ours. Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV):

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

vatican wall

Aerial view of the wall surrounding the Vatican (white line).

Bryan Fischer in his article “Trump, the Pope, and the wall” notes:

The Pope created a firestorm of controversy by going to our southern border and making the building of a border wall the litmus test of Christian faith. “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel.”

Setting aside the plain truth that the litmus test of Christian faith is what a man does with Christ, not what he thinks about a wall, the Pope has hoisted himself on his own petard here. The Vatican is surrounded by the mother of all walls, and has the stingiest citizenship and immigration policy of any sovereign state in the world.

The low-information media and the Vatican itself have scrambled to the Pope’s defense. The Vatican reminds us that the Pope did not build the Vatican wall. True. But he’s making no effort to take it down either.

Read more…

Mr. Trump does not take any false criticism lying down. Not from you Holy Father, not from the Democrats, not from the “establishment” Republicans, the Chinese, the Russians or the North Koreans. NO ONE!

So, if you wish to debate on the issue of building walls perhaps you should first check the Holy Bible. Do  you recall Zechariah 2:5 which says:

And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will be its glory within’

We don’t need any distractions during this critical election year.

Now Mr. Trump was prompted by your little outburst to respond in kind. He said you sir are “disgraceful” for questioning his faith. I and many others agree.

You want to stick your nose into the sovereignty of the United States be careful. We will challenge you. We are done with the political correctness. It is time to confront the real evils in the world, those who slaughter Christians and Jews. This is our nation and Mr. Trump is going to protect our borders, our culture, our Judeo/Christian heritage and our language to paraphrase radio talk show host Mr. Michael Savage.

Remove your blindfold and understand that you should spend more time protecting your flock against Islam, Communists and atheists.

I beseech you, Pope Francis take down your walls.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Vatican walls built by Pope, designed to repel Muslims

Trump, the Pope, and the wall

U.S. Sin Cities And Saintly Sanctuaries

Pope SLAMS Trump. Trump BLASTS Pope. (Sigh) Trump Is Right.

New Black Panthers purge transracial members, cause outcry

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ATLANTA, GEORGIA – The New Black Panther Party, an admittedly black supremacist group, has announced from their headquarters in Atlanta last week that their organization has purged 137 of its members nationwide after it was discovered that they had a Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic, or a Native American parent or grandparent.

The discovery came after the New Black Panthers initiated a new mandate requiring all current members and applicants to prove their African heritage with documents showing at least four generations of pure and unadulterated African ancestry.

Of the 137 New Black Panthers who were expelled after failing to submit the required paperwork, at least 30 had been revealed to have Caucasian parents on both sides. The rejected members have since issued a statement through their lawyer, claiming that even though they may have been born to white families, they strongly identify with the African-American race and, therefore, they feel justified in filing a discrimination lawsuit against the New Black Panthers.
McCray.jpg
“I’m a black man trapped in a white man’s body,” said Muhammad Tayyib-Matin (Formally known as Kevin McCray). “And I’m being discriminated against for the body I was wrongfully born into. It’s bad enough that I have to be constantly reminded of my unfortunate whiteness every time I see my birth family, but now my former Black Panther brothers have also found out about my white genetics and told me to turn in my patches and other Party insignia. I’ve never felt this much pain in my entire life.”

The ACLU has picked up the cases of the rejected Black Panthers, seeing them as serious civil rights violations. “For obvious political reasons we used to turn a blind eye on the New Black Panthers’ open-carry parades and threats of violence towards voters during elections,” stated the ACLU representative. “But to discriminate against members who happen to be transracial African-Americans and who have every right to identify with an ethnicity other than the one they’ve been born into, is a grave violation of their civil rights.”

skin tone.pngBacktracking on their new policy, the Black Panthers have since proposed to replace the genetic documentation requirement with a visual test based on a scale of acceptable skin tones, which existing and hopeful members must pass if they wish to maintain or gain entry into the organization.

However, the ACLU has called the visual scale “even more discriminatory” and “outrageously offensive” to the transracial victims. “That’s just as appalling as forcing a transgendered person to use a restroom in which they wouldn’t feel comfortable, or forcing a member of the LGBT community to prove their natural physical attraction towards members of the same gender,” said the ACLU statement. “The New Black Panther Party must answer for insensitivity towards their former members who have already suffered enough persecution with intolerant assumptions and asinine expectations of them from their immediate families and from society at large.”

In the wake of the discrimination lawsuit filed against the New Black Panther Party, dozens of similar lawsuits are now being filed against black-only organizations like the NAACP and the BET Channel by white individuals who racially identify with black culture but have been turned away from entry-level positions due to their birth color.

Observers expect that during the following months and years, many more victims of transracial discrimination will step forward and defend their right of racial self-identity by flooding various courtrooms and law offices with lawsuits involving employment and affirmative action cases, in which seemingly Caucasian persons were looked over despite their self-identification with racial and ethnic minorities.

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.

Killing America via Planned Ignorance

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George Washington, known as the father of our country was born February 11, 1731 according to the then used Julian calendar.  In 1752 however, Britain and her colonies adopted the Georgian calendar which moved Washington’s birthday a year and eleven days to February 22, 1732.  Americans celebrated Washington’s Birthday, long before congress declared it a federal holiday.

