Living in reality like most of us do it is hard not to get weighed down by the constant barrage of bad news.  It seems, to me, that it is everywhere I look.  When I read the newspaper, watch the evening news, talk to friends or just drive down the street I see it.  With the constant pressures to live up to familial expectations or work expectations or societal expectations combined with the depression inducing onslaught of bad news a person can quickly find themselves overloaded and burdened down. 

Where does life find you right now?  Are you divorced?  Approximately 50% of all marriages end that way.  Are you unemployed?  Unemployment rate was up to 9.5% as of October.  Are you grieving the loss of a loved one?  Are you facing a medical crisis?  Are you slave to an addiction?  Are you weighed down by the uncertainty around you?

When you’re weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all

Art Garfunkel penned Bridge Over Troubled Water in 1969 and it is, according to several sources, an allegory about friendship and being there for someone during a difficult time. 

Over the past few weeks I have been overwhelmed by the news and by the pain that those close to me are going through.  I wonder at times how much worse it can get.  In my view we as a society are teetering on the brink of a large precipice and I wonder how long before we fall head over heels into the abyss.  It seems that all of the things that I hold near and dear are being assaulted over and over and over.  I see on a daily basis news reports of adults raping and murdering children.  I see stories of families that are homeless because of lost jobs.  I see reports of people dying because they can’t afford insurance coverage.  I see reports of countries gearing up for nuclear war.  I see reports of genocide.  I see reports of men and women having affairs and breaking up homes with innocent children caught in the middle.  I see reports of entire families being wiped out by a murderer for no apparent reason.  I see reports of gangrapes taking place in our schools.  Where has the value for life gone?  How long oh Lord must we endure?  How long until your return? 

Where can we turn when the pressures of the world become too much?  When you feel weary to the bone where can you turn?  Who is the friend in your life that Art Garfunkel alluded to?  Do you have someone in your life that you can count on?  Do you have someone closer than a brother? 

Proverbs 18:24 says, “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

This friend that the writer is speaking of is God.  I forget this truth so many times.  I find myself looking to the world for answers.  I find myself burdened down with the cares of this world and wondering why?  Why did this happen?  Why did this happen to me?  There’s no one who understands.  When the truth is that there is someone who understands.  There is someone there who I can give my cares to and trust to guide me through. 

Psalm 55:22 says, “Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.”

I can feel an important change occurring in how I am thinking and how I am feeling.  Consequently I think that is likely to flow through in my posting here.  So let me tackle this head on and try and explain where I am at.

I still desperately miss Abigail.  She is still a huge part of my thinking.  I am still grieving and will be forever probably.  But Abigail is not the only part of my thinking.  More than that, I am able to see that she isn’t the only factor to determine our future.  First, I can now see that we DO have a future.  But also we do have choices.

Infertility and Abigail’s death are not simply things that have to determine the rest of our lives.  They will always have a major influence but don’t have to be the only influence.  Our family will always have an Abigail-shaped-hole in it.  But around that hole we can continue to build our beautiful family.  A garden can grow in the ruin.  Flesh can grow over the wound – even a scar can be beautiful.

And so we come to the place where my wife and I are actively considering adoption.  This is a massive milestone for us.  It feels much more positive than the serious consideration we gave to IVF before ruling it out.  This is for a few reasons.  First, I considered adoption a great thing to do long before we knew about our infertility problems.  Second, we could have gone through several cycles of IVF for nothing – whilst there is always the chance we could fail the assessment process that would seem unlikely.  Third, with adoption you are doing a wonderful thing for a child or baby.  In a way the harder the process of adaption (ie the worse conditions the child comes from) the greater a transformation you are achieving for them.  Finally, at the heart of this is unconditional love – and that is at the heart of the Christian faith too.  God loves us unconditionally and adopts us into his family!  God redeems our lives and we could by taking a child into our family redeem that child’s childhood and family situation.  That is wonderful.

