FURIOUS!!

I have been to all of the links on my blogroll.

The only ones I can comment on are the ones that are not on Blogger.

When I comment on a Blogger site, it asks for my Google password. When I enter it, it takes me to my dashboard and does not leave the comment.

A thousand poxes on Blogger.

More, if you can manage it.

RANDOM RAMBLINGS

Random 1

I'm so happy to learn that Democrat Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, has stated that she supports our troops in Iraq.

According to her, her way of supporting them is to enable them to fail at their assignment by premature withdrawal, but hey, you can't have everything.

I've always believed premature withdrawal was awkward, at best.

Random 2

Saw a picture of a crowd of members of the Religion of Peace demonstrating against Pope Benedict XVI. They were burning him in effegy. They carried signs that said: "Jihad is Our Way."

When Ismail Haniyeh was installed as the new prime minister of Palestine, his first act was to wave the Qur'an and shout "Allahy Adhbar!" ("Allah is great).

The members of the legislature shouted back, "The Qur'an is our constitution, Muhammad is our prophet, jihad is our path, and dying as martyrs for Allah is our greatest wish!"

Peaceful folks, wouldn't you say?

They signed a peace agreement in Sudan.

In Darfur, Sudan, 200,000 Christians have been executed since the peace agreement was signed.

Another feather in the cap of the Religion of Peace.

In Khartoum, over 1,000,000 Nuba Christians have been slain, displaced, starved or sold into slavery by the Islamic government of Khartoum.

Let's hear it for the Religion of Peace!

In Pakistan, a teen converted to Christianity. Her uncle, a Muslim town leader, beat her, held a gun to her head and demanded that she renounce her Christianity and return to Islam.

She refused.

He, thinking he might be accused of murder if he shot her, instead tried to drown her in a canal. She struggled free, got away and is now in hiding.

Three cheers for the Religion of Peace!

Seven Israelies and three Christians were wounded and subsequently captured by Muslims during the recent Lebonese conflict.

They were executed with shots to the back of their heads.

Religion of Peace?

In a hospital emergency room in Israel, wounded Lebanese, Christians, Muslims, and Palestinians had their wounds treated and got well.

What defines a Religion of Peace?

Couple of days ago, mortors were systematically and diliberately fired into an elementary school in Israel, killing many children and wounding others.

What religion were those who chose children upon whom to fire?

They were members of the Religion of Peace.

Random 3

No doubt, when we pull our troops out of Iraq, the members of the Religion of Peace will show their real colors.

I wonder which of your relatives and friends will be receipients of their peacefulness.

NOW WHAT?

First I can't post.

Now I can't post comments.

Blogger keeps asking me for my GOOGLE login and password, which, when I put them in, it refuses to recognize, except when I use them to log in to my new Blogger site, which I can only do through my old Blogger site.

I used to enjoy this.

Blogging, that is.

They've made it so good that I can't use it any more.

NEW DIRECTION

Members of a particular political party (which shall not be named here, but whose initials are D.E.M.O.C.R.A.T.) keep saying we need "a new direction."

Oh?

Well, let's take a look.

Inflation is almost non-existant.

We need a new direction.

Taxes are lower than they have been in years.

We need a new direction.

The number of new terrorists attacks on our country stands at zero.

We need a new direction.

Gas prices are down.

We need a new direction.

The number of troops killed in Iraq annually has dropped significantly.

We need a new direction.

The budget defecit has been dropping.

We need a new direction.

The national debt has been dropping.

We need a new direction.

Deaths from cancer have been dropping.

We need a new direction.

The number of abortions in the country has been dropping.

We need a new direction.

Lower taxes have resulted in MORE government revenues (you are smart enough to realize how this happens, right?).

We need a new direction.

With fewer ecconomic barriers (read: "taxes"), new businesses are at an all time high (in spite of Wal-Mart, who was going to drive all other businesses out of business).

We need a new direction.

Overall drug use is down among teenagers.

We need a new direction.

Unemployment is very, very low.

We need a new direction.

The number of "better" paying jobs (ie: well above the minimum wage) is at an all-time high.

We need a new direction.

The stock market, overall, has been on a rise...even setting records!

We need a new direction.

Please...make me a list of which of the above things YOU want changed in our new direction.

Now, aren't you glad you elected representatives who are going to take us in "a new direction?"

New Blogger

It happened.

Blogger FORCED me to use New Blogger.

Now nothing I try to do works.

I have been days trying to make it work.

Finally I can write a blog.

I can't upload pictures.

I can't use colors.

I can't do anything!

"Nothing will change." it said.

I tried to submit a description of my problems.

It would not submit.

I had to jump through six hoops before they would allow me to blog again.

I am 65 years old weigh 275 pounds and have heart trouble.

I don't jump through hoops.

Period.

If you can read this, please report my troubles to blogger, tell them to fix my problems, call me, apologize in person, send me $1,000,000.00 in penalties and give me back my First Amendment rights to opine!

(Two out of three would be acceptable.)

I WANT OLD BLOGGER BACK!!!!!!

The March

The year was 1964.

The place was St. Augustine, Florida.

