Wake up America!!!

Here's an E-mail I received today. I fully agree with its content. The Author's word's are very close to my own conclusions

by Pam Geller

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied history all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 - 15 years.  The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codified into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we know could never pay back? Why? We learned recently that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.

Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "We the People," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally De-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not d own right scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)

Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change.. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully them into submission.

And then he was duly elected to office, with a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media - Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though...

Don't forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years - a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency - it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course.  The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe - and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. But, I do not think I am.

        About the author via Google...

        Pamela "Atlas" Geller began her publishing career at The New York

        Daily News and subsequently took over operation of The New York

        Observer as Associate Publisher. She left The Observer after the birth of her

        fourth child but remained involved in various projects including American

        Associates, Ben Gurion University and being Senior Vice-President

        Strategic Planning and Performance Evaluation at The Brandeis School.

        After 9/11, Atlas had the veil of oblivion violently lifted from her

        consciousness and immersed herself in the education and understanding

        of geopolitics, Islam, terror, foreign affairs and imminent threats the

        mainstream media and the government wouldn't cover or discuss.

        ***************************************************************

Since many of you enjoy senior citizen status or will sometime in the not too distant future, I thought you might be interested in this information.

        IN GOD WE TRUST

        Everybody that is on this mailing list is either a

        senior citizen, is getting close or knows somebody that is.

        Most of you know by now that the Senate version

        (at least) of the "stimulus" bill includes provisions for extensive

        rationing of health care for senior citizens. The author of this part

        of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle was credited today

        by Bloomberg with the following statement.

        Bloomberg: "Daschle says health-care reform will

        not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions 

        that come with age instead of treating them."

        If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just

        remember that Senators and Congressmen have their own health care plan

        that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the

        remainder of their lives and are not subject to this new law if it passes.

        Please use the power of the Internet to get this

        message out. Talk it up at the grassroots level. We have an election

        coming up in one year and nine months. We have the ability to address

        and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and it allies

        have begun and in the interim, we can make our voices heard! Lets do it!

        If you disagree, don't do anything.

Bailout Politics

by Thomas Sowell

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional "leaders" invited to the White House to devise a bailout "solution" are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said "I do not see" any "possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury."

Moreover, he said that the federal government has "probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing."

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they "need to do more" to help subprime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

But the magic words "affordable housing" and the ugly word "redlining" led to politicians directing where loans and investments should go, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and various other coercions and threats.

The roots of this problem go back many years, but since the crisis to which all this led happened on George W. Bush’s watch, that is enough for those who think in terms of talking points, without wanting to be confused by the facts.

In reality, President Bush tried unsuccessfully, years ago, to get Congress to create some regulatory agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
N. Gregory Mankiw, his Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned in February 2004 that expecting a government bailout if things go wrong "creates an incentive for a company to take on risk and enjoy the associated increase in return."

Since risky investments usually pay more than safer investments, the incentive is for a government-supported enterprise to take bigger risks, since they get more profit if the risks pay off and the taxpayers get stuck with the losses if not.

The government does not guarantee Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, but the widespread assumption has been that the government would step in with a bailout to prevent chaos in financial markets.

Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal Reserve System, made the same point in testifying before Congress in February 2004. He said: "The Federal Reserve is concerned" that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were using this implicit reliance on a government bailout in a crisis to take more risks, in order to "multiply the profitability of subsidized debt."

Chairman Greenspan added his voice to those urging Congress to create a "regulator with authority on a par with that of banking regulators" to reduce the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a riskiness ultimately borne by the taxpayers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not deserve to be bailed out, but neither do workers, families and businesses deserve to be put through the economic wringer by a collapse of credit markets, such as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Neither do the voters deserve to be deceived on the eve of an election by the notion that this is a failure of free markets that should be replaced by political micro-managing.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.

It would be better if no such government-supported enterprises had been created in the first place and mortgages were in fact left to the free market. This bailout creates the expectation of future bailouts.

Phasing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would make much more sense than letting politicians play politics with them again, with the risk and expense being again loaded onto the taxpayers.

Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved

DON'T WORRY

BE HAPPY

By: Philip J. Rappa

There is no need to be a forensic pathologist to understand the cause of death of America's financial institutions and our credibility abroad. The only thing required is a familiarity with our history.

Over the past twenty-nine years beginning with the 96th Congress and concluding with the 106th, there has been a systematic concerted effort by our elected officials to unravel the remaining vestiges of our institutions that represented our sovereignty as a nation. If we just round up these usual suspects, based on reasonable suspicion we can begin to delineate more then just probable cause, but most importantly the direct cause of our misfortune.

