My questions to a Muslim brother.

Oh Brother,

You may ask questions of my religion anytime. May I ask you something that I wish to understand?

If you keep reading I presume = yes.

If your faith is what is called Muslim, is it your understanding that God created everything in the universe?
Yes/No?

Does your faith tell you that God was not only present in the past, but at every moment sources of all life – some say by continuously creating molecules, gravety, light, and living cells?
Yes/No/Cannot say?

Does God hate parts of His own creation?
Yes/No/I cannot answer?

Do you think the All Merciful has human thoughts like revenge, jealusy, betrayal?
Yes/No/Sometimes/Cannot answer?
(I think the Christians used to think that – but I don’t know how many still do.)

And the final question: Does God give you freedom of choice, but also command you to live in particular ways?
Yes/no/yes and no?

Insurance in general.

Both sides of faith lead into yet another system

Guarding myself against misfortune by taking insurance is a two-sided mirror.

You are simultaneously stating: I don’t want this to happen, and I think it could.
Liability insurance is being forced upon us, for the sins we could potentially commit.
We are considered a risk to the system simply by being born.
We are accepting it.
No, we are tolerating it.
Toleration is a factor the system keeps score on.

What may be running things here isn’t so much bad humans, as it is a thought. When you start a train people jump on when they see it moving toward the destination they want. The thought itself that a government can solve a problem has attracted so many workers it may now have developed an “Almost-Consciousness” – a spirit without the presence of a Soul.
The largest bureaucracy in the world is a Frankenstein, told it must awake and save everyone from themselves – while everything it touches either dies, or multiplies and needs more saving.

Take the insurance for my little scooter: Fifty bucks a month. That’s to make half a million dollars available to put someone together again after he meets me blazing down the wrong lane, high on meth-amphetamine. I have to pay a fee because society tells me I am guilty of having the potential of being an idiot. First I became a risk driving cars, then serving dinners and swinging golf-clubs. Now the system wants to charge me for being costly to fix some day – when there is nothing wrong with me and I am not asking to be fixed.

A system would think like that.
An artificially created system would have no soul, nor would it be able to see any proof of a soul’s existence. Hence, it would be suspicious of all soulful things (such as caring for others for no reason), and not trust that I as an individual have a moral compass within me that I follow – not because I have to, but because I want to. How would a soul-less system hear that?

It can’t.

It threatens me with jail-time because it thinks it knows the solution to a problem I don’t have. The problem I now have is a system telling me what to do. I don’t mind the things we can agree on, but those don’t need laws to begin with. I will ignore as long as possible the implied insults, distrust and outright distain the system displays towards me, but I will resist, in any way possible, demands based on pure speculation.

In the system there is no driver at the con, but the levers and wheels move – as if on their own – from all the people in the gears that have learned how everything works and wants to keep it going and growing. Everyone on the train came onboard because they shared a central thought such as: Laws solve problems – or We just need rules for everything. Think of all the people in government working away, creating new positions, new areas where they can make things right, fair, just, equal, pure and simple. All they ask is that you tolerate how fast the system grows.

No.
Know:
I trust people, not systems.
Freedom is never given.
It must be claimed.

To my friends in Denmark

Sitting pretty here in a small town in California I sometimes hear of what the media reports from United States. The Danish newspapers and TV seem to think Mr. Obama is doing a wonderful job and America is finally on the right track.

Allow me to present another angle:

Mr. Obama is expanding government, killing private businesses, raising taxes and making promises he can never fulfill in order to secure power in perpetuity to his political party. I can forgive him for being ignorant, arrogant and possibly a Marxist. What I can’t forgive him for is putting the nation in such debt that it is mathematically impossible for the inhabitants ever to repay it. This is shameful, because mine will be the first generation that will leave the country worse off than we found it to our children. All other generations have fought hard, made sacrifices, worked all thier lives to give their children a better life. We, on the other hand, have already made life harder for our children and childrens children because they will have find a way to pay back the money we borrowed. By the way, Prez Carter, followed by Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2 got the bloating of the beurocracy and entitlement programs going, but Obama has quadrupled our debt in the short 10 month he has been in office.

According to the constitution, neither the president, congress or house of representatives have the legal right right to borrow money on behalf of present or future generations. Everyone in office should be fired or impeached, because they have all sworn to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States and they are ignoring it at best. If we had a free press (or TV) on the side of the people and truth, perhaps our government would not be able to get away with what it’s doing, but unfortunately most people will rather be entertained that learn something.

The second thing I cannot forgive is being weasel, trash-talking America and lying to the public.

