‘What Would Jesus Cut?’: Christian Leaders Urge Obama To Protect The Poor In Debt Talks

‘What Would Jesus Cut?’: Christian Leaders Urge Obama To Protect The Poor In Debt Talks: "pAn “unprecedented” coalition of religious leaders are coming together to urge President Obama not to sacrifice the needs of the poor in negotiations to reduce the nation’s debt. Leaders from the Episcopal Church, the Salvation Army, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the [...]/p"







FINALLY! The Church(s) has been silent for too long on social, and international crises.
Where has been the outcry for the innocents who are killed daily in a war that was based on lies?
So it has taken you a while.
I am glad to see you stepping back into the fold.

Change?

WTF

     It's hard to sit quietly these days and watch the animals roar over each other to be the loudest of the pack.

I'm an independent minded guy, I like some Republican candidates and I like some Democratic candidates. I listen to what they represent and decide whether that is what is important to me.
But to listen to some of the rhetoric today, one would think that there is only ONE party that will save the nation.
I have been a voter for over 30 years now. I have seen them come and I have seen them go.
There is NO one party that can, or will do the job of setting this nation back on it's feet.
It took the complicity of both parties to bring us here and it will take the work of both parties to get us out of this mess.
But we are a nation divided right now.
We just went through a leadership that promised to be a "uniter, not a divider" and all we got was a trillion dollar sink hole and more further apart than ever before than any time I can remember.
Now we have a new President.
He promised to change the status quo in Washington, change the way things worked, give the voters their voice back in government.
Instead he has surrounded himself with many of the same old tired pol pals, ensuring the continuance of the "good old boy's" club, and there is little difference in policy, even extending the last administration's wars, renditions, and attacks on the people's rights with the unPATRIOTic Act.

$1 trillion dollars.
Man, wrap your mind around that for a minute.
A trillion dollars is a heck of alot of dinero.
Now, there were a lot of wheels in motion that brought us to our knees, but the act of taking us to war against a country that posed no threat to us, and against a group that could not be found, has really come back to bite us HARD.
We have spent over a trillion dollars on this "war" so far, and what has it gotten US?
What, exactly, has our folly wrought us?
Do we have access to more oil?
Do we have cheaper oil?
Have our countrymen been put back to work building war equipment like in WWII?
Has our economy rebounded because of this war?

What could we have done instead with that trillion dollars?
What would our economy look like today had we spent that money on rebuilding our infrastructure, putting in mass transit trains across the country, making funds available to small business instead of corporations?
What could we have done with a trillion dollars spent HERE?

Who knows? We will NEVER know now. The money is GONE, never to return.
SOME people made multi-millions from the war though.
It did enrich a select few.

And today we have a groundswell of people calling for the return of the very people who enriched themselves at OUR expense.
I hear churches outright degrading our President for not expanding the war. CHURCHES, complaining that we aren't killing enough heathens. Meanwhile, they are the same people complaining that we cannot afford, or do not want, national health care.
It is all just so mind bending.
How does one rationalize in one's mind that we don't have the money for health care for our citizens, but we give the Iraqi people free health care with our tax dollars.
What kind of world is it when churches are complaining that we aren't spending enough money on war?
We don't have the money for health care for our children or parents, but we have to stop abortion?

2012 may come early

My current fascination is with the 2012 scenario.

     There is a lot to contemplate concerning the "indicators" to trouble ahead, if you follow that sort of thing.
      It occurred to me today that in all of the uncertainty of the 'end time', I am pretty sure of at least one thing; 2012 may not bring the global catastrophes of the Mayan's or Nostradamus' supposed predictions, but it sure as hell looks like it will be a time of dire straits in the U.S.


     People know that something  is fundamentally wrong, but they are being assured at every possible moment with reports that things are getting better.
Still, the lie is becoming obvious to even the most casual observer now.

     Many say we have become a dependent people (as though the great masses are all on welfare and/or medicaid), relying on the government to give us everything (Yeah, that's me alright. Where's my freebies?).

But they're right....we HAVE indeed become a dependent people!

It is NOT a dependency on the gov't to give out freebies however.
It is a dependency that we ALL share;

-We are all depending on there being gallons of fresh, clean water to come pouring out when we turn on a faucet.
-We are all depending on a light to come on when we flip a switch.
-We all depend on a refrigerator to keep our food fresh.
-We depend on there being enough fuel to run our furnace in the Winter.
-We even depend on the trash being taken away every Tuesday morning,
-And we depend on jobs that will pay for all of these things to happen for us in the land of milk and honey.

     What are our representatives doing?
Increasing military spending.
Giving control of our food supply over to pharmaculture.
Reducing restrictions on coal and natural gas extraction.

      Where are the jobs?


-We have over 750 military bases around the globe.
-458 V-22 jets that took 25 years to develop and it still has problems, each costing 119 million dollars.
-Over a Trillion dollars for wars against an invisible enemy.
-Banks that made bad investments, mistakes, and/or outright fraud are rewarded with Golden Christmas bonuses....thanks to your tax dollars (I guess the millionaires are hurting more than you are).
-Multi-billion dollar coal and oil industries getting tax breaks.
-The insurance industry just got handed a guaranteed 40 million more participants.

We are ALL being screwed over by the corporate, military complex our representatives have sold themselves to.
 
What did you get for Christmas? 

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
---President George W. Bush (2004)

Conservative values?

Only in the mindset of the conservative can one find the polarity of abortion and health care.
On the one hand, conservatives like to say they are "pro-life" (as if anybody that is NOT a "conservative" is "pro-death"), yet they are dead set against universal health care.
How is it that one wants to demand that a pregnant woman deliver the baby to term, then turn around and refuse her and her children access to health care?
WHAT?
Now don't get me wrong, I AM against abortion myself.
I would NEVER suggest to someone that they get an abortion just because they were irresponsible.
To save the mothers life? Of course
In the case of rape? Of course.
But how can I tell a woman, a young girl, NOT to get an abortion when it is clear that she has no way of providing adequate health care for her baby?
If WE are going to insist that babies be brought to bear, then WE MUST be willing to provide our citizens with health care so that they themselves are healthy enough to care for their family, and their family is healthy enough to grow into fit adults.
When I put all of the pieces together it is even scarier.
Since Roe Vs. Wade in '73, it is said that more than 45 million abortions have taken place.
45 MILLION abortions!
That is a lot of babies, for sure.
Sad too.
Now let's take a look at our current economic situation.
Add those 45 million fetus' to our current society.
What would our country look like today, with 45 million more children and adults without insurance, without jobs, without hope?
It is imperative that we elect representatives that will work to fix the problems of joblessness, homelessness and health care access before we bring another child into a society that offers them nothing but despair and hopelessness.
In a society that offers hope and health, the abortion problem would likely dry up and next to disappear.