Following the stock market crash of 1929, laws were enacted to prevent another debacle: The Glass-Steagall Act and the creation of the FDIC. Both officially named the Banking Act of 1935. These laws set in motion the apparatus separating commercial banks from investment banks; this arrangement worked for sixty-four years.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) included banking reforms some of which were designed to control speculation. Some provisions such as Regulation Q allowed The Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates in savings accounts. In 1980, congress in all its wisdom repealed the FDIC reforms by enacting the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act.

Then on November 12th, 1999, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. One of the effects of the repeal was to allow commercial and investment banks to consolidate. From that moment in time it only took Wall Street and K-Street nine years to destroy our financial institutions and our credibility abroad.

The only noteworthy fact that is prologue to this disaster is that each generation preceding us has had their own financial calamity ushered in by unencumbered and unbridled capitalism. Each time profit trumped public interest. The agents of our despair have treated their oath of office as if it were an antiquated notion giving their allegiance as well as aid and comfort to the free market, while the working man became little more then an expendable asset.

Each generation had its own brand of corporate and government corruption and cronyism and an understanding of the collusion between the government, industry, military and the bankers. Even to a casual observer a pattern seems to emerge. Humanity has struggled for centuries to unshackle themselves from the subjugation of kings, popes, empires and raw capitalism.

In one generation we have idly watched as these same elected officials dismantled our nation's industries sending them, our jobs and our technology to foreign shores to be made on the cheap. America's labor force has been disemboweled placed on a pyre fueled by vapors of a gossamer web that once epitomized America's "Promise": that of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The "Promise", once the tapestry of this nation's domestic social contract, which was won by the blood, sweat and tears of those who came before us has been shredded by an unregulated corporate free-market fanaticism. We on Main Street shall be left to pay the piper due to the treasonous actions of our elected officials and our own individual participation in this Ponzi scheme.

" Published originally at EtherZone.com: republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

IS TIME RUNNING OUT

Or have you giving up?

More terminated Mixed Blood Ute's are sounding off about the Ute Partition Act than ever before. But, have things reached the point where the sounding off is more of a jarring cacophony than a stirring rallying cry? -Or- are we all destined to lose in the long run? Politicians and lawyers, aided by behind-the-scenes handlers of all kinds, quite nimbly played one faction against another and have been for more then fifty years. They seized the opportunity to appeal to a group that they knew wouldn't take the time to read the fine print and notice scripts change just enough to lock in a different agenda, while claiming to represent the best choice for everyone's future.

Politicians, Lawyers and the Ute Indian Tribe, worked itself into a frenzy of viewing the Ute Partition Act (Termination) as a do-or-die marathon, never noticing or caring what the effects this act would have on individuals. It was and is a game where greed and bigotry replaced common sense and effort--from qualifying to a winner take-all finale. Now, when the stakes were at the highest, individuals were coerced into ‘stakeholder” status, the rules rapidly change; but too few people paid any attention to the details.

This process (termination) can be compared to an Old Western movie, where the gullible Rancher loses his wallet, jewelry, horse, ranch, and even his very life-- because the Rancher mistakenly assumes the game was honest. The Ute Partition Act was not an Old Western movie. It was and is real life. By the time they noticed the game was rigged and what was lost it was too late.

What's left? Do we have any workable solutions? Who can orchestrate a sustained and needed solution? Do we have time left to find out and get any orchestrated efforts all working together? The tune is more important than the people directing the chorus! There is still time!

A SOCIALIST BY ANY OTHER NAME...

SWEEPING THE WEST
By: Selwyn Duke

One of the consequences of being right in an age of lies is that it brands you as a radical. Remember that being an extremist doesn't mean you're wrong, but simply that your views deviate greatly from those of the mainstream. If you say that 2+2=4 in a land where everyone else insists it's 5, you'll be labeled a radical. The same is true if you assert that a certain society of men is full of wolves when everyone else believes they're sheep.

Now, for years I've been telling people that most of our Democrats are essentially socialists; sure, either they won't admit it publicly or aren't fully aware of it themselves (quite common; self knowledge is often sorely lacking, especially among leftists). It was a message as hard to relate as it is for many to accept, as it renders you something less than the kind of "credible" commentator who gets invitations to appear on Fox News (bigot Opio Sokoni was on O'Reilly last week). But that message now goes down a little easier with the recent Democrat proposal to nationalize oil refineries.

There is a great article on this very subject by a writer named Lance Fairchok; it is titled "Why Do We Call Them 'Democrats'? After quoting a couple of Democrats who waxed enthusiastic about nationalizing the oil refineries, he presents this Freudian slip by Congressman Maxine Waters:
"This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh . . . would be about . . . basically taking over and the government running all of your companies."