The centennial of his birth prompted festivities nationally and congress established a joint committee to arrange for the occasion.  At the recommendation of the committee, chaired by Henry Clay of the senate and Philemon Thomas of the House, Congress adjourned on February 22, 1832 out of respect for Washington’s legacy and memory and in commemoration of his birth by reading aloud his Farewell address.

In a special joint session held in the House Chamber, the House and the Senate, along with several cabinet officials, justices of the Supreme Court and high ranking officers in the Army and Navy gathered to listen to the Secretary of State read the address aloud.  Eventually, the reading of George Washington’s Farewell Address became an annual evet for the Senate, a tradition that is still observed to this day.

Washington’s Birthday, however, did not become a legal holiday until January 31, 1879 when Congress added February 22nd to the list of holidays to be observed by federal employees in the District of Columbia.  One of the main purposes of singling out the birthday of George Washington to be a holiday was to keep the memory of his important role in the establishment of this republic fresh in the minds of succeeding generations of Americans.

Likewise, the Birthday of the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln was at one time recognized and celebrated in many circles.  Currently, the Lincoln holiday is celebrated unofficially nationwide as part of what many states now dub Presidents Day during mid-February.  Only a handful of states celebrate the Lincoln Birthday which is on February 12th.  There is an official ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.   There is also a wreath ceremony at Lincoln’s Birthplace in Kentucky.  There were efforts right after Lincoln’s death to get his birthday secured as a national holiday in his honor, but none succeeded.

Now, more states celebrate Black Friday than Lincoln’s or Washington’s birthday.  In fact, 18 states have days off for state employees for Black Friday.  Another ten states give their employees the day off for Good Friday, and five states recognize December 26 as a holiday.

The historic accomplishments of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are very significant.  As both a general and later our republic’s first president, George Washington credited Providential guidance for his accomplishments on the battlefield as well as in the government “of by and for the people.”  Lincoln’s decisions to ultimately free the slaves as well as preserve the union were both influenced by his faith.  Regarding the rights of negroes, Lincoln was also influenced by popular orator, publisher, and businessman Frederick Douglas.  His great life story, like Lincoln’s and Washington’s is both shunned and not taught to young Americans in the typical American government school classroom.

Unfortunately, the decades long evil practice of denying American school students important historic information about many of our most important historic figures is actually making it more difficult to maintain our exceptional nation.  Because of the deep understanding of unalienable rights and liberty, Washington, Lincoln, and Douglas all contributed in their time to America’s bedrock of personal freedom.  It is shameful tradition that government school students have for decades not been properly instructed on, or even taught to appreciate the United States of America.  If the truth concerning our national heroes like Washington, Lincoln and Douglas continue to be shielded from the inquisitive minds of students, disastrous outcomes will result.

No nation can remain strong and prosperous if multiple generations of the population are systematically indoctrinated against it and not instructed on the good merits of it’s founding and great historical figures, it’s great heritage or achievements.   Currently, our republic is suffering through an ongoing constitutional and moral crisis.  The bloated federal government no longer operates according to constitutional mandates.

The main reason for that is that for approximately five or six decades, the majority of American students have not been instructed on the rudiments and benefits of a constitutional republic, free market economics, America’s Christian heritage etc.  So now, generations of Americans are political, intellectual and spiritual zombies who support open borders and illegal immigration into America.  In many instances, Americans don’t even know who George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Frederick Douglas is, let alone understand or even care about their unalienable rights which come from God.  Shamefully, many are even proud of their lack of knowledge of unalienable rights and what made a nation like the United States the onetime envy of the world.

I however am of the belief, that despite the current state of affairs regarding our land of the free and home of the brave she has an upcoming renewal of her destiny of greatness.  Because of a growing groundswell of real change for the better, she will not remain in her current state of decline.  The dastardly plots and plans of the progressives will utterly fail in the mission to destroy our beloved republic.  The truth will prevail and replace the wicked indoctrination and utter lies of recent years.  In fact, America will once again be a nation under God that is both blessed and highly favored.

george washington quote

Donald Trump keeps charging — Ted Cruz keeps denying

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Senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz (R-TX), a leading candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, was born on December 22, 1970, at the Foothills General Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  His parents were Eleanor Elizabeth (Wilson) Cruz, a U.S. citizen, born in Wilmington, Delaware, and Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, a native of Matanzas, Cuba.

Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate, first uncovered and released by the Dallas Morning News on August 18, 2013, nearly eight months after he was sworn in as the junior senator from Texas, shows that his birth was registered with the Division of Vital Statistics in Edmonton, Alberta, on December 31, 1970.  When Ted was three years old his father returned to Texas, leaving his wife and son in Canada.  Several months later the parents reunited and the Cruzes moved to Houston.

In a February 11, 2016, recap in the Dallas Morning News, questioning whether Cruz is eligible to serve as president of the United States, campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier attempted to put the best possible face on the issue.  Ignoring the existence of his Canadian birth certificate, Frazier said, “Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen.  To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship.”

However, Ms. Frazier’s statement is at odds with Canadian law.  When contacted by Dallas Morning News reporter Todd Gillman, spokeswoman Julie LaFortune, of the Canadian Ministry of Health, said, “Generally speaking, under the Citizenship Act of 1947, those born in Canada were automatically (Canadian) citizens at birth… unless their parent was a foreign diplomat.”