For all these reasons I feel much more positive about adoption than I ever did about IVF.  Yes it would be wonderful to see my wife pregnant again, to see a baby born and to see the family resemblance in that baby.  But, it would be wonderful to adopt in a different way.  It would be wonderful to get to understand the culture that that child came from and incorporate some of that into our family.  It would be wonderful to meet our child for the first time and to bring that child home.  It would be wonderful to know that we loved that child because that child was unique and precious in its own right and not just because it shared my DNA.  It would be wonderful to know that this child was special and precious in its own right and we had an opportunity to celebrate that with our lives unconditionally.  And whilst that is valid completely and of itself there is also a sense in which that is one of the ways God could redeem our previous suffering.  Don’t get me wrong – an adopted child could never replace Abigail (that would be an insult to Abigail and to the child in question!) but…

… our suffering of infertility and Abigail’s death can be redeemed by allowing God to channel that suffering into the journey of adoption.  I hope that makes sense.

Here are some of the issues that are becoming clear to us:

- we are not looking to replace Abigail – she is unique and irreplaceable

- we are not wanting to adopt because we always wanted 2.4 children – ideals have long since gone out of the window

- we could be complete as a family of 4 (1 in heaven) but we do have capacity in our family to love another child and would love to do that

- first and foremost are the interests of the child we would be adopting – what is best for them?  This is the most important thing of all.  Our role would be to love them completely and unconditionally – for better for worse

- we would love our son to have a brother or sister here not just for what remains of his childhood but also for the rest of his life.  The impact on him of adoption (destination and journey) is a key factor in our thinking – we do not want our stress levels to hurt him too much for example.  But we do see the benefits to outweigh the difficulties

- we do know that the time (4-5 years) and cost (financial and emotional) of this journey are significant.  We know that it will be stressful, very stressful at times.  We know that the assessment process will be thorough and probably upsetting at some points.  We know that we cannot guarantee the result – we could be rejected.

- but, we do think we are good parents to our son and we do think we have a huge amount to offer a prospective adopted child as a family.

- we need to decide on domestic versus international adoption.  For several reasons international is probably the way we will go.  I may post on this later.  But we need to explore both so we make an educated decision.

So, yes we are considering adoption.  It is only after Abigail’s first anniversary that we could have contemplated adopting in these terms.

A constellation is an imaginary, invisible and immaterial relation drawn between real, visible, material things. It is something seen into the world, but not itself in the world; between things, amongst them, but not of them. It is not a property ascribed to them, but an improper way of treating them, not endorsed or induced by them, supported by them without permission. It is an improper use of the elements of the world, using them for a purpose they could not have anticipated and toward which they are indifferent.

The constellation is a mode of allegory, perhaps its purest mode, in that it makes use of some material such that the actual context and character of that material is totally abstracted, only retained insofar as it serves to illustrate something totally and essentially unrelated. The constellation treats the constellated material much in the way the present may regard ancient ruins: now deprived of everything that furnished them with relevance and meaning, we are free to read into these ruins whatever fabulous and romantic significance we care to, even if this takes the form of meticulous and scientific reconstruction of the original context. In the latter case, we do not struggle against the manifest effect of historical corrosion, but only resurrect the past in a form now deprived of its original aura, a new and barely recognizable form that nonetheless faithful repeats the original (just as Christ was unrecognizable to his disciples after his resurrection). Even the truth becomes allegorically transcribed when bestowed upon the ruin.

The constellation treats everything it touches as ruined, as deprived of any proper meaning or context. This is not to say that it ever had such a meaning, but only that it has none, and that this poverty is its only essence. The improper use of worldly material evinced in allegory and constellation is not a violation or transgression of proper use, but demonstrates the absence of any such propriety; in approaching its material as ruined, any use would have to be improper, even the scientific use of archaeology.

The constellation may be imaginary, imputed to things that have no need of it and remain blind to it, but this is not to say it is unreal. Yet the reality of the constellation does not take a literal form, as lines really traced in the void between stars. The reality of the constellation is manifest in their power of orientation, to give direction to travelers, especially at sea. The constellation exists not between stars, but between stars and sailors as the orienting force which is a condition of navigation. The lines of the constellation are traced in the movements of ships at sea, even if these lines bear no resemblance to those imagined in the heavens.