There is a difference between not being able to fulfil on a promise – which Obama has done, and will do plenty of – and stating something knowing it is not true. He promised transparancy, but nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. He said no lobbyists were to be part of his administration and it’s filled with lobbyists – and he would allow “no earmarks” in bills – and the “stimulus bill” had over 9000 special “favors” in it. No “special interests” were to run his clock either, and the biggest union in the country put up 60 million dollars in campaign contributions, buying unristricted access to the White House. We have a president that has no problem lying. Amazingly, other politicians, doctors, scolars & scientists seem to follow his trend.

As I understand it, generating prosperity in a free country is not rocket-science. It’s actually easy. Historically it has been shown over and over that if you cut taxes and cut government regulations the people prosper. Yes, you can still be environmentally responsible, but growing government, debt and taxes invariably leads in the OPPOSITE direction of prosperity.

I do not think Obama is stupid, ergo I must assume he is not interested in creating jobs, energy independance or securing the nation. He seems to view private enterprise as toxic and has no real understanding of the spirit that build the United States of America into the most successful nation in the world in a short 250 years.

What I, and others, think he is interested in is political power for his group of elites, and – it wouldn’t surprise me – a world government, where he could run for president.

My friends in Denmark, I’m sorry if you don’t get better information from the press or TV. Listen to some talk-radio stations in America instead, where they actually care about reality, history and facts. I reccommend (yes) Rush Limbaugh, Roger Hedgecock http://www.rogerhedgecock.com/Default.asp?cchk=yes, Glen Beck (http://www.glennbeck.com/content/tv/) and others.

America was founded on the idea of freedom and personal reponsibility. For decades Americans have been sytematically been told how irrisponsible and mean the country is while being the one power in the world that has done more good than any other nation in history. Obama is saying that people and free enterprize is greedy and cannot be trusted, and a big government is a better way to go.

Socialism/Marxism is an idea that has ALWAYS failed the people, while hugely benefitting the ruling elite. Look at history. Hitler, Mao, Lennin, Castro, Chavez… The leaders say they will take the money from the rich and give it to the poor. Well, they do take the money from the rich, the rich then leave town and take their companies with them and the government rations services to the people. It all seems terribly obvious from here.

To care or not to care…

There was a moment.
I sat outside taking my skates off – after a ride in the streets of Los Olivos.
I put my foot in a cold shoe wearing only a thin sock, giving me a momentary chill.

And I had a thought of a woman sitting next to me, who would notice something like that and ask if I needed thicker socks. I saw a picture of myself also caring for her in that manner and bring comfort to her whenever possible – and I could see the two of us taking walks, doing dishes, sharing time and a sense of recognition of the gift each moment together truly was.

Nonsense, we say these days. Such a relationship does not live long. Everyone is only into themselves and what they want.

Yes. It does appear that way.

We care, but not that much.
We have come to the other side of individualism, where we each live in our own universe with our own goals, our own brand of religion and priorities.

So what’s it to you?
How satisfying is it to get the job, the dress, the connection, the next meal if nobody cares if you do. When something good happens we must tell someone just to see them rejoice for us – and when bad things slam us down we need others even more.

A machine could learn to do most of what we do all day long. What makes us human is that we care. That’s all.

The simple fact is that if you don’t care, life is not worth living. Another simple fact is that you cannot care for others long, unless you let yourself be cared for also. We all start life with love inside us, which we gladly give at first. Then, if not returned, we give a little less the next time – and so it goes until the pool of love we pass between us is less than what we can hold in our hands.

We are so focused on doing and giving.
Will we learn to be and receive?

- When we give, we live.
- When we receive, we grow.
One must breathe in, as much as out – or there will be trouble

Dearest Bank,

I consider myself honest, which means I return favors, money, lawn-mowers and tools to their rightful owners most of the time.

I have a dillemma: To keep my end of a bargin with what now appears to be a group of thieves.

Like most good citizens, I have a standing credit-card debt. For some years I’ve dutifully paid what I could each month but not making much of a headway. As anybody knows, it all goes towards the interest and who knows how much I’ve paid over the last 3 to 5 years while it still appears I owe everything I started out with.

Recently I noticed that “my” bank and others had recieved astonomical sums of bail-out money from the government – to which I and others pay taxes. As consolation I was told that my government did not actually take my taxes to pay the bailout. Out tax-dollars were already spent, so they borrowed it from my neighbor’s grandchildren – as if that was any better.

I further see on TV the president of my bank walking away with bales of money in his pocket for his incompetense and the scoundrels in goverment who made the deals are roundly rewarded also.

