The Dilemma of A Decision...

For a couple of weeks now I have in my possession my mail-in ballot, unopened. Not dissimilar to arranging for the next appointment with my dentist to schedule his recommendation that I undergo the joys of a root canal, I have been as equally dreading the duty bound decision that awaits me to mark my ballot for one of the two front-running candidates that shall occupy the office of the Presidency of our country for the next four years. To say that I am woefully disappointed in the glaring character flaws imbedded within both of these deeply flawed human beings rivals any previous understatements ever publically uttered. In an ideal world of a character driven campaign, neither of these two individuals would be considered to be assigned  even the singular  responsibility as a school crossing guard.

 

I find it a gnawing dichotomy of common sense that permeates this election cycle that one is encouraged to check's one's sense of moral integrity at the voting booth curtain while consulting one's conscious for direction. Not claiming or boasting that I am an arbiter of anyone's moral imperatives, it would seem to me, nevertheless, that if one is going to call on one's conscious to guide them in  any major decision of importance that to cast one's vote based on the supposition that the lesser of the two evils is by some stretch of acceptability a justification to turn a blind eye on one's moral and ethical center is a fool's gambit.

 

Even more dishearteningly demoralizing is the vast array of purveyors of faith based institutions that council to forgive the past glaring indiscretions of the one candidate in particular, Mr. Donald J. Trump. "To err is human, to forgive divine." Were that logic to be equally applied, would it not be as fairly just to offer carte blanche the same degree of absolution to the Democrat contender? Hillary R. Clinton most assuredly has the documented requisite experience in the executive circles of power to qualify her for the Presidency.  What's fair is fair.

 

Abstaining from adopting this course of rendering a final decision on how to cast one's vote, leaves only two other options; one viable, the other less so. If finding either of the two major party candidates too repugnant to extend a personal endorsement, one could abstain from casting a vote for the position of President at all, electing, hopefully, to still vote for the under card candidates of one's choice that appear on the ballot. Alternatively, perhaps the more viable option would be to select one of the third party ticket candidates. I find these two options personally unacceptable.

     

I most certainly recognize that the current two party system is corrupt, manipulated and in desperate need of a massive restructuring, if not a complete abandonment. I further recognize that by casting a vote for a selected third part candidate that represents a most welcomed and needed departure from the status quo would send a definite message that a movement for reform is an undercurrent that is taking firm root among the nation's electorate. But pragmatism dictates that the current popular strength of any of these third parties is a mathematical impossibility. Therefore, expending a vote to support such a movement, although laudable, will not markedly alter the final vote tally on November 8th. Like it or not, the reality is abundantly clear, one of the two major party candidates in going to be elected as the next President of the United States. Which brings me back to my blank ballot.

 

Of the two remaining candidates, which shall I mark without conviction for my choice for President?  I will not vote for Hillary. Her historic thirty year trail of suspicious maleficence in and out office cannot be awarded yet another more powerful avenue to inflict her thinly veiled brand of centralized Washington power politics that will continue this country down the path of economic stagnation, class and racial division, and a reckless foreign policy that baffles our nations of friends and emboldens our avowed enemies. The latest FBI revelation that there are yet more heretofore unaccounted Clinton authored emails in need of careful and diligent scrutiny may prove, in the final analysis, to be inconsequential. Still, it speaks to a long and tiring continuing saga of Hillary's smoke filled past that defies a reasonable assumption that there may indeed be a blazing fire of purposeful criminal behavior lurking just under the next batch of classified, private emails. In addition, to minimally entertain the notion that the September 11th, 2012 attack on our Libya consulate in Benghazi, where our ambassador and three other Americans died horrific deaths, when available military assistance was directed "to stand down," and a bogus 14 minute YouTube video was put forth as the impetus behind what was proved to be a planned, organized terrorist attack against our woefully under-manned compound security personnel, is a leap of blinded faith that defies a careful, logical examination of the true facts. To have me accept Hillary's cavalier dismissal statement that, "After all the time that has passed, what difference does it make now?" affronts in a most visceral way my sense of truthfulness and human compassionate decency. It DOES make a difference to me! 