Well, well, I don't suppose that's the kind of rhetoric she used on the campaign trail (although I suspect most of her constituents either wouldn't know what she was talking about or wouldn't care). Don't rejoice too much at the shedding of the mask, however, as it's not so much attributable to a sudden spirit of honesty as it is to a changing climate. The truth is that no small number of American citizens are now socialists, only, they usually aren't aware of it. These are people – and we've all met them – who never heard a proposal for government involvement they didn't like. They only ask that one of two criteria be met: The proposal must sound convenient for them or inconvenient for someone who they envy. Oh, and, yes, I have always known that greed and jealousy -- as opposed to some noble desire to help the downtrodden -- are what drive leftists. Winston Churchill observed this decades ago when he said:
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."

If you doubt both that old curmudgeon and me, a younger one, consider research related by columnist Peter Schweizer in this article. He writes,
Scholars at Oxford and Warwick Universities found the same sort of behaviour (a desire to take from those who have more) when they conducted an experiment.

Setting up a computer game that allowed people to accumulate money, they gave participants the option to spend some of their own money in order to take away more from someone else.

The result? Those who considered themselves 'egalitarians' (i.e. Left of centre) were much more willing to give up some of their own money if it meant taking more money from someone else.

Much of the desire to distribute wealth and higher taxation is motivated by envy – the desire to take more from someone else – and bitterness.
Unfortunately, while we can give ourselves pep talks about how we value liberty and the wonders of our "free market" (if only it were freer), the truth is that socialism has swept the West. British Chancellor of the Exchequer quipped about this over a century ago when, after introducing death duties in the budget of 1894, he said, "We are all socialists now."

As I said before, though, let's not lose sight of the fact that the politicians merely reflect the people. Too many Americans have been instilled with unrealistic expectations for lifestyle and a spirit of entitlement, and they will glom onto any slick demagogue (even if he has a strange foreign name) who promises a larger piece of the pie. As to this, in Fairchok's article he presents a chilling prediction made by U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas more than half a century ago. To wit:
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."

While I can't say much for the man's politics, he was, at least insofar as this went, quite prescient. Most Americans have been inured to socialism under a different name, although virtually all would protest loudly if so accused.
People fall victim to the idea that socialism can work for a few reasons. For one thing, new generations are born and, with history taught so poorly, the mistakes of the past must be learned anew. Then, many labor under the illusion that socialism breeds prosperity in places such as Sweden, when in reality such countries are dying a lingering death.

Yet, if socialism – in any guise – is what Americans want, it's what they will get. But not only won’t they know how it happened, as Thomas said, they won’t like the consequences and won't know what to blame them on. Thus, they probably will fancy that the solution is even more government involvement.

Another thing that gets you branded a radical is when you point out that socialism is just a less virulent strain of communism. Yet the pseudo-intellectuals who would thus stigmatize you are blithely unaware of an important fact.

Karl Marx himself said that socialism was just a transitional phase on the road to communism.

We just have to wait for the second mask to come off.

" Published originally at EtherZone.com: republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

“AN ENIGMA”

The Perplexity of Life as a Mixed Blood Uinta

There are still many barriers facing the terminated Uintas that seem extremely difficult to over come. In the white communities adjacent to; along with the Indian communities on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and some individuals within our own group; there exists a foundation of prejudice which inexorably target’s the mixed-bloods efforts at regaining their Indian identity. While the full-blood Indian feels a need to marginalize the terminated mixed bloods and their descendant’s because of dogmatic tenets within the Ute Tribe; the tribe supercilious believes all mixed bloods must be held prisoner behind invisible bars and malevolently feel that to allow the mixed blood to escape this prison will be the very death of the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in Utah.

This kind of mindset is nothing more then a 1970’s colloquium on South Africa and the Coloureds. This vociferous wanton attitude, by the tribe, its members; which is fomented by the white community, and with some mixed blood’s supercilious dogmatic attitude, assiduously maligns the terminated mixed blood, which only serves to empower cabal grift-ers ad-nauseum.

For the terminated Uinta, notwithstanding their disparate mixed blood lineage, this becomes a form of genocide, or, put in the word spoken as a hiss by Indians, assimilation. This is an enigma and is the crux of the problem for me.

I’ve been assimilated. It seems like a thousand years from Dry Mountain, Rock Creek, Pigeon Water and Mud Springs, to the freeways of California, and I traversed those thousand years in one swift stroke. I’m also one of the many thousands of metis¹ (mixed blood) whose combination ancestry serves to bridge those thousand years between white and Indian ways. I’m a living testament to the best, and the worst, of two significantly dissimilar worlds.