The relation between a constellation and its navigational manifestation is one of non-resemblance, as much as that between the constellation and the myth it supposedly transfigures. The constellation is a figure of both the myth and the journey, which is not to say it depicts or predicts them. Rather, it constitutes a graphic that, without resemblance, nonetheless traces or outlines elements as incomparable as a myth, a navigational course, or a divination. The astrological divination in particular is paradigmatic: its predictions have no ’scientific’ value, they have no necessary relation to the future, they may in no way resemble it; yet they nonetheless are fully real and amount to a tangible influence upon that future, however negligible.

The stars are indifferent to the myth they are imagined to figure, the course assist in charting, and the future they seem to reveal. As the material of a constellation, they are treated allegorically, as support wholly enveloped in an improper use, but nonetheless remaining essentially unassimilable, necessarily inappropriable and hence rendering every use improper, marked as improper. This relation, between the materiality of the ruin as indifferent support, and the misuse value manifest in allegorical ex-appropriation, is that of constellation.

This relation is what is at stake in myth; not myth in the sense of fabulous pseudo-histories, but myth as the effacement of the inappropriable support of every use (this is precisely the sense of mythic violence described by Benjamin). It is no coincidence that our constellations are carved up according to mythology. The mythic assimilation of origin to that which originates with it, of condition to that which it conditions, of creation to the created, is precisely what is opposed by materialism, which is the attestation of the essential inappropriability of the material support of myth, or any self-validating use. Myth, in claiming propriety over its material support, in claiming the authoritative account of its own origin (or more abstractly, that there is such an account, as in the case of Lacanian fantasy), attempts to erase every trace of impropriety. Benjamin’s historical materialism begins precisely from the revelation of this impropriety as the very materiality of history itself, and on the basis of which every sovereignty (mythic effacement of impropriety and inclusion of origin) establishes itself, while also being essentially doomed to ruin.

RUINING YOUR CAREER IN 8 SECONDS
You just did it.

(Kanye West and Taylor Swift)

Picture by: dunno source Caption by: IcanhascheezburgerNewbie via Poster Builder

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Tracklist:

1. Made In Russia – Gancher & Ruin
2. Return (Gancher & Ruin Remix) – C.V.I.
3. Generation – Gancher

out now on chemical-records.com
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Älvvägen är inte alltid vacker, men den har en och annan sevärdhet. Notera det nyinstallerade fönstret och balkongdörren. Festligt!

“Is your inn haunted?” I can’t begin to count the times I’ve been asked that question on the phone by travelers looking for lodging. I always answer honestly the way I see it (and feel it), which is that this old place does have a strong spiritual essence, but I wouldn’t say that it’s haunted. I have never experienced “hauntings” at the inn. It’s not a spooky or scary place at all, if that’s what they mean by “haunted”.

Most who have visited the Nancy Shepherd House have remarked after a night of good restful sleep that there is a such a feeling of total peace at this inn. So if there are any ghosts around, they are happy and content ghosts and the sport of spooking the building’s living occupants is not their thing. That’s not to say that the presence of of some sort of friendly spiritual being or beings can not be felt by quite a few people who spend time at the Nancy Shepherd House Inn.

I have spent many hours, days, and nights in this ancient building, much of the time alone here. Most of my overnight stays here were back in the late 1980s and 1990s, when the building was in a state of ruin, with dark empty halls and rooms of cobwebs and crumbling plaster. That was when this place should have felt spooky. But even then the vibe was, “Come on in…relax…stay a while.” And to this day, I have never seen, heard, or felt anything that would make me think, “ghost!”, or “boo!” I have never witnessed any paranormal occurance or felt any unpleasant karma to drive me out of the building. But I have always sensed a constant warm and kind spritual presence in and around the building.