That leaves Mr. Trump; the most bombastic, arrogant, irreverent, ego-driven, self-preservationist, win at all cost, foul-mouthed, and any inconvenient flirtation with the truth be damned individual who has ever taken center stage in a presidential election. Yet I know this, he is NOT Hillary. He has at least voiced and demonstrated that he is the antithesis of everything that Hillary is and stands for. Without a crystal ball at my disposal to discern with any degree of certainty how he will govern as President,  I can, in the final analysis, only trust in the watch care of God who oversees the affairs of mankind and this nation that Mr. Trump will be agreeably persuaded to populate his cabinet with an influx of recognized level-headed, intelligent personalities that will temper Mr. Trump's uncertain propensity to take names, shoot from the hip, and see and who may be left standing.  

It  is a crap shoot, voting for Trump. I recognize that. And most assuredly there is a certain amount of trepidation in my doing so. But I can but continue to depend on the providence of God that the future of our country's beacon of light will not be allowed to grow dim in an ever increasing dangerous and dark world, but will be allowed to shine into the next four year term of President Trump. Hillary might also serve to accomplish that same desired end goal, but I cannot and will not trust that she would. Therefore, with several layers of duct tape wrapped firmly around my head, I cast my presidential vote for Mr. Donald J. Trump. And into God's hands we go...        
    

   

The In Between Day

Christians all around the globe on this day are patiently waiting in certain expectation that the morrow, Easter Sunday, shall be the day we exuberantly celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ's resurrection from the earthly clutches of mortal death. But what about this day? What does this in between day offer us in the way of an inspiring lesson on how we are to live our lives once the sunset of Easter Sunday has come to pass? 

I awoke on this in between day with that question on my mind. In particular I began to contemplate by placing myself among the remaining eleven disciples who had the day before witnessed the horrific death of their beloved leader, hanging limp from the cross, his body no longer in agony from the relentless beatings that had torn his sinless skin to bloody shreds, and I asked myself what were these faithful, but impressionable eleven men thinking and feeling on this their in between day?

What would I think or feel or say to my fellow brothers huddled in that darkened room? Would any words at all be exchanged? Would the air hang heavy with the over-powering sense of hopelessness and resignation, where only silence among the eleven would rule the agonizing slow passing of the minutes as each considered individually; "How can this be? We had such hope for the future with this man! Where do we go from here? Where do I go from here?"

Even though we eleven men had gladly followed this kind and gentle man for the past three years, listening to his profound teachings and watching in still questioning amazement as he performed acts of kindness and signs of wonders that surely, we agreed, marked this man as unique and "Yes!" undoubtedly divinely inspired. Yet, this special man spoke so often metaphorically in his teachings to us of things as they are and things yet to come to pass, our finite minds did not see, nor could they fully grasp the true and certain meaning of his prophetic words of promise and assurance.  We still being but mortal men, our eyes that witnessed the miracles that he performed even then did not attest to our full understanding of who indeed he really was. So, on this in between day we sit in quite and uneasy contemplative silence, lost in our own confusing thoughts, not knowing and perhaps not caring what our lives were to be from this day forward. 

But this in between day passed and the morrow of another day of lingering sorrow broke equally unpromising with the rising of the new sun. Into the room rushed Mary Magdalene, having just come from the burial cave where Jesus' remains had been laid, to breathlessly announce that Jesus was missing from the tomb! The room, which had just moments before been a den of continuing sorrow, erupted into a cacophony of discordant and confused emotions!  "What did she say!?!  Could this be!?! Where could he be!?!  "Who would be so evil as to break into a sealed tomb and steal a body!? What must we do now,  if anything!?" 

The continuing story is so easily familiar to us, as we who know and proclaim on the day after the in between day that our Lord had indeed risen from the dead and that he would make this revelation a reality to all his brother disciples as he miraculously appeared before them in the upper room, and even unto a late arriving doubting Thomas.  

So, what are we to do about each of our in between days."  It comes to my mind and heart that on this God created sphere that is hurdling through time and space that there are untold thousands of souls who themselves are trapped in their own in between days, who have lost all sense of self and purpose, who have encountered personal set-backs or tragedies that render them emotionally traumatized and paralyzed to go forward. Who ask, "What now? Where do I go from here? Is there to be for me no answer to my longings for better days?" We know the assurance and the promise of bright and better days to come because we have come from a dark place called Calvary, through the in between day, and have stood in reverent awe and thanksgiving on Easter-morn to declare that our hope lies not in ourselves, but in loving grace of our Heavenly Father who sacrificed his beloved son on a cross to die that we may live joyfully with hope now on this earth and forever after in the infinite days beyond mortal calculation. 