So it is clear that, in spite of official “spin” from the Cruz campaign, Ted Cruz was born with Canadian citizenship… which he officially renounced in 2014 when his presidential ambitions reached critical mass.  In spite of being a learned lawyer, Cruz apparently felt that he could, at age 43, miraculously acquire status as a “natural born” U.S. citizen.  It apparently did not occur to him, or to his legal advisors, that it is no more possible for one to gain “natural born” status at any time beyond the instant of birth than it is for a mother of three to regain her virginity later in life.  Either we are “natural born” citizens at birth, or we are not.  It cannot be acquired at a later date in the same manner that one would become a “naturalized” citizen.

What is not clear is whether Ted Cruz has ever acquired U.S. citizenship.  Spokeswoman Frazier insisted that, shortly after his birth, Cruz’s mother registered his birth with the U.S. Consulate in Calgary, and that he was granted a U.S. passport in 1986, at age fifteen.  If true, it would tend to confirm that Cruz’s birth was, in fact, registered with the U.S. Consulate in Canada and that he was recognized as a U.S. citizen at birth.  However, to register a birth at a U.S. Consulate in a foreign country is not quite as simple as Ms. Frazier makes it sound.

According to the U.S. State Department, Bureau of Consular Affairs, the U.S. citizen parent(s) of a child born on foreign soil must obtain a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA, Form FS-240) at some time prior to the child’s eighteenth birthday if the parent desires to pass on their U.S. citizenship to their offspring.  Published rules of the Bureau read as follows:

“If you determine that the child born abroad qualifies for U.S. citizenship, please follow the instructions below in order to complete the required forms, prepare the necessary documents, and make an appointment at the U.S. Consulate General in Montreal.  All applicants will need to provide the following forms and documents:    

  • Completed Form DS-2029 (50KB PDF). Please complete the form, but do NOT sign.
  • Completed Application for a Social Security Number (Form SS-5-FS).
  • Child’s original civil birth certificate.                  
  • Proof of parent’s or parents’ U.S. citizenship (i.e. U.S. passport, Certificate of Naturalization and Citizenship, Consular Report of Birth Abroad, etc.).
  • Proof of identity of parents and child (i.e. passports, regardless of nationality).
  • Parents’ original civil marriage certificate.
  • Termination of any previous marriages of either parent (i.e. divorce decree, death certificate, etc.) if applicable.
  • Fee of US$100 payable in cash (U.S. or Canadian), or Visa, Mastercard.
  • If only one parent is a U.S. citizen, evidence of his/her physical presence in the United States sufficient to transmit citizenship to the child (as indicated in http://canada.usembassy.gov/consular_services/birth-abroad.html).
  • Make an appointment online before you show up at the Consulate.
  • All children must appear in person with the parent signing.

Please bring a return Canada Post Express Post envelope with you to your appointment so that we can mail your Consular Report of Birth Abroad to you when it is ready.  Alternatively, you can pick it up two weeks later during our public hours.”

In other words, it is not simply a matter of stopping off at the nearest U.S. Consulate with a newborn infant to announce that you are a U.S. citizen, that the child was born on foreign soil, and that you would like to insure that your American citizenship is passed on by descent to the child in question.

So the question arises, did Ted Cruz’s parents assemble all the necessary documents and then  drive or fly to the office of the U.S. Consulate General in Montreal, a distance of 2,196 miles?  Or did they simply rely on the fact that his mother was a U.S. citizen, assuming that her U.S. citizenship would be automatically passed on to her son?

Everyone, including the top leadership of the Democratic Party, knew as early as the summer of 2008 that Barack Obama was not a natural born citizen and was, therefore, ineligible to serve as president of the United States.  Yet, Democrats were so blinded by their ambition to win back the White House that every one of the 365 Democrat members of the 2008 Electoral College violated their electoral oaths and cast their electoral ballots for Obama.

Now, in early 2016, ten months before the 2016 General Election, the “shoe appears to be on the other foot.”  Millions of conservatives and Republicans, supporters of Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, appear unwilling to even question whether or not these men are eligible to serve in the office they seek.  If they would prefer not to be compared favorably in the historical record with the Obama Kool-Ade drinkers, they should demand that Cruz produce a copy of his CRBA (Form FS-240), proof of his foreign-born U.S. citizenship.

Although Barack Obama has put a tight seal on every personal document relating to his past… from birth through his January 20, 2009 inauguration as president of the United States… we cannot allow a Republican presidential candidate to thumb his nose at the American people and the rule of law in the same manner.  It is only a matter of time before Donald Trump discovers that it is not the place of Ted Cruz’s birth that raises questions about his eligibility.  Rather, it is the citizenship of his parents on the day of his birth that brings his eligibility into question.

It would be a simple matter for a member of the United States Senate to obtain a copy of his own citizenship documentation from the U.S. State Department… if such documentation exists.  So one must ask why Cruz has not produced his CRBA Form FS-240.  Why does he allow the speculation to rage on if he is able to prove conclusively that he became a U.S. citizen at birth?

However, the production of a CRBA Form FS-240 would prove only that he is a “citizen” of the United States, eligible to serve as a governor, a state legislator, a member of Congress, or a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Form FS-240 does not, and cannot, establish that Cruz came into the world on December 22, 1970 as a “natural born” U.S. citizen.

It is not clear precisely when Cruz’s father renounced his Cuban citizenship in favor of Canadian citizenship.  However, what is clear is that he did not apply for U.S. citizenship until 2005.  So if it can be shown that his father was not yet a naturalized U.S. citizen on the day he was born, it is clear that he cannot meet the Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 standard of a “natural born Citizen” and is, therefore, ineligible to serve as president of the United States.