I suppose I’m luckier than most mixed bloods, including direct cousins. I look white and thus am automatically exempt from the immediate visual tag of half-breed. I do not consider myself much different from my white neighbors or my Indian cousins. However I do cling tenaciously to my Indian-ness and its like holding fast to a wet rope while the floodwaters try to carry me away.

We had our identities taken away by an antecedent wanton act, but those malevolent demagogues couldn’t and won’t make us disappeared. The terminated mixed-blood is still here and here to stay!

Most Indians seem to think the government owes them just because they’re American Indian, but that feeling isn’t true of all American Indians. A few, like me, realize that you can't turn back the clock. Instead, we argue, pay the Indian his/her due, as spelled out in treaties, and then leave us the “h***” alone!

Is Education Our Salvation?

Education is the great dilemma facing our people. Without it, we will never be able to survive the white man and yet with it the full blood Indian has tried to destroy us. On today’s U & O Reservation, Ute parents sends their child to the local white school located off the Reservation to learn values and trades that do not necessarily relate to the world on the U & O. The reservation doesn’t have the economy to support an Indian with an advanced education. It is fine to train a young Indian boy or girl to be a dentist, doctor or engineer, but when they must choose between going home and serving their people or moving to a large urban area and making money, the choice is obvious, especially if they’re a descendent of a terminated Uinta, but for the full blood an advanced education is like trying to break the suction of a suckling piglet clinging to the tit of a Sow (the government.) All though there are a few exceptions to this rule, but not many.

We mixed bloods are better educated, but having a diploma doesn't mean you'll be infused with or automatically gain wisdom; wisdom can only be gained by experience and time.

When it comes to my Indian-ness, I'm pragmatic and not ignorant. Ignorance² is the condition of being unaware, or uninformed.” I have an awareness of things as they really are and I know who I am. The enemy wants to keep us ignorant! This can be prevented by making an effort at keeping the lines of communication open between each other and not shutting anyone out of the loop.

We are surrounded by many tenacious miscreants bent on keep us down. We must all have fidelity, fortitude and not abrogate our faith in, both, Dennis Chappabitty and Felter v. Kempthorne.

1 - Métis were the offspring of local Indians and Europeans in the Red River area of what is now southern Manitoba. They call themselves the Forgotten People.
2 - Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Ignorance is sometimes misinterpreted as a synonym of stupidity, and is as thus often taken as an insult.

Incrementalism

How To Boil A Live Frog
By Tom Barrett
http://www.americandaily.com/

(08/07/03)
Please do not try this at home. I want to make it clear from the outset that I do not advocate frog boiling. I am simply describing a science experiment which I learned about roughly a hundred years ago when I was in high school. I want to make this very clear, because otherwise I'll have liberals demonstrating on my front lawn about my insensitivity to frogs. (Isn't it interesting that the same people who advocate killing babies in the womb are so concerned about animals? Kind of twisted, isn't it?)

In the experiment a frog was dropped into a pot of hot (not boiling) water. It immediately jumped out, as would any sensible frog. Then it was placed in a pot of cool water sitting on a stove. This was more to its liking, so it swam about and lounged comfortably. The heat was turned on and raised very gradually. Soon it was hotter than the water in the first experiment, but the frog didn't jump out. This was because there was no dramatic difference, as there had been when it was taken from room temperature and dropped into hot water. The frog became accustomed to the increased temperature as it was raised little by little. Before long the temperature was so high that the frog was unable to jump out of the pot, and it died.

Thinking about some of the radical changes in our society over the last several decades made me remember that frog. Here are a few things that would have been unthinkable when I graduated from high school in 1966. A homosexual U.S. Congressman is caught having sex with a male Congressional page, and is allowed to stay in office. Schools suspend high school students for quietly praying together during lunch, but teach classes on witchcraft and Satan worship. Little children are sexually abused by trusted day care workers. Illiterate teenagers receive High School diplomas. The President of the United States commits perjury before a Grand Jury, and beats impeachment. High school girls are ashamed to admit that they are virgins. When I was in high school they would have been ashamed to admit that they weren't! Irresponsible adults use abortion as birth control; over half of the babies conceived in this nation are killed in their mothers' wombs.