That is our challenge. To seek out those who know at this time only the in between days. To share with them the promise that there is hope for a better life as they journey toward their own end of life story.  They need not journey alone. We must not allow them to go forth alone. We hold the answer and the promise that they so desperately need to hear and apply in their lives. I am thankful for my in between days. For I know my in between days are the prelude to the joy that only my Lord can and does provide. You?  

  

    

"Half The Power Of God"

I do not recall where or when I heard or read the statement that a police officer's firearm affords that officer immediate access to "half the power of God." If memory serves, I believe that truism appeared in an editorial emphasizing the requirement that all members of the law enforcement community to be ever vigilant to guard against being too quick to employ lethal force when engaged in perceived dangerous confrontations.  The realization of that truth is just as valid for any individual who is in possession of a firearm.

As previously revealed, I do not own a firearm nor do I have any desire to possess one. So, my plea for a rational, reasoned approach to better regulating the proliferation of firearms,  where it is roughly estimated that there are 3.5 million guns in existence in this country, may indeed be met with wary skepticism if not outright anger. Let it be stated from the outset that I am a staunch supporter and defender of the Second Amendment's constitution guarantee that every law-abiding citizen has the right to own a firearm, and I would join in any protest against any entity that would usurp that right.   

In order to begin to even have a rational discussion on how best to reasonably regulate the continued possession of firearms going forward, two important concessions must be validated as as irrefutable. Number One: For those groups of individuals and organizations who believe that any step toward the regulation of firearms is yet another slippery slope step toward the confiscation of all firearms, the assurance that that eventuality shall not and cannot occur is in the rock solid Second Amendment itself. As recently as June of 2010 the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Second Amendment provides Americans a fundamental right to bear arms that cannot be violated by either state or local governments. A review of case law on this particular issue is replete with Supreme Court decisions that are in affirmed support of this fundamental right, even going so far as to define the original wording of "a well-regulated militia" as being unquestionably "we the people."  Secondly: For those groups of individuals and government ideologues who would view a Utopian American society as being free of any privately owned firearms, I refer these entities back to the pronouncements above. Both sides of this prolonged Constitutional debate must come to an agreed understanding and affirmation that a citizens right to bear arms is "off the table" for further debate. The elimination of this "right" could only occur "if" the American people elected to adopt such a change to the law through the arduous process of an amended change to the Constitution itself. The probability of that occurring is remote at best.

Yet we have tragic instances of the misuse of firearms that assault our sensibilities that are repeatedly occurring almost on a weekly if not daily basis. Nine killed while participating in a church prayer meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. Another nine killed in Roseburg, Oregon's Umpqua Community College. Wikipedia has a specific list of all the shootings that have occurred in this country's schools beginning in 1850 until this current year. The number of wounded and fatalities reported in this list is beyond mind-boggling. Children killing children! And we are going to continue to waste time and more precious lives fruitlessly debating whether or not someone or somebody is going to take away of Constitutional right to own a personal firearm. How tragic! How stupid!

It is now time that the American citizens awake from their perceived silence on the tragic consequences of our country's poorly regulated gun laws and demand that there be consequential teeth placed in the existing laws to better assure that gun ownership is by and for law-abiding citizens. We can begin this laudable quest by agreeing that the firearm application questionnaire that is typically employed by local municipalities and state governments is a joke. The inquires made are as worthless and uninformative as the age-old stupid question, "Do you still beat your wife?  Yes or No? Typical  "Yes" or "No" questions asked on the application form: "Are you a fugitive from justice?"  "Are you under indictment for, or have waved indictment for, or have been bound over to the circuit court for, or have been convicted in this state or elsewhere for having committed a felony, or any crime of violence, or the illegal sale of any drug?" "Have you ever been diagnosed as having a significant behavioral, emotional or mental disorder? "Yes" or "No." If the answer to any of these questions and the five other equally inane questions is "Yes," there is space at the bottom of the form where one can explain in detail why the person filling out the questionnaire should be allowed within 100 miles of a firearm!  Does anyone possessing an ounce of common sense beyond that of a single cell organism actually believe that a person with a prior criminal felony record or a traceable documented trail of mental illness is going to be forthright in answering any of these questions in the affirmative?