Until recently, only one overnight guest had claimed to have had an actual ghost experience at the inn. That guest says she was awakened in the night by her bedroom door slowly opening and closing on its own with nobody at the door to do it. She was slightly startled, but says she was not scared and slept peacefully the rest of the night. She very comfortably accepts the experience as a ghost happening at the inn. It was the only “ghost happening” reported by a guest that I had heard about, until…

Well, not too long ago the Nancy Shepherd House Inn had its first true paranormal research scientist (along with her assistant) for a weekend stay. From historical research, she knew that during the war, the inn and its grounds had been used for the medical treatment of injured soldiers, and that simply because of the age of the building the probability that people had died here was high. So she chose the Nancy Shepherd House Inn because of the strong likelyhood of good paranormal activity. I remember telling her on the phone after she had explained her interest in the inn that if she was looking for ghosts, she may be disappointed. I said, “no haunting here”. She felt sure I was wrong and booked two nights at the inn.

These interesting guests arrived at the inn bringing in several boxes and totes containing all kinds of specialized high-grade cameras and professional equipment, including electro-magnetic field detectors, ectoplasm detectors, orb detectors, infrared energy sensors, computers, tripods, etc.

Over the next two days, what this paranormal scientist and her associate discovered about the inn and its grounds was significant, to say the least. Even these ghost-tracking guests were amazed by their own findings. I know I certainly was!

So…Want to hear more about it?

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My country? My family?

I should start with myself. I hate myself everyday. Not the things I do or the things I say. Just me. I don’t know why.

It’s the things I have done and the decisions I’m made that have led to this point in my life. Mistakes. Most of it. I can’t think of anything good I have done in the over 2 years.

She ruined me, they ruined me.
My own family.

Blood in NOT thicker than water.

I never should have trusted family.  It’s not something I wanted to do, but at the time I thought I had no other choice.  No one else was willing to “help”.  Little did I know I was going head first into a sick and twisted plan to ruin my life.  And it almost did ruin my life.  But I would never, EVER give them the satisfaction.  If it wasn’t for the 2 loves of my life, I would have killed myself.

A betrayal like that is unforgivable.  Yet, people expect me to forgive and forget.  How can I?  Every time I look at these 4 walls I am reminded of what they did to me… my own sister and mother.

WHY? I have yet to find out… nearly 2 years later.

They think I have already sought revenge.  They have no clue what is coming.

The reason why western democracies have the highest standards of living in the world and why the Soviet Union and its satellites collapsed in economic ruin is that wealth creation is driven by private enterprise.

When the state owns and controls most of the economy the generation of new ideas and products withers. This causes public discontent because they are deprived of the things they need and which they can see being enjoyed in freer societies. The government which cannot face letting go of the control that it has grabbed from its own citizens can only respond by ever more interference in personal choice.

When the Labour Government came to power in 1997 about 33% to 35% of the British economy was owned and controlled by the government. That was an unacceptably high proportion and very damaging to the efficient development of wealth creating companies. The laws we have to control monopolies and to try to stop large corporations from completely dominating a market define an unacceptable monopoly as control of one third or more of a market. On this basis the British Government had a monopoly grip on our economy even in 1997. Since then the government stake in gross domestic product (GDP) has risen to nearly 45% and it is growing at an increasing rate.

According to Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times there were almost 1,200 quango’s in 2001 costing £20 billion a year to run. By last year the cost of quango’s had risen to £34.5 billion a year. In just seven years the quango bill has risen by 75% at a time when inflation has only been around 2.5% and at the moment it is close to zero.

This government has taken the country into near bankruptcy. We have a national debt so huge that our grandchildren we be left with trying to pay it off and it is still increasing at a rate of £200 billion a year.

Desperate all the time to find more money to finance their lust for control, the government continually increases taxes. The recent increase in top rate income tax from 40% to 50% will actually produce almost nothing if not even reduce the tax take because high earners will move away, but an even more damaging consequence is that the decline of the wealth producing sector will accelerate. This is the road to collapse that killed off European communism twenty years ago.

We need to call a halt before we are all ground into destitution and subservience. A good start is to kill off the quangos.

Palace of Vine and Leaf

Originally uploaded by stonewall072

“There is a temple in ruins stands, Fashion’d by long forgotten hands: Two or three columns, and many a stone, Marble and granite, with grass o’ergrown!”–from The Seige of Cornith by Lord Byron.

If you’ve known me for a while then you may have noticed a photo gallery on my Facebook page that disappeared lately called “Traces.”