These changes didn't take place overnight. Just like the frog, our nation has been assaulted gradually, so that we didn't realize what was happening to us. It wasn't easy to turn a mostly moral nation into an amoral morass. But the liberals, secular humanists, God-haters and perverts who have systematically engineered this cultural revolution had strong allies in their campaign. Over the years they have targeted and gained control of four of the most powerful influences on American thought: the public schools, the judges and justices on the benches of our appeals courts, the entertainment industry, and the media. Here are just a few examples:

I often tune in to C-Span's live coverage of the Senate and the House of Representatives. I once saw a bunch of Hollywood stars and two hundred young diabetics testify before a Senate sub-committee. They were supposedly there to request additional funding for juvenile diabetes research. Instead they used the television exposure to lobby for embryonic research. I saw deliberate, repeated use of the term "embryonic stem cell research." No mention was made of the fact that there are many other sources of stem cells for research that do not involve killing an embryo. For instance, literally tons of stem-cell-rich human fat from liposuction are discarded every week. They are desperate to link the use of the word "embryonic" to the phrase "stem cells" so that no one will realize that you can have stem cell research without using embryos. They know that most Americans are in favor of stem cell research, and that if they can tie these two concepts together, they can get America to approve of killing human embryos.

Mary Tyler Moore disgraced herself by repeating the lie that all human embryos will be destroyed. No mention was made of the fact that millions of infertile couples could adopt those embryos, and that human embryo adoption has already resulted in many healthy babies being born. They put ten-year-old children in front of the microphones to parrot scripts written by PR hacks. One little girl talked about "...legislators playing politics to stop the embryonic stem cell research that could save children like me." Come on - does that sound like a ten-year-old speaking from her heart? She had obviously memorized her lines. Liberals seem to have no compunctions about using ill children to push their agenda.

The heat is being turned up in the area of morality. School children are told by their teachers, "We know you're going to fornicate, so here are some free condoms." TV sitcoms show happy homosexual and lesbian couples living "normal" lives. Anyone who has studied the statistics knows that heterosexual couples stay together far longer on average than same-sex couples. A national radio ad has a dentist advising listeners to "Ask your lover if you grind your teeth at night." Not your spouse; your "lover." Not too long ago most radio stations would have refused such an ad; now few people take notice.

It's getting very difficult to find any family-safe programming on television or at the movies. It used to be the filthy words, sex and violence were reserved for the R-rated programs. Now PG programs are like the former R's, and the R's are frankly pornographic. Even some G-rated programs contain sexual innuendos. Many times we have tuned in to or rented a movie that we thought was safe, only to have to cover our daughter's eyes and hurriedly turn off the tube.

Am I hopelessly old-fashioned, or am I right when I say that we are in serious danger of becoming a completely perverted, amoral nation? Only you can decide whether you will idly stand by and watch as the heat gets turned up, or whether you will take action.

What action? Please don't say, "What can I do? I'm just one person." There are many things each of us can do to stop this slide. Start with talking to other people. Don't be afraid of controversy. During Election 2000 two men from my church were on a job with another man who described himself as a Christian. When he said he planned to vote for Gore, they asked him if he was aware that Gore was in favor of abortion on demand, and was an advocate of homosexual marriage. The man was shocked. He said he had no idea that was where his candidate stood, and that as a Christian he could not vote for him after finding out Gore?s views on these moral issues. These men made a difference by being willing to speak the truth in love.
Talk. Discuss. Vote. Write letters. Get involved! Evil can only prevail when good people fail to act.

I'D BE LOST WITHOUT OUR EDITORIAL BOARD. These volunteers review each issue before it is published, and their corrections, comments and suggestions are incorporated in the final version. In response to this issue, Editor Michael Carr made me laugh with his comment, "And may we dinosaurs continue to roam the earth."

Editor Ed Mitchell sent back some very insightful comments. I couldn't send this issue out without including them: "When alchemists were in their heyday, frogs were considered to be excellent catalysts, and were used for all kinds of experiments. In his search for gold, one alchemist took a tub of urine (because of its gold color) added a frog (as a catalyst) and boiled the pot. The point is that all this "embryonic stem cell research" is simply modern day alchemist's medieval philosophy, using newer tools. The frog still dies, only in this case it is a human embryo. True scientists try to expand man's knowledge and condition by understanding the mind of God through researching his creation. As you said, fat cells, bone marrow and umbilical cord blood are full of stem cells, and they are discarded every day. Federal funding and private research should be involved for the good of mankind. The assault on the human embryo is consistent with Satan's big lie and the liberals parrot it constantly. If evolution is true, then human life (or any life for that matter) is of concern only to the family or state as long as it is a productive life. Thus a donkey has more value than a baby because a donkey can do work." (NOTE: Most of these "researchers" are medical doctors. They have forgotten their Hippocratic Oath, which says, in part, "First, do no harm.")