We can begin here. Agree to make background checks uniform in their inquiries across all and within each and every state and municipality. Increase the waiting period before an individual can take actual possession of a firearm until such time as the background check and verification of information submitted can be validated. Make it a provision that no private owner may legally sell a firearm to another person without employing a third party, such a a broker, to assure that the individual wishing to purchase that firearm meets the uniform application process to own that firearm. None of these easily implemented suggestions poses a genuine threat to a citizens right to possess a legally obtained firearm. What it does take is the willpower of the American people to implement same. 

All responsible gun owners and we fellow citizens who value the worth of all lives need to exercise that willpower and better assure that responsible gun ownership is a right that must be accompanied with sane, regulated safeguard provisions. Will initially instituted safeguards prevent the continuing tragic and needless loss of life committed by mentally defective individuals or the criminal element in our society bent on disregarding the basic tenants of a civil society? Sadly no. There are common sense laws that govern rational behavior every day that are continuing to be willfully violated. People still operate their motor vehicles without being in possession of a valid drivers licence or proper insurance, who speed, who fail to wear their seat belts, who drive intoxicated.  But there are rational and well-reasoned laws governing these violations that punish those who are apprehended for failing to comply and adhere to these statutes. Needless tragedies shall still occur, but we are not suggesting or lobbying to ban the operation of all vehicles in order to put an ultimate stop to these events. That's irrational. 

The time to stop the bickering is long past due. Our government is apparently incapable of coming to grips with this nation-wide epidemic. It continues to be a stalemated failure of willpower to at least raise the question of what can we do together to protect the legitimate right of gun ownership while realistically limiting the opportunities for gun possession by those who are recognized as being incapable of properly owning and safeguarding the right to possess a firearm. Indeed, the possession of a firearm must be understood to encompass the awesome acknowledgement and accompanying responsibility that "half the power of God" is but a fingertip away.       

  

  

AN IRREFUTABLE CORRELATION

AN  IRREFUTABLE CORRELATION 

Many well reasoned words have been penned heretofore in on-going attempts to illustrate the profound correlation between the recognized injustices of slavery and the current government sanction through Constitutional Law of a "woman's right to choose" whether or not she of her own free will elects to bring a confirmed pregnancy to full term or terminate the unborn infant in the womb. Ask any Pro-Choice (a.k.a - Pro-Abortion) if she believes that the purposeful enslavement of another human being - to deprive that individual of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -  is morally and ethically wrong and the resounding answer would be "No." But to inquire of this same individual whether or not by terminating a pregnancy this very same moral and ethical standard would also be in effect, the response would not be likewise.There is no logic to this reasoning, but only defense of the indefensible. Whereas the first is a declaration for life and human potential, the second is a hollow argument for personal privacy. In this country both of these ideals of citizenship are constitutionally protected, but the question remains, which of the two takes precedent over the other? 

When slavery in the rural south ruled unchallenged the fodder of its underpinning were not even recognized as persons. At best they were merely "property," to be bought and sold at will. At worse they were regarded as sub-human, to be beaten beyond what even a dog or work mule would be subjected to endure, dehumanized with derogatory labels of inferiority; "exactly intermediate between the superior order of beasts such as elephant, dog and orangutan, and European or white men," or "agents of Satan." Today the Pro-Abortion proponents freely utilize the same tactic in dehumanizing the unborn, callously classifying them as "Abortus, conceptus, gobblets of meat, masses of protoplasm, human waste, a loathsome plague, a hideous affliction."  Now Planned Parenthood has even taken a page out of the slave trade by allegedly marketing to the highest bidder the by-products of salvageable organs of the aborted, late-term infants. If these allegations prove valid, Planned Parenthood's slogan, "Care No Matter What" takes on a deeper, hideous connotation that denotes that due care and diligence shall be faithfully prescribed to transform their status as a non-profit organization to sustainable profitability.  