I was living in St. Augustine while earning money to continue college st Stetson University in Deland.

The CBS Evening News, featuring the venerable Walter Cronkite, announced that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was coming to St. Augustine to help the Southern Christian Leadership Conference stage peaceful protests in support of the equal treatment of "colored" Americans.

Because I believed (and still believe) in that cause, I decided to join the march and protests.

The march was uneventful.

The presence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. created an aura of excitement and great dignity.

At lunch time, there was to be a sit-down protest at restaurants around town.

At the same time, "whites" in the city decided to boycot the restaurants that allowed "blacks" to eat at them.

I chose to go to my favorite lunch hang-out and eat with the protesters.

When I left the restaurant, I was greeted by two very large individuals of the white persuasion who threatened to take me out back and paint me black with shoe polish.

A deputy Sheriff pulled up to the corner where I was standing, and I promptly stepped over to the car and struck up a converstion with the deputy.

When I did so, the two very large individuals left the area, for which I was personally grateful.

That night the CBS Evening News showed what were supposed to be pictures of the arrest or Dr. King and of him being led up the stairs of the courthouse. Then they panned what was supposed to be a large crowd of mostly white people watching the proceedings.

Now, I worked across the street from the courthouse, and I know that the pictures shown on CBS were NOT of the St. Augustine courthouse, nor was there room for a crowd the size the network tried to make us believe was there.

Additionally, the pictures of Dr. King being arrested were pictures taken somewhere other than St. Augustine. They were not taken in St. Augustine.

That was the first time I realized that everyone who thinks the news tells you the truth is totally deceived.

Today, more than ever, I believe in the precepts set forth in Dr. King's famous speach:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

What a different America we would live in if we all had that same dream.

Have a meaningful Martin Luther King Day.

(By the way...why don't we use his correct name and call it Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day?)

How to Read

Those of you who have read my blog for a while (both of you) know that from time to time I go on a rantette about poor interpretations of Scripture due to unfamiliararity with rules of sentence structure.

So let's set this up.

I have driven in many cities: Miami, Florida; Tampa, Florida; Jacksonville, Florida; Atlanta Georgia; Boston Massachusetts and New York City, to name a few.

None of the cities in which I have driven have been more terrifying than Atlanta, Boston and New York City.

One could reasonably say, "Drive yourself in those cities with fear and trembling."

It is much better to let public transit do the driving in places like that.

I love airplanes.

I fly several times each week.

Only I don't fly real airplanes.

I fly Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight.

You would do well to stay off any actual aircraft behind whose yoke I sat.

One could reasonably say, "Board an aircraft flown by Joe Scoggins with fear and trembling."

It would be much better to let real pilots fly those planes.

There is a Scripture that I have heard quoted by many pastors, each of whom attempted to interpret it, and each of whom had to twist it to make it say what they perceived as something that makes sense.

Here is the verse:

Philippians 2:12 "Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. "

Invariably, preachers try to make this verse command us to work out our own salvation while trying to avoid making it sound like a faith of works.

Actually, it is absolutely, positively NOT instructing us to work out our own salvation.

In the same sense that the statements above are used ("Drive in those cities with fear and trembling." and "Board an aircraft flown by Joe Scoggins with fear and trembling."), so is this verse used: "...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."

We know this by the context of the verses ahead of it:

5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.;

and the verses following it:

13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Perhaps rendering it this way would help:

If you are going to try to work out your own salvation, you had better do it with fear and trembling, 'cause if it isn't done by God working it in you, it isn't going to get done.

In other words, you can't work it out yourself. Period.

It would be much better to let the real Savior do the saving for you.

This is the only way Phillipians 2:12 fits with its immediate context and the context of the rest of Scripture.

Plus, it is the only way to find the Gospel in this verse, for the Gospel requires God to do the saving through Christ, not of ourselves, or else we would boast of our accomplishment.

Now, aren't you glad that you have me to help you through these things?

A friend of mine, Guy Taylor, sent this to me. I thought you might like to see it.

Weather Bulletin - North Dakota

THINK ABOUT THIS FOR A MOMENT.

North Dakota News

This text is from a county emergency manager out in the western part ofNorth Dakota state after a snowstorm.

WEATHER BULLETIN

Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event---may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard of up to 44 inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.

FYI:

George Bush did not come.

FEMA did nothing.

No one howled for the government.

No one blamed the government.

No one even uttered an expletive on TV .

Neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton visited.

Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.

Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.

ABC, CBS or NBC did not report on this snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.

No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.

No one looted.

Nobody - I mean NOBODY demanded the government do anything.

Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.

No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.

No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.

Nope, we just melted the snow for water.

Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.

The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.

Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families.

Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.

We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".

We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.

Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."

It does seem that way, at least to me.

I hope this gets passed on.

Maybe SOME people will get the message. The world does Not owe you a living

Me-Me

Pride and selfishness are closely related sins.

In an effort to avoid insensitivity, we refer to recent generations as "me" generations.

Truth is, they are selfish generations.

The theme of this generation seems to be, "I want what I want, when I want it, where I want it, the way I want it and I want it right now."

Delayed gratification is a thing of the past.