I think to myself: The bank borrows money from the Feds at close to zero percent, then lends to me at – say – thirty percent, while I – as taxpayer and as the actual backbone of the FDIC in essence carry the risk and guarantee the loan also. What a deal!

I stop. I say to myself: Perhaps it is time to stop paying my credit-card bills and take the money out of the system. There is something that is not right here, something fundamentally out of ballance and while I try to figure it out, I think it would be reasonable to stop feeding the “pig” as they say.

Undoubtebly they would call me and try to persuade, explain, threaten me into getting back on the bus, but since my credit-score is apparently not worth much to begin with, who cares?

How many people in America is thinking the same as I right this minute?

The party of “know”.

There are some things in life that are hard, and some that are simple.
Economics are not hard. History does show us some things very well. To have prosperity you allow people to keep what they earn. Those who do well then have the means to put others to work – Americans did that very well until the government got too big.

If the politicians indeed wanted the country to prosper they could turn everything around in 48 hours. Kennedy did it, so did Regan and it worked without a hitch. Politicians cannot all be blind to history, think it doesn’t matter, or justify economic enslavement while saying the opposite. One must assume that most of them have heard how to make a country prosperous – and they still do the opposite. If politicians say they are trying thier best – and it isn’t working – it is because they are politicains, not leders.
And that is the crux of the matter: Politicians. Not leaders. None of them in either party are anything else than politicians. They are also beurocrats, believing in beurocracy – otherwise they could not have risen through the ranks to their lofty positions. They are politicians acting as leaders.

But even if they were leaders, Americans – truthfully – are not much for leaders in the first place. They have no need, beyound national defense perhaps, for a central government. Politicians lie. We accept that. They don’t keep promises – we expect that. We keep it civil. We keep the rules. If there was anyone in Congress with some genuine testostrone producing glands they would not keep the house-rules. Given that this will be the first American generation that will leave the country worse off than they found it, and also the first generation to leave an enormous debt to their children – I would think an absolute tantrum for as long as possible would be fitting. Pounding on the podium and marching around the hall – accusing every last cockroach in the place of everything from deciet to subversion – would be appropriate behavior. I would relish, as a statesman to be dragged away by the capitol-police still spitting fury and accusations on national televison.

Let me say that I belive our nature as human beings is to prosper, and we have been duped into thinking we are raping each other and nature by doing so, that we are inherrently bad, greedy and need supervision. Most of us don’t and many find that to give is indeed to recieve, but we cannot be forced into this realization. It is in our nature, but it must be learned from life and not everyone arrives at the door at the same time. Politicians don’t trust the wisdom of life, nor understand the goodness of the people.

Honor, by the way, cannot be taken, only given.
There are things in life that are simple once you look at it, and some that go on forever.

I want to be in the party of “know”. Not the party of “no”, as some say about certain others these days. In the party of “know”. There are earthbound people no matter what group they are in. They are the salt of the family and the pepper in the soup of their communities. No one takes things too serious, but don’t faint from action either if action is needed. There ought to be just one law: Behave. Everyone knows what that means. Then have a sane judge slam the table and demand an explanation if you like. To not Behave could be punished with either a stern look or death, depending on what the judge thought he could do for the particular individual. One law: Behave. That’s all we need – everything else should only be recommendations.

A certain breed of human used to come to America. One who had dreams and was willing to work hard for them. Those genes are still in many Americans, but the vote is up in the air, and will America find it’s spirit? Many voters are bowling for “gimmies”. If leaders bond us with debt and taxes they are not good leaders – would you not think so in the party of “know”? There is a reason they call it a “bill”. And they’re not paying either.

Iran – bottom line:

You cannot negotiate with anyone if you don’t have a common goal.
We wish peace – they don’t.
Each time Achmajimmibob finishes a speech he recites the same prayer:
That “the 12th Imam may hasten his steps to get here”.

Unfortunately the arrival of their “Jesus” can only occur after the world’s destruction, according to the Koran.
To cause this destruction is therefore a holy and good mission, and it appears that Mr. Awkmachdingnut thinks he is the right man for the job. It further states in his holy book, that to lie to your infidel advesary is generally terrific, and the purpose of any negotiation is to gain time to better prepare for war.

It seems to me that if you wish to negotiate with someone who first and foremost wants your agony and death, you are not on a level playingfield. You are vulnerable, because you value material things, like your property, family, loved ones, perhaps life in general – while the other side welcomes death, because they think that will be their soul’s salvation. What can you offer someone who just wants you and your country, the whole planet for that matter, burned to a crisp, because they think that out of the ashes a new world will emerge with their god and minions in charge?