The irrefutable correlation between the immorality of slavery of old and the unabated practice of pre-birth infanticide today may be refuted but it cannot in moral conscience be denied. In the 1973 when the Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe V. Wade became constitutional law, approximately fifty-five million unborn human infants have been deprived the right and privilege of life, liberty and the promised pursuit of happiness, also affirmed and protected by both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution that guarantee that "no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."  

Much justifiable lip-service has been ascribed to labeling slavery as American's "original sin." Historic verified estimates place the number of African born persons at 500,000 who were transported by force to the shores of this fledgling nation to endure and prevail daily for generations the cruel injustices and deprivations inflicted upon them to sustain an economic and social life style that enriched the few on the backs of the many. A great civil war was engaged in this country, wherein 750,000 lives were lost to only begin to settle the question of human equality for all that continues in fits and starts today.  Those 500,000 and those 750,000 lives expended are never to be regarded as having been spent frivolously, but they pale in comparison to the 55 million unborn children whose beginnings were deliberately aborted before their first gasp of air. 

It has been 42 years since Roe V. Wade was enacted into law. Will it be another 42 years and another 55 million aborted human lives before America's second on-going greatest sin against humanity will be relegated to a sad, appalling footnote in the annals of history? It is not time?  It is not long overdue that this nation throw off the thin veil of the corrupted privacy excuse for this on-going mass murder of the unborn and to begin in earnest a groundswell of support for a Right To Life Amendment to the Constitution of the United States? Continue to turn a blind eye to these legalized atrocities and the American conscience of life and liberty for all shall be awash in the blood of these precious lives yet to be. It is not time that this nation lives up to his proclaimed heritage of freedom for all...even the unborn?  Isn't time for God's sake? Isn't it?   

For additional documentation of the correlation between slavery and abortion, see CHAPTER 86 - SLAVERY AND ABORTION: HISTORY REPEATS by the American Life League.. Link: https://ewtn.com/library/PROLENCE/ENCYCO86.HTM 

       

IN DEFENSE OF CHRISTIAN ANGER

It has been brought to my attention that on past occasions my Facebook posts dealing with social issues have  been perceived as my being angry and, therefore, are considered not to be in keeping with my professed "Christianity," as though anger and/or righteous indignation are somehow incongruous with the Christian faith. I disagree. 

Hardly a celebrity, I nevertheless believe I have a significant following on Facebook, and most people would agree that the majority of my posts are lighthearted and hopefully are so regarded as being uplifting and void of overly-opinionated flights of voiced dissatisfaction. Still, I would be far less than honest with myself or with my followers if I didn't admit that on occasion  I do climb high upon my white steed and charge headlong into some topic of personal aggravation. So yes, I do allow my anger to come to the fore. Steadfastly, I make no apologies for that genuine emotion.

Whether by omission or commission of the observed offenders of my sensibilities, the character flaws that bring my blood to a slow boil are abject stupidity, incompetence, hypocrisy, laziness, arrogance, ignorance and occasionally a mismatched fashion assemble. (But the latter shall be reserved for a future rant...)

To suggest that a "Christian" must always abstain from the employment of anger or otherwise bear the slings and arrows of incrimination for failing to live up to the tenants and precepts of an always perceived gentile faith is, if you'll pardon my indiscretion, ludicrous. One only need to consult the scriptures of the Bible to discover that even God himself was not without wrathful righteous indignation when occasion and circumstance warranted. Dig into the New Testament  gospels of Mark and John and one will read where Christ Jesus himself became righteously angry at the observed defilement of the temple courts, wherein the money changers were unabashedly deriving an ill-begotten profit by selling animal sacrifices to the Jewish sojourners who had come to the Temple to ritualistic repent of their sins. So incensed (read: angry) was Jesus that He fashioned a "whip out of cords and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and (are you ready for this?) overturned their tables."  To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" (John 2:15-16) With  no more than even a cursory reading of these verses, one would be in folly to suggest that Christ was more than just a little "hot under the collar." Let me be so bold as to suggest that Christ was angry and had every justifiable reason for being so.