Traces is a project I started last year to photograph the myriad of abandon buildings I come across in my wanderings and present them with different pre- and post processing techniques. In addition to structures located around my East Tennessee home, I went back in my archive and pulled a handful of photos taken in New Mexico that fit the spirit of the project.

The project has been dormant since I left the Advocate & Democrat since I only recently acquired a new DSLR camera. Since then, the project has started rolling again and I’ve managed to add a few more buildings to the collection. In addition, I’ve scouted out several locations I’d like to shoot and will hopefully get to them soon.

I took the photo gallery down off Facebook to migrate to to my Flickr account. Here is a direct link to the set.

These pictures were taken in the last days of August. Two years ago, in late autumn 2007, I’d just moved back to Tokyo, to an area close to Ueno. My arrival coincided with the demise of Nova, that ubiquitous and most disreputable merchant of TEFL. As a result, the capital was awash with practitioners of the Mother Tongue and despite my boyish good looks and easy charm, my then visaless-ness left me all but unemployable. Thus I spent my time walking around and exploring. It was then that I found this joint, a small run down apartment block, not far from my own place. Ever since that time, I wanted to come back and take some decent shots. Shazoom! Fast forward twenty-four months and I finally get around to it. I called a friend to join me and we ended up having a fine afternoon’s trespass. First we cased the joint, waited a while and then went inside. It was a rewarding shoot and an afternoon of adventure. I took many pictures. Below represents what I think is the best of them.

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I came across an interesting concept this morning.  I have friends who are a part of the purse rental clubs so they can carry different designer purses every month.  And I am a member of NetFlix – same thing but more in my price range.  But the offer I came across this morning allows you to rent clothes that you see on runways – wear them – and return them. 

Check it out here – RentTheRunway

Now, I’m all for wearing cute clothes, but I can’t see getting my size 6 rear into a size 2 runway dress.  So I’m wondering just how big is their target market?

So, let’s assume you can wear their tiny, itsy-bitsy dresses…  and you order a gorgeous $1,000 dress.  You get it and admit that your confidence is going to skyrocket in this sexy little number.

And you wear it to your fabulous celebration… and you get all sorts of compliment (and free drinks sent your way).  And you probably should have stopped after 4 martini’s…  cause you spill down the front of your “rented” designer dress!

What then?  Do they make you buy the stained designer dress that you’ll never wear again?  What happens now?

Do they just send you a stained dress next time since you’ve now been labeled as a “Danger to Designer Clothing?”

So get used to this look, just in case…

Have you ever rented a dress?  Did you have to return it in pristine condition?  Was it worth it?

Just needs a coat of paint and you can start milling again.

Botallack Mine

Botallack must be the most spectacularly located of the tin mine engine houses which can be found dotted around Cornwall. The National Trust have a page dedicated to the site, which contains plenty of historical information, and a self guided walk around the site here.

To get to the site take a short walk from the village . of Botallack down to the coast.  The mine in pictured here is to the North of the main complex of ruins around the arsenic works.  Most of the site is West facing, so I imagine it would look great on a late afternoon or sunset.  There is also scope for visiting in stormy weather and trying to incorporate the waves into a scene.

It is also worth popping into the Queens Arms Pub, in the village, they have a great collection of photos, include some of the mine in action.  This is a strange contrast to the abandoned site that is there today. They also have good beer and wifi.  It is possible to camp in the village at this site.

More photos of Botallack can be found here

There’s Something

in the turn of a narrow drive
a sweep of field
the decaying house stark
against Long Island sky.
The ruined garden echos lovers
whisper in the long ago
moonlight.

How beautiful can the silhouettes of trees be?
What earth stirring there is
in a small placid lake
separated from a crashing sea
by a small strip of woodlands.

Oh the ducks are so well
organized
but the gulls go thier own way.

How could one of Hollywood’s highest paid actors find himself owing $6.3 million in back taxes and deep in money troubles? The answer is easy if you believe Nicolas Cage.

In a lawsuit filed Oct. 16 in Los Angeles, the National Treasure star, 45, claims that his longtime business manager, Samuel J. Levin, duped “lined his [own] pockets with several million dollars in business management fees while sending Cage down a path toward financial ruin.”