Children, by nature, believe that the entire world is about them. That's because they have no contrary experience.

Teens are supposed to be discovering that the universe does not revolve around them.

Young adults, it should be able to be assumed, are supposed to be beginning to be other oriented.

Sadly, parents are afraid to teach their children the importance of serving others, rather than self, because of pressure put upon them by celelbrities, politicians and the intellectual elite.

The result is that neither teens nor young adults have a grasp of societal otherness, let alone an idea of how to use their talents to serve others.

As for Biblical admonitions to "raise up a child in the way he should go...," and to "spare the rod and spoil the child...," et. al., they are regarded as passe ideas that are not relevant today.

Is it any wonder, then, that a common complaint of parents is, "I just can't do a thing with him/her?"

From a purely practical point of view, how on earth is it that a 120 pound mother or a 200 pound father cannot control a 40 - 60 pound child?

Isn't it high time to pocket Dr. Spock (who recanted his recommendations, by the way), relearn the concept of firm, but loving, discipline and begin raising generations that at the least know how to be polite?

(I hear voices from all over crying, Dr. who? To which I respond, "No, not Dr. Who. He was a British time traveler. Dr. Spock, the early purveyor of permissiveness in child rearing.")

Will you be the parent who dares to say to your "sensitive" offspring, "Because I'm the Mommy, that's why."?

Or Daddy.

Oh Bother!

I am bothered by some things.

1) I am bothered that we now have a person serving a Speaker of the House who thinks of herself as a queen.

2) I am bothered that the citizens of this country who bother to inform themselves of things political seem to like the idea of higher taxes, more stress on small businesses, killing babies before they are born, stabbing a sharp instrument into the base of the skull of a baby about to be born after forcing him/her to be born breech, allowing babies to be aborted for the sole purpose of harvesting stem cells for "research" that has not had one single solitary success in treating any human disease of any kind, pulling the life support from a person who is of low estate while not even considering it for one "of their own" who may very well never recover from his condition....ahhh...what's the use?

3) I am bothered by the multiple divisions in Christianity, whose adherents would rather argue over this doctrine or that than seek the unity for which their Savior prayed (John 17), whose adherents would rather allow their feelings and/or emotions to supercede the Word of God in their behavior and worship and whose adherents wallow in catatonic inaction with regard to telling others about Jesus' offer of salvation.

4) I am bothered by my own cynicism, excusing it as "my spiritual gift." (II Hezekiah 4:12)

5) I am bothered by Christians who confuse their own thinking and vain imaginations as being the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

6) I am bothered by Christians who exercise spiritual pygmyism fighting about musical styles, pew colors, hymns over praise choruses and praise choruses over hymns, etc., etc., etc.

7) I am bothered by people who call themselves Christians who do not realize that there is absolutely no further revelation about the character of God, His love of His creation, or His plan for its redemption than is already revealed in His Holy Word.

8) I am bothered by Christians who stubbornly and quite mean-spiritedly believe that God revealed His Word in 17th Century English, and who do not even understand the 17th century, single sylable, three letter word "wot," used frequently in Bibles translated in that era.

9) I am bothered that I am bothered by so many things...and, frankly, that bothers me.

10) I wish that I were not bothered by being bothered by so many things so that when things bother me I would not be bothered so much.

Does all of this bother you?

Be It Therefore Resolved

1) I will blog every single day, rain or shine, hail or high water, what or may.

2) I will skip some days when I don't feel like blogging.

3) I will earn my second million dollars this year.

4) I have decided to work on my second million, since it is clear that I will never make my first million.

5) I will treat everybody with dignity and respect.

6) Except the people I know who have no dignity and don't deserve respect.

7) I will lose weight.

8) I've lost hundreds of pounds over the years and found every one of them...right where I left them.

9) I will have no more heart attacks.

10) They hurt.

11) Concerning the 2008 presidency: If nominated, I will not run and if elected, I will not serve.

12) I will no longer forget what I am talking about in mid..........

See You Soon, Elizabeth

I just found out that a very good friend of mine, named Elizabeth died of cancer Christmas day.

I have known Elizabeth for 20 some-odd years, since my early days at WSOR radio.

Elizabeth used to call seeking my "wisdom" on many matters. She also volunteered when I became manager of WJYO, helping with the music library.

She had her troubles, including several emotional disorders that kept her from being able to hold jobs very long, but she was loyal to Christian radio for many years.

Elizabeth trusted Jesus as much as anybody I have ever known.

She was my friend.

According to her sister, on Christmas morning Elizabeth acknowledged that she would be "seeing Jesus today."

She died a short time later.

She had lived here in Lehigh Acres for as long as I have known her, but had family in New York, which is where she will be burried.

Elizbeth was fond of the sign-off I have use for over 23 years in radio.

It goes:

"I'll be back tomorrow, and if you'll join me, we'll spend time together praising God through music and the Word. I look forward to that. Have a great day today. Make it a Christ filled day, and, the Lord willing, I'll see you here tomorrow morning. But if I don't see you here...I'll see you over there."

And so, Elizabeth, I know I won't see you any more here.

But I'll see you soon...

over there.