When the Founders drafted the U.S. Constitution in 1787, they were not concerned that the day would come when a three-year-old Ted Cruz would be uprooted from his Canadian birthplace and transplanted in Houston, Texas, fully committed to the Canadian single-payer healthcare system and other peculiarities of Canadian governance.  What did concern them, greatly, is the possibility that a child such as Ted Cruz, whose father was a supporter of Fidel Castro during the Cuban revolution and who could easily have been a deep-cover Soviet or Cuban agent, could have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the orthodoxy of the international communist conspiracy throughout his childhood and his formative years… the perfect “Manchurian candidate.”

Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution specifies that all members of Congress shall be at least twenty-five years of age and a citizen of the United States for at least ten years when sworn into office.  So the question arises, can Ted Cruz produce a U.S. State Department Consular Report of Birth Abroad?  If not, he may be able to meet the ten year residency requirement, but if he cannot produce documentary proof showing that he is a U.S. citizen, born abroad, then his eligibility to serve in the United States Senate becomes equally questionable.

Donald Trump: America’s Champion

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At this crucial moment in our nation’s history, America needs a hero.

We need a strong champion of our national security.

We need an unapologetic promoter of economic prosperity that’s made possible by free enterprise capitalism.

We need a bold defender of our Constitutional rights, including our freedoms of speech, religion and right to bear arms to protect ourselves from criminals and rogue terrorists.

We need a courageous fighter to stop Democratic Party socialists from destroying our country with their failed policies and actions.

“Capitalism Is Freedom; Socialism Is Slavery” is the title of the below article by John Hawkins which demonstrates clearly why I stand with Donald J. Trump, the champion America needs to make our country great again.

trump embraces american flagCapitalism Is Freedom; Socialism Is Slavery

By John Hawkins

“The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.” — Milton Friedman

“If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” – Jonah Goldberg

In a time where consumers have almost unlimited choices of music, movies, websites and every product you can imagine in the supermarket, socialism is an outdated economic system that no longer fits with the world we live in. Socialism requires the intervention and control of the marketplace by an overwhelmingly powerful centralized government. It penalizes high achievers, rewards laziness and stifles choice.

Socialism is a government regulation that stops you from creating a successful business. It’s the Bureau of Land Management or the EPA making arbitrary decisions about what you can do with your own land. It’s the IRS taking the money you busted your butt to earn and giving it to people who didn’t work as hard as you did.

Almost every socialist policy requires taking resources from someone who’s earned them and giving them to someone who hasn’t. Even programs that are supposed to be self-funding rarely are because the juice is never quite worth the squeeze. The real reason we’re so deeply in debt is because if the middle class was forced to choose between paying for what our government is spending or dramatically cutting back, our government would already be much smaller than it is – and no wonder.

What does our government do well anymore? Do you trust the IRS? FEMA? Are our borders secure? How does the customer service of the post office or DMV compare to, let’s say Apple or Amazon? Who wants to live in government housing? Who wants a minimum wage job? Who wants to answer to bureaucrats, jump through their hoops and do as he’s told by people who see him as a nameless, faceless slob dependent upon them for his livelihood?

This is what socialism offers.

Socialism will take something from someone else who earned it and give it to you and in return, you will do what socialists want you to do. If you’re irresponsible, lazy, have a habit of making poor decisions or just need a master, this can seem like a good deal. You can work a menial job and get paid more than you’re worth! You can go to college and you don’t have to pay for it! Someone else will give you a place to live, food stamps, welfare and health care! In return, you just have to give up on your pride, your dreams and control of your own life.

People who can take care of themselves don’t need socialism and most of those who have difficulty taking care of themselves would still be better off under a more capitalistic system. The more capitalistic an economy is, the faster it grows. The faster an economy grows, the more jobs and wealth are created.

Eighty percent of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. Meanwhile, 96% of the poor in America have televisions, 93% have microwaves and 81% have cell phones. Ultimately, it’s the economic growth produced by capitalistic policies that has allowed America’s poor to do so well compared to the poor in more socialistic nations. Paradoxically, the more we move towards socialism in the name of “helping” the poor, the less poor Americans will ultimately have. That’s because the more regulations, the more taxes and the more GOVERNMENT a country has, the slower its economy grows.

Socialism requires a gargantuan government so it can confiscate property, control behavior and manage an always growing list of programs to achieve “fairness.” Unfortunately, “fairness” is a will-o’-the-wisp that can never be caught because human beings have different levels of talent, skill and effort.

The factory worker who spent 30 years working his way through the ranks to become regional sales manager should make more than the new guy who just started yesterday. The man who spent 10 years building his own successful business should make more money than his employees.

The man who invested every extra dime he had and does well should make more money than the fellow who used all his extra money to buy a bigger car and nicer furniture for his house. Socialists say, “Not so fast. Maybe those guys should make more money, but they’re making too much money. We should control how much they make. We should decide how much of their money they get to keep. We should control how much of their money is given away and to whom.”

On the other hand, capitalism is freedom. Capitalism says you should do what you want to do with your own time and either suffer the consequences or reap the rewards. Sure, we might all cooperate to create a military and a police force along with building sewage systems, roads, street lights and stop signs and a few other necessities, but beyond that, let everyone rise and fall as he deserves.