That journey began in 2001 when Cage – whose next movie is the crime drama Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – hired Levin to oversee and manage his business interests, investments and finances. Levin did not return calls seeking comment. A rep for Cage had no comment.

On The Market
Though Cage claims it was only recently that he learned the gravity of his financial condition, the actor started selling off some of his prized possessions months ago. In April, Cage bid farewell to his Bavarian castle, selling it to his German advisor, lawyer Konrad Wilfurth.

Now he has placed other homes on the market in California, Las Vegas and New Orleans, where two of his residences – each worth at about $3.5 million – are up for auction Nov. 12, according to the that city’s Times-Picayune. Regions Bank foreclosed on Hancock Park Real Estate Co., the owner of Cage’s properties, for $5.5 million in unpaid mortgage debts, the newspaper reported.

Tax Trouble
Cage’s home liquidation comes as earlier this month the U.S. government placed a tax lien on his vast real-estate holdings because of $6 million in unpaid taxes dating from 2007, according to court papers. In addition, the Internal Revenue Service has another lien for more than $350,000 in unpaid taxes dating from 2002 to 2004.

East West Bank also filed a breach-of-contract complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court that claims Cage had failed to repay a $2 million loan that was extended this past August.

In the lawsuit filed against his business manager, Cage says he “relied on Levin to handle his financial affairs to ensure that he and his family would have a financially secure future built on the foundation of the substantial monies Cage earned through years of hard work.”

But “he is now forced to sell major assets and investments at a significant loss and is faced with huge tax liabilities because of Levin’s incompetence, misrepresentations and recklessness.” (Interestingly, Cage sold off his rare comic-book collection in 2002 for more than $1.6 million, a year after hiring Levin.)

Now as the actor gets ready to hit the big screen again this fall, he faces “catastrophic losses” in upwards of $20 million. The next court hearing in the lawsuit is scheduled for February 2010.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.  There may even be a worse case.  You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. —Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Through a combination of ineptitude, greed, and design, our “representatives” in Washington D.C. have put America on the fast track to economic ruin, and servitude to a Global Elite.

“We the people” have finally had enough—more than enough.  You can see it clearly in Doug Hoffman’s race in New York, where Republican party faithful are abandoning the candidate hand-picked for them, and endorsed by Michael Steele, the RNC, and Newt Gingrich.

Common sense, fiscal responsibility, and love for America trumps party loyalty.

Hoffman’s popularity should not be misunderstood as a shift away from the Republican Party.  Hoffman isn’t winning simply because he’s an Independent.

“We the people” are backing the most fiscally responsible, pro-American candidate available—Democratic, Republican, Independent—it doesn’t matter.

The boneheads in Washington should take note—if they still care what “we the people” think.

America has been snookered, lied to, sold down the river

“We the people” are waking up to the fact that America has been snookered, lied to, sold down the river, by both political parties.

This is no joke, no conspiracy theory, no dress rehearsal.  This is the real deal.  The time is now, and we are the people.  America sinks or swims through us, and us alone.

The “cavalry” riding to America’s rescue is us—we are the cavalry—and it’s time to charge

The “cavalry” riding to America’s rescue is us—we are the cavalry—and it’s time to charge.

The radicals of the 1960s now hold the reins of power.  Unpatriotic, anti-American Globalists control the media, the entertainment industry, our schools, and the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government.

The erstwhile radical revolutionaries, are now the U.S. government’s status quo.  They ARE the “establishment.”

Like Alice in some topsy-turvy “Through the Looking-Glass” world, conservative Americans (the vast majority of the population) are looking at a world that no longer reflects their reality, or their ideals.

Our government representatives, no longer represent us.  The counter-revolution has begun.

Old hippies know the drill, but for most of us, rebelling against the establishment is new and unfamiliar territory.

How do we fight out-of-control spending, Green Fascists, and the Nagging Nazi Nanny State?  How do we take down “the man,” the power structure, the establishment?

How do we stop the destruction of America’s middle class, the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, the insane government spending, and the ceding of America’s sovereignty to a Global Elite via the U.N.?