So, let's abstain from the notion that a Christian is to suppress this most basic of human emotions in order to placate some misguided sense of Christian piety. Both God and his Son displayed anger when provoked to do so for justifiable reasons. And as humans, created in their image, we too are imbued with that same behavioral characteristic as well. Where this emotion becomes harmful and uncharacteristic of a Christian, or any rational individual for that matter, is when the anger spills over into spitefulness, vindictiveness, bitterness or a quest for unrequited vengeance. If in my past posts or posts yet to be published, I have slipped or may venture into the darker side of anger, then I stand accused as charged and offer my humblest apologies. 

But let's not falsely accuse me or any other professing Christian of losing their grip on their religion because they allow anger to color their opinions or quest for redress. I daresay that there was an undercurrent of angry dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church when Martin Luther pinned his ninety-five theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences on the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg. I dare say that the Christians of the colonies were more than just a little angry on numerous historical occasions with the despotic rule of Mother England. The Boston Tea Party comes to mind. And I dare say that Martin Luther King, Jr. was not immune from a sense of anger and frustration as he marched repeatedly through the south to protest the deliberate and malicious subjugation of the oppressed black citizens of this nation. No, don't tell me that anger has no role to play in a Christian of conscience. The righteous anger of many Christians have and will continue to strive to turn the pages of history for the betterment of all mankind. Equal justice for all is some times best sought and acquired when the flames of anger and righteous indignation are ignited.  

A Path We Can No Longer Follow...

August 9th.  18 year old Michael Brown fatally shot in the middle of the street in Ferguson, Missouri. November 22. 12 year old Tamri Rice fatally shot on the playground of a recreation center in Cleveland, Ohio. Similarities: both were back youth. Both were killed by white police officers. The details surrounding both tragic occurrences continue to be debated, centering on who was right and who was in the wrong. After the smoke from the smoldering ruins of the burned out buildings of Ferguson have been lost to the winter winds and the stinging tears have dried from the eyes of the loved ones who morn the loss of young Tamri, the larger question remains: Who among us all do not bear some responsibility for these two tragic events occurring in the first place? If this larger question remains unanswered, this nation shall revisit far too often again and again similar tragedies of unnecessary loss of life.

Beyond the facts, proved or assumed, in both incidents, lie festering realities that at base comprise the basis for the conflict of the racial divide that is today prevalent in this country. Fear and suspicion. A broad unspoken societal fear and suspicion that neither the black nor the white race as separate and distinct entities can be trusted to have the best interest of the other at heart. That we are not in this journey of life together, striving for the same things;  peace, security and tranquility. At the detriment of the other race, we must first look first and foremost to protect and preserve our own self-interest. Out of this fear and suspicion grows a cancer of assumptions that left unchecked, unexplored, and undefined rips ever widening jagged holes in the fabric of our society.

Young Tamri had in his possession a toy gun that was modified to appear to be an authentic and potentially deadly weapon, capable of doing grave bodily harm. A two-fold question arises. Of lesser consequence is what was the underlying motivation behind the toy gun being modified to appear to be a real semi-automatic pistol? Of greater concern, is why Tamri felt compelled to even be in possession of the instrument that was a leading direct consequence of his death?  "Well, he was just a boy and this was just a toy gun." He is dead and the reasoning on his part must be explained and understood, fore the argument that he was just an immature boy playing some type of game for his own entertainment cannot fully explain the underlying root causes that resulted in his death. Stark unfortunate truth: He was a black boy in a predominately black neighborhood banishing what appeared to be a deadly weapon. The unintended triggers on his part that lead to his being fatally shot. 

Arriving on the scene are two Cleveland City police officers, they having received a radio call that there was an individual in the park displaying menacingly what appeared to be a gun, that might be "fake," but was still greatly concerning those who were witnessing the behavior. That individual was 12 year old Tamri Rice. The officers confronted Tamri and directed him to put his hands up. The officers reported that Tamri failed to follow their commands and instead "reached into his waistband" to retrieve what appeared to the officers to be a handgun. Two shots rang out, one of which proved to be the fatal stomach wound to Tamri..

The questions swirling around the aftermath of this incident are many. Was the shooting justified? Could lesser measures been utilized to avert the tragic outcome? Had this been a white youth in a predominately white neighborhood, would the two white police officers have employed the same tactics? Valid questions all. 