If you want to get a four year degree in women’s studies at an Ivy League university? Great, pay for it yourself. You want to live cheaply and work a second job so you can save up money? You should be able to do that and someone else shouldn’t get the benefits from your hard work. If you want to spend your twenties as a beach bum, surfing all day and sleeping in a tent at night, you can do that, but no one else should be asked to help pay for your lifestyle.

Having real freedom means you get to make real choices and when that happens, some of those choices will work out better than others. The only way to change that is to build a massive government apparatus that makes everyone poorer in return for reducing the amount of natural inequality that will happen when people are allowed to pursue their wildly differing hopes and dreams.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it won’t bankrupt the country, it doesn’t reward failure and it can’t control you like socialism. To the contrary, in a capitalist system, businesses benefit from voluntary transactions. Do you want to get rich in a capitalist system? Find a way to give people what they want. If you’re just okay at it, you can make a decent salary. If you’re as good at it as Henry Ford or Bill Gates, you can become rich beyond imagination.

Do you want to get rich in a socialist system? Be well connected. Make friends or just pay off people who can give you government contracts. Make contributions to politicians so they’ll change the laws to help you and hurt your competitors. Get the government to take money from other people and give it to you as part of a bailout.

Which sounds more admirable? Which sounds healthier for our country? When you give the government unlimited power to create “equality,” you also give it the power to tilt the playing field towards corrupt businesses that have every incentive to try to take advantage of it.

At the end of the day, socialism is for slaves who are willing to give up their freedom for promises that they’ll be given some minimal level of support no matter what. On the other hand, capitalism is for people who want the freedom to rise or fall based on their own effort. If you know which type of person you are, then you know whether you should be a capitalist or a socialist.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of the author Frances Presley-Rice with Donald Trump.

Blacks Are Searching

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This past weekend I had the chance to be part of a historic event in Washington, D.C.

Black Americans for a Better Future (BAFBF) hosted their fourth annual Black Republican Trailblazer Awards Luncheon at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel.  We had a packed house for both the Saturday evening VIP reception with the honorees, as well as for the Sunday luncheon awards presentation.

We honored six phenomenal trailblazers:  Ambassador Harold Doley, Fred D. McClure, James Jones, Allegra McCullough, Jennifer S. Carroll, and Robert L. Woodson.

The audience was totally mesmerized by the honorees and their stories about their personal and political journeys.  These honorees truly met our definition of a trailblazer.

A true trailblazer is like a candle; the more light a candle gives out, the less it becomes.  Likewise, each of our honorees has given of themselves to make America, the Republican Party, and the Black community better.

For two days the honorees hung out with the attendees and simply took photos and signed autographs for everyone.  Business people made connections with like-minded entrepreneurs that will lead to business collaborations.

Multi-Grammy Award winning songwriter/producer, Carvin Haggins produced a night of entertainment that was extraordinary.  The entertainment began with up and coming R&B songstress, BriaMarie.  She is such a phenomenal talent.  You will hear great things from her.

The headline artist was none other than the “Songstress of Sensuality,” Algebra Blessett.  She is a multi-Grammy Award winning singer and more importantly, just a good person.

I have worked around many A-list entertainers, but none is more delightful than Algebra.  Many artists, after they perform, go immediately to their room or if they have friends in town will go hang out with them.

But not with Algebra.  After her performance, she stayed in the ballroom mingling and talking with people and signing autographs and taking what seemed like a million pictures.  As if that wasn’t enough, she went to her room to change clothes and then hung out with the attendees at the hotel bar.

But one comment summed up the whole weekend kind of nicely.  A member of Algebra’s staff said to me, “I am a big Hillary Clinton supporter.  I have never been around a group of Black Republicans; but if this is how Black Republicans are, I could get used to this.  You all are a lot of fun.”

Black Republicans are rarely seen in a positive light and the party seems incapable of using its vast resources to change this dynamic.  Therefore, we at BAFBF will fill the void.  In the next couple of months we will be announcing several major names in sports, entertainment, business, and politics who will for the first time publicly declare their party registration as Republican.

They will be joining and working with BAFBF to go into the ten battleground states that will determine the next president.  We will use their celebrity to get people registered to vote and to engage with BAFBF.

BAFBF will initiate a media campaign where we can begin to change how Black Republicans are viewed within the Black community.

Blacks have absolutely no relationship with Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders.  The Black vote is very much in play if the Republican Party were to finally get serious about cultivating a real relationship with the Black community.

Every Black should be embarrassed and angry at the members of the Congressional Black Caucus who endorsed Clinton’s campaign for president last week.  They are totally out of sync with the majority of the Black community.

Hillary can’t point to one substantive thing she has ever done relative to the Black community.

BAFBF has already begun to work on doing a business summit here in DC with our congressional leadership.  We also have the backing of several Republican governors who are willing to host their own business summit with some of the most successful Black entrepreneurs in the country.

A representative of the African Diplomatic Corps announced that they will be hosting a reception for BAFBF to bring together one hundred Black entrepreneurs to DC to cultivate relations centered on building business relationships bilaterally.

We will also be sponsoring a series of basketball and football camps this summer for kids in under served communities with our friends in the NBA and NFL.

As we begin to have our surrogates engage in the media, engage with our congressional leadership, and engage with our governors in a substantive matter; the Republican brand will slowly begin to be rebuilt.