There is nothing to talk about. This is worse than a hungry crocodile, because the animal still has some fear. As much as I love peace, there are still moments when you realize that unless you are ready to lay down your life like a Buddha, yours and others’ freedom and right to self-determination has a price. The cost is a fight, and it is a severe cost. If you can run from a fight I see nothing wrong with that, but the Earth is round and there is nowhere to run to when your opponent is getting atomic weapons.

If I saw a mad dog in my neighbor’s land, biting his children and beasts day after day, and he did nothing to stop it – I would call the police. But if no police came and the next day arrived with the same crazed dog chasing, barking and biting everyone – I would shoot the dog with no delay. Mr. A in Iran, his religious nuts still inhabiting the 8th century could have been tossed out of office by the people of Iran, but the USA were not available to answer the call that day. It would have been a small pittance, and have looked good on us to support that revolution, but now we have this theatrical production to deal with.

We are so smart in America, there must be at least 10 great solutions to taking these guys out of power without too much fuss. It makes you wonder why we don’t. Are we just waiting for the Israelis?

The cat’s out of the bag, now where will it go?

Oh
My
Goodness.
The French president did what the translater for Kadafee did when he threw off his headphones and and screamed (in Arabic): I can’t take it anymore!!!

The French president expresses the opinion that our president is not only naive in a big way, but is egotistical and arrogant as well. He mentiones that America has until now been the leader of the free world, but it’s leader has abdicated this position. I don’t know if he used the word “weasel”, but that was the gist of it. Politics-driven, theocrat, blind, naive, egotistical and dangerous for the free world.

The French president may have his hair on fire, but he still has his pants on. He is a man who speaks his mind, and so is the Israli prime minister who was not impressed with Mr Obama at the UN – or in the White House – either.

I understand both the English prime minister, and the French president were admonished to keep the Iranian nuclear factory a secret. Mr Obama had another speech in mind about global disarmerment, and the information was not “helpful”. Wouldn’t it have been a surprising, but rewarding spectacle to have out president stand up for America (and the world) and given foreign dictators hell? Well. Not today or soon enough.

It’s becoming common knowledge in the world, that America is weak and becoming weaker by this man. I know he probably means well, I know he is trying his best, and maybe white can be black, and water become rocks, but charm alone don’t cut it.

Tell me how to live, oh bureucrat.

First it caught my attention that workers in New York were threatened with being fired if they did not get a flu-shot.
Earlier I heard that if a census worker would knock on my door I could be punished if I didn’t answer his/her questions.
It is true that if I don’t have insurance and drive a vehicle, someone has the right to confiscate to car.
Soon, I understand, I can be fined and put in jail for not purchasing credits in a government-run hospital business.

No, I say: I have the right to refuse food, drink or anything else that goes into my body.
I also have the right to NOT speak to someone – I probably have a good reason for it.
And to the insurance-issue I say: If I hurt someone by accident it does not matter if I’m driving or fishing. I will do my best to make it better, put things together and mend broken bones. That is to take responsibility of one’s actions. If I take insurance it is because I can afford it, and it is worth my piece of mind to do so. I would also note that the times I have driven with no insurance, I drove slower and paid better attention, just as I can attest that keeping the speed-limit in many places would put drivers to sleep and they would have more accidents.

I don’t want it to be government’s business to make me live a better, safer, healthier, more productive life.
Provide a common defense. That’s complicated enough.
It’s still a big world, and America is still young.

Pay to breathe.

Since the health-care debate is still roaring, I keep thinking about it.

Now, they say it is only fair to demand by law for everyone to pay to have health-insurance. “If you can afford it, you must get it or be fined $10,000 and/or go to jail for a year” some say. “We must get everybody on-board, or it won’t work”.

First, it seems we are being told to trust Western Medicine beyond life itself, because there will be no room for alternative methodologies. We must all sign on to one way, and one way only, of going through life. One is presumed in debt to society simply by being born. There will be standards for treatment of every condition – based solely on the oppinions of the Surgeon General.

Once government takes on the responsibility to keep us healthy, it will escalate telling us how to live. Seat-belts mandetory laws were just the beginning. Trans-fatty foods, sodas, cigarettes and who knows what else will be taxed in order to “protect us”, and save money down the line.

Fine, you may say. We can all use being more healthy, slow down, use less resources and it will cut the cost of health-care – it’s OK if the government tells us how to eat, work, think and live.

Better build a lot more prisons. I will not pay someone to be my master, and I don’t think I’m alone in my thinking. How I treat my body is my own responsibility and I will not hand it over to a system that cannot even make it’s trains run on time.