How do we stop the indoctrination of our children, and the “dumbing down” of America?

How do we get God back into our government, culture, and lives?

Many of us have had “tunnel vision” regarding America’s government.  We concentrated on “keeping our own house in order,” and left the running of the country to the politicians.  Well, we see where that has gotten us.

We need to educate ourselves about matters that we used to ignore—it’s a matter of self-preservation.  If we fail, we’re screwed, and so are our kids, and grand-kids, and so on for generations.

We need to do this on the fast track.

We need to know what we’re fighting against, and we need to know what we’re fighting for.  We need to get active.

“We the people” need to “be informed, rather than opinionated.”  We need to get off our butts—as many already have.

I give you as an example, Carmen Reynolds, Lt Col (Ret) USAF, who is most definitely active.  She has been diligently working to reform the Florida Republican Party from the inside out, and is suing the state of Florida to stop any forced vaccinations

In addition, she is active in local Tea Party rallies, and organizing support for Florida fishermen who have been forced out of work because of Agenda 21.  She is constantly networking with other conservative causes and NGOs.

If you are motivated, committed, and active, then great—please continue your valuable work.  If you want to get active, but aren’t sure where to go; I have drawn up a short list of web-sites (with some help from Carmen).

This is hardly an exhaustive list, nor is it a “best of” list, but it should be enough to get you started.  My apologies to the numerous outstanding web-sites not mentioned.  I also have not mentioned any of the superb web-sites devoted mainly to disseminating the truth.

There are many people who have been “fighting the good fight” for years, in some cases for decades, and they will welcome your support and help.

Contacting the Congress How to send a message to your Congressional representatives. Yes, it does help.

GovTrack U.S. An in depth look at what Congress is up to—and not up to.

National Precinct Activists 2010 How to get involved in changing the makeup of your political party at a local level. Why don’t YOU run?

Committees of Safety Read their Mission Statement, and if it looks good, join.

The Kick Them All Out Project Pretty much what it says. Dedicated to getting rid of everyone currently in Congress (there may be a few exceptions), AND putting an end to the special interest lobbies. Tall order.

• Oath Keepers Mainly for LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers), vets, current military, and anyone who has ever taken an oath to defend the U. S.  Constitution. Read the list of “Orders We Will Not Obey,” and see what you think.
• Sheriff Mack In the vein of Oath Keepers. This website is primarily for those LEOs connected with a Sheriffs Department, but anyone can join and support Sheriff Mack’s efforts. They can use your help with their “No Sheriff Left Behind” program.
• Eagle Forum Phyllis Schlafly has been “fighting the good fight” since the 1960s
• Evergreen Freedom FoundationAlthough EFF is based in Washington state, the issues addressed are often of national interest—and the EFF website serves as an excellent website-template for patriots from any state.
• Freedom AdvocatesExcellent website for understanding and fighting the U. N. ‘s Agenda 21
• U.S. Term Limits Support term limits for politicians.  Important!
• Tea Party Express(Not to be confused with the Tea Parties which are grass root, non-profit organizations)
• 9.12 Project Be a watchdog!Read (and live) Glenn Beck’s 9 Principles, and 12 Values.
• Faith 2 Action Janet Porter’s pro-Christian, pro-family website. Send your pink slips!
• Glad Tidings Studio Articles, videos, music, blogs, links, and merchandise—Judeo/Christian.
• Free Our Health Care Now Help to stop government run health care!
• Tenth Amendment CenterReturn power to the states!
• Give Me Liberty Defending the Constitution. Get active!
• Center for Military Readiness “Promoting high standards and sound priorities for our military men and women.”
• The Right LinksWeb-site links to a large number of conservative sites

And simply because the USA is at war—a couple of web-sites to keep you informed.

• Jihad Watch
• Global Jihad

CFP

The last time the Philadelphia Phillies brought a World Series title back to the City of Brotherly Love, the nation’s financial sector was in complete ruin, the cost of a gallon of milk was only $2.74, fans watched the Fall Classic while huddled around their slightly-less-streamlined high-definition television sets,

Source:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/phillies_hope_to_end_364_day_world