But it will not take place from within the party; it can only take place outside of the party structure.  Those inside the party structure have no clue on how to cultivate relations within the Black community.

All I know is that when the Black community engages with “real” Black Republicans, they are open to joining the cause to make America great again.

If you have any doubt, simply talk to anyone who attended our trailblazer event.  Truly, the harvest is ripe, but the laborers are few.

God–Damn It, or Praise Him? A Tribute to Science and Einstein By a Scientist

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Science has been in the news because of the discovery of gravitational waves that Einstein, a century ago, said existed. Are we brilliant–or maybe retarded because of our unwillingness to admit something else Einstein said—that God is not a magician, but a scientist?

Since science put men on the moon, some scientists think they can escape the realities that seem inherent to the universe and ignore the Source of everything we see and so much we can’t see. How many of the following questions can my fellow scientists answer without God because we are too intellectual to believe a book of myths? This begs a hundred questions, and maybe a thousand–we start with the hundred elements on a chemistry chart–where did they come from?

It earth exploded off the sun, how did earth develop its spin so we have 24-hour days? How did earth come to orbit at just the right distance from the sun so we don’t cook (like summer) or freeze like winter? How did it get oxygen that we need so desperately every second? And in just the right proportion with nitrogen? What about carbon? Wouldn’t carbon and nitrogen have burned up on the sun so our atmosphere would be carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide (toxic) if the sun had oxygen, and if not, how did it get on our planet?

And how did hydrogen get here—so prevalent in the human body, but essential to water—we say H (2) O. Was there water on the sun? How did it get here?

How did the planets come to orbit around the sun at such varying distances—some huge, some small. Why didn’t the smaller ones fly off into space? Why aren’t the larger ones pulled back to the sun by gravity? How did Jupiter or Saturn get 60 some moons orbiting them? Why does our moon (and others) look so nicely rounded? Wouldn’t an explosion give jagged particles? Did the moon explode off earth? Where’s the gaping how where it came from?

How did life begin? It sounds simple, like the elements just got together in some primordial soup until one understands the complexity of a single molecule and far more so for a single living cell like an Ameba. It has a complexity that exceeds New York City. The city has to feed itself and dump the waste which it does poorly into the ocean. It has roads too narrow. Man’s evolution is worse than God’s creation. How could evolution work when we can’t even solve cholesterol problems without drugs that make us sick or kill us?

Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine was right–food should be our medicine, but modern man has DuPont’s slogan, “Better living through chemistry.”

Cell division would be a huge obstacle for evolution. Mitosis is so compex. Did it all happen just in time before the old cell died? How did sexual replication develop. Did the female develop at just the right time for her male counterpart’s evolution? Millions of years but finished the same year?

This is like building a mousetrap—it won’t work until you have all the parts together. The human eye is so wonderful, and it begs appreciation for dozens of processes which had to develop simultaneously or it wouldn’t work, and Darwin’s idea of natural selection and survival of the fittest would have doomed us without sight, or hearing or the ability of blood to clot if wounded—a complex cascade of reactions.

And what about the 2nd law of thermodynamics that says the energy systems of the universe tend to run down unless acted upon by some outsde source, or shouldn’t we say Source—God! If we try to avoid Him, we may be in trouble when we get to the end of life’s brief probationary period like Voltaire. Google “dying words of infidels”–we should avoid the fearful looking for of Judgment with curses as famous atheists have died. Before dying, it would be well to understand God’s love and a better plan for us.

Maybe dying peacefully like Christians martyred by Muslims who don’t have such peace (and who have trouble living with others of similar but different belief) should tell us something?

Shouldn’t “Back to Basics” in education require answers to the above questions before we teach evolution (science without God) because it is so stupidly impossible? This happens to be the opinion of thousands of scientists who also believe the Bible—they have the same Author. Science rightly understood and the Bible rightly understood (damn the bad translations) agree. One of the amazing things about God is His ability to read the future better than we can read the past as the book of Daniel shows.

EDITORS NOTE: Dr. Richard Ruhling has three science degrees and has authored some eBooks with five-star reviews on Amazon. For readers interested in geopolitical events, he recommends The Alpha & Omega Bible Code with its explanations from Daniel, Revelation and the wedding parables.

Are we faced with a Nightmare Scenario Regarding the Future of the Supreme Court?

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By Wallace Bruschweiler and William Palumbo –

Now that Justice Antonin Scalia has been found dead with a “pillow over his head,” the showdown is set between the administration of Barack Hussein Obama and the GOP-controlled Senate.  Who will Obama nominate, and will he or she be approved by the Senate?

Consider the history of this present administration, coupled with what constitutes a “qualified” résumé for the Supreme Court – at least on paper.

Who is a possible, perhaps even likely, nominee?

  • Was it not the Department of Justice (DoJ) that ordered that the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers be dismissed – why?
  • Was it not the DoJ stonewalling justice in the ATFE gun-running scandal known as Fast and Furious – why?
  • In fact, was not the DoJ regarded as the supreme gatekeeper of the scandal-ridden Obama administration?
  • In August 2014, Barack Hussein Obama flew back from Martha’s Vineyard to Washington for a mysterious 48-hour trip for what the White House claimed to be a series of important meetings. Who were these meetings with, what was discussed, and specifically promised?
  • Strangely enough, a month later, in September 2014, Eric Holder announced his resignation as Attorney General. Could he have been the mysterious person involved in the meetings the month before?
  • Today, Eric Holder is successfully employed by a private law firm as partner specializing in “complex investigations and litigation matters … that are international in scope and involve significant regulatory enforcement.” Would he be willing to leave this comfortable, plushy, and cushy job?
  • Potential scenario from the point of view of Barack Hussein Obama – if he nominates Eric Holder to the Supreme Court, he would achieve simultaneously two major objectives: 1) To politicize the Supreme Court beyond description for years to come, and 2) As a means to reward his long-time ally and personal friend.

Is this the unfortunate and inevitable scenario we are faced with?

Keep in mind that this year the Supreme Court is scheduled to judge critical cases that will decide issues related to race in college admissions, abortion, union rights, gun control, immigration and the status of illegal aliens, as well as religious freedom.

In today’s political environment, do you think that the above scenario is really far-fetched?

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VIDEO: What caused the religious orders to fall apart?

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TRANSCRIPT

Ninety percent fewer seminarians; 35 percent fewer priests, and many are old; 92 percent fewer religious brothers; 90 percent fewer nuns and sisters — all in the space of just 50 years.

The drop in the numbers of men and women willing to give their lives for the Church has been beyond dramatic. Certainly, it isn’t news that there are enormously fewer numbers of priests, sisters and brothers than in days gone by, but what needs to be understood is why this happened.

It isn’t enough to just make it a simple, overly broad answer like “Vatican II caused it.” To whatever degree, the Second Vatican Council is involved, it only provided the means. It wasn’t gradual; it was a spiritual meteorite that hit the Church in the late 1960s. What we are feeling today is the lingering effect of it.

If the Church is going to rebuild Herself, we need to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. Facts have to be faced and examined objectively. Something was already present in the Church before Vatican II that allowed for the implosion of the Faith.Never forget that every bishop at Vatican II who signed the documents had been born, baptized, confirmed and ordained in the Old Rite. So the notion that the Old Rite — meaning the Traditional Latin Mass — is a cure-all is not well thought out.

The Church imploded when the TLM was the normal, usual routine. Something was already stirring in the souls of many laity and religious prior to the Council. Mass attendance before the Council was already on the way down before the Council, across the West. Obviously, it got a lot worse after Vatican II, but the dynamite was already laid.

The state of the Church in those days running up to the Council may very well have been a case of a mile wide and inch deep, in other words, the termites had already been at work for some time, so when the strong wind blew, it didn’t take much to bring the whole house down.

The same was true of religious orders at the time. They were burgeoning, busting at the seams. How did the convents and monasteries empty out so fast? Remember, it was not just the case that people stopped coming. It was the case that people stopped coming secondarily. The primary disaster was that the already professed left in droves.

So what was wrong just below the surface with all these vocations? That many would not ever come, while sad, is not shocking. What is shocking is those that had already dedicated themselves to the religious life, made vows, took oaths and so forth — that these would just chuck their vows aside.

And more to the point, as the Church tries to resurrect from this implosion, we need to be certain that we aren’t laying the groundwork for the same thing to happen again, if not at this moment, then somewhere shortly down the road.

All of this is the topic for this week’s “Mic’d Up,” a fantastic discussion about the collapse and resurrection of the religious orders.

WATCH NOW

What is needed in any vocation is love for the Faith. And it has to surpass the love of evil that enemies of the Church have. The zeal for evil among Planned Parenthood supporters, for example, is enviable. The degree of constancy and conviction that those dedicated to the destruction of the Faith have is astounding.

Venerable Bp. Sheen used to say: “The Communists have all zeal and no truth, and we Catholics have all truth and no zeal.” The religious orders ultimately fell apart because they fell out of love with Our Lord and His Holy Catholic Church. When the opportunity presented itself, and there became a choice between Our Lord and His Holy Bride, they looked at each and chose the lesser.

That can happen to any one of us, religiously professed or lay person. People have to love; their relationship with truth, with the Faith, must be enhanced and advanced daily. They must have a sense of mission; we must have a sense of mission.

The problem facing the Church today is that the sense of mission has been reduced to a watered-down emotionalism where the mission is your feelings. That’s not mission; that’s ego. We must be in love with Our Lord in His Church — not some in love with some imaginary feeling of being in love.

Love compels greatness; it compels sacrifice; it compels a vocation.

As an early “religious” once said, “If I have not love, I am a noisy gong and clanging symbol” (1 Cor. 13:1).

EDITORS NOTE: Originally published at ChurchMilitant.com.

Former Cocaine Dealer Pulling Strings to Get Marijuana License?

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State Democratic Majority Leader J. Kalani English, (a former cocaine dealer), is raising eyebrows at the state Capitol after he helped to pass the law to create medical marijuana dispensaries in Hawaii and then joined in a group that applied for one of the potentially lucrative dispensary licenses.

State employees and lawmakers are prohibited from using their positions to receive any unwarranted advantages, and cannot use confidential information obtained through their positions to benefit themselves….

…some of English’s colleagues are saying privately or publicly that his participation in a firm that applied to become one of Hawaii’s first marijuana retail centers gives the appearance of a conflict to the public.

“I wouldn’t do it,” said Sen. Sam Slom….

“Look, there’s already people that think that we’re self-dealing or we’re crooks or we’re jerks or whatever, so I think to the extent that we can show them that we are fair and we are open and we’re doing our job, I think that’s the most important thing,” said Slom (R, Diamond Head-Kahala-Hawaii Kai).

English is listed in state records as one of four members of Hawaii Medicinal Options LLC, which is one of 59 applicants for eight marijuana dispensary licenses….

Another of English’s colleagues, who asked not to be identified, said the public might believe that English, a key leader of the Senate’s ruling Democratic caucus, will somehow use his clout to influence the selection process….

“It’s the general perception of it, because there’s a general distrust anyway.”

And since bills are being considered this year to refine the dispensary law, the situation appears to be one where “you’re in the game, and now you’re making rules for it,” the lawmaker said.

Lawmakers this year are considering a number of possible changes to the law such as specifying that license holders can cultivate marijuana in greenhouses or shade houses, and English would normally participate in measures like those as the majority leader and a voting member of the Senate.

State Ethics Commission Executive Director Les Kondo said the Hawaii State Code of Ethics exempts lawmakers from the conflicts-of-interest restrictions when it comes to voting or participating in official matters as legislators…

Rep. Marcus Oshiro, who has been a supporter of medical marijuana but a critic of the new dispensaries law, said there are already questions about favoritism or undue influence in the process to decide who will get licenses, and that this doesn’t help.

“It leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths, and I wouldn’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” said Oshiro (D, Wahiawa-Whitmore-Poamoho). “Perception counts for a lot in politics, and from most people’s perspective it doesn’t look good to amend the laws that could benefit you or your friends.”

  • J Kalani English Marijuana: 2016
  • J Kalani English Cocaine: 1996, 2005

read … Lawmaker’s pakalolo ties might provoke suspicion

Marijuana: Secrecy, Unknown Agendas, connected applicants and lobbyists pressuring friends

Shapiro: The state Health Department’s apparently aborted scheme to select Hawaii’s eight medical marijuana licensees in secrecy adds to a sinking feeling that this high-stakes program won’t go well.

Using a legislative exemption, the department dispensed with hearings and public comments in drafting rules for exclusive and potentially lucrative licenses to grow and sell medical pot.

Then the state tried to avoid disclosing who would serve on the panel that will select eight licensees from 59 applicants, reversing course only after the Honolulu Star-Advertiser threatened a lawsuit.

The plan was for secret judges with unknown agendas and vague criteria deciding which of the rich, famous and politically connected applicants get licenses to mint money.

What could go wrong?

The state now says it’ll release names of selectors, but claims they haven’t been chosen yet as signs of disorder abound.

The Ige administration initially defended the secrecy as necessary to avoid tainting the integrity of the process with outside public pressure on the selection committee.

They have it backward: The real worry isn’t outside pressure but inside pressure — connected applicants and lobbyists pressuring friends in the administration or Legislature to influence the process.

Prominent names tied to applications include former Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle, former state Attorney General David Louie, Honolulu rail director Ivan Lui-Kwan, actor Woody Harrelson, producer Shep Gordon, former St. Francis Healthcare CEO Eugene Tiwanak, tech entrepreneur Henk Rogers, Hawaii island farmer Richard Ha, Maui state Sen. J. Kalani English and Anthony Takitani, law partner of Senate Judiciary Chairman Gil Keith-Agaran.

Adding to the secrecy and potential for backdoor influence is that many pot license applicants are limited-liability companies, which aren’t required to publicly identify principals behind the front persons….

read … A-state-that-favors-secrecy

Trey Gowdy Backs Ineligible Candidate for President

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Dear Representative Gowdy,

I have no idea how much time you spent vetting Mr. Rubio but you missed a most important point and that is Rubio is not a Natural Born Citizen which is a requirement to serve as president or vice President of the United States.

Marco Rubio was born in Miami in 1971 to Cuban parents who were not U.S. citizens

It is more than a stretch to simply say being born on U.S. Soil makes a child a Natural Born Citizen. If in fact that were true there would be no need for the requirement for it to be in the Constitution. Since all children born here of illegal aliens (anchor babies) and to mothers from around the world who come to have a child on U.S. Soil (birth tourism) so the child automatically is deemed a U.S. Citizen and the mother returns to whichever country she came from with baby and social security number in hand would be deemed Natural Born Citizens. Do you really believe all of these children are Natural Born Citizens?

By the way Steve King’s H.R. 140 would solve the above problems. Are you a co-sponsor?

I have been a resident of Florida for thirty years and witnessed Rubio’s entire state career from his cosponsoring a Florida Dream Act bill for illegal alien children to barring committee meetings dealing with containing the illegal aliens in the state.

Rubio won the election because Florida’s citizens suffer an annual cost to educate, medicate and incarcerate illegal aliens at of over $FIVE BILLION and wanted a senator that would oppose amnesty as he promised to do. He betrayed Florida’s voters when he joined the Gang of Eight whose main purpose was to grant amnesty to the illegal aliens.

Interestingly enough another Cuban American by the name of Mel Martinez pulled the same betrayal of Florida voters in 2004 winning the senate seat opposing amnesty only to lead the push in 2007 to pass amnesty.

My favorable impression of you has diminished dramatically with the decision by you to support a candidate who has a checkered past and as a former prosecutor did not adequately vett him perhaps believing he was just another of the “good ole boys” in the senate.

Sincerely,

George R. Fuller

PS: I’ll be shocked if he does well in the Florida primary since voters are not quick to forgive a politician that betrayed them.