The police would proclaim, and justifiably so, that when confronted by an individual who appears to be an immediate threat to their life and limb, they are instructed to employ whatever measures necessary in order to avert the danger, up to an including the use of deadly force. Still a 12 year old boy banishing in reality a toy gun lies on the cold playground but mere hours from breathing his last. Any person in possession of a deadly instrument of death must understand that they have at their disposal half the power of God. 

Fear, suspicion and assumptions that need not have played a role in the deaths of either Michael Brown or Tamri Rice, but were simmering just below the surface of consciousness as ingrained learned generational behaviors that feed a cancer that has spread to epidemic proportions in the chasm of our country's racial divide. 

The symptomatic causes of this racial strife are many. The proliferation of guns in our society plays a major role in fostering mistrust between the varying segments of our populace. Did Tamri adopt the gang mentality that being in the possession of a fire arm proclaims powerful unassailable masculinity? That a gun grants immediate access to being respected? Why do some whites proclaim that possessing a firearm is a mandatory necessity for self-protection? Protection from what? Marauding black gangs? In the inner-city back on black crime is daily punctuated by the deadly use of guns. Rolling into these neighborhoods come the local police agencies, forearmed with the assumption that every black individual encountered is armed and determined to defy their authority. A charged atmosphere of  mistrust permeates the encounter. As a result youth like Tamri and Michael lie bleeding in the streets. Cooperation, understanding and the deescalation of events take a back seat to immediate irrational assumption. Guns, no matter who possesses them for whatever rationalized reason, do not promote the sanctity and worthiness of life, but to the contrary renders life too often as expendable fodder for the undertakers. 

An absence of equal access to opportunity to better oneself in our free enterprise society also serves as the fuel of mistrust and resentment within the black community. It is folly for white society not to understand and grasp the undeniable reality that by the mere color of our skin and by the mere accident of birth that we sit in the front row of opportunity. Indeed recognized and applaud-able strides have been accomplished to level the playing field for all minority ethnic groups to partake in the bounty of realized self-actualization. But there remains still far too many hurdles for many of our minority citizens to overcome. By being black far too often come with strings of added requirements to gain access to opportunity that white privileged citizens are automatically afforded. Until our society fully recognizes that all its citizens have an equal right to sit at the table of opportunity in all its many varying and encompassing facets, there will continue to be an out-crying and rebellion arising from our black citizens that see their present circumstances of existence as a desperate trap and their futures bleak and void of promise. 

    

We must all come to an understanding that the promotion of equality of the races is all of our personal concern. Silence in the face of recognized inequality shall serve only to fuel the fires of a thousand additional Fergusons. Being merely content and quick to ascribe blame for the consequences of such acts of lawless rebellions shall never address the true causes of such acts. They will continue to lie beneath the ashes of the burned out buildings and behind the tears of those who mourn the loss of their tragically lost loved ones. A new generation of citizens must be given birth and fostered by we who see and understand the folly of our current course. A generation that embraces from birth that education is the gateway to opportunity. That access to that education, regardless of race, color or creed, must be a quality education, equal for and to all. That privilege is no longer to be regarded as a matter or skin color, but an equal right of citizenship. If together we do not purposefully grasp each others hands in this quest for equality for all, the promise of America shall never be realized and the God ordained greatness of our nation shall be lost in the dust of history. 

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." - Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Simple Math... Simple Solution...

Confused? No need to be. Ignor what the media talking heads and double-speak politicians rattle on about the woeful state of our nation's degraded economy. Here, in the most simplest of explanations, is an "in your face" illustration of how totally upside down and mismanaged are our national finanaces.  

Illustration No. 1:

* U.S. Collectible Tax Revenues: $2,170,000,000,000

* Current Federal Budget: $3,820,000,00000,000

* New Debt: $1,650,000,000,000

* Current National Debt: $14,271,000,000,000

* Most Recent Budget Reductions: $38,500,000,000

Now remove 8 zeros and use the same figures to illustrate a household budget:

* Annual Family Earned Income: $21,700 

* Money the Family Spent in the Year: $38,200

* New Debt Added to the Credit Card: $16,500

* Outstanding Balance on Credit Card: $142,710

* Total Budget Cuts Made: $38.50

Got it????

Okay, now let's look at yet another eye-opening illustration of our debt crisis...

Let's say you come home from work one afternoon and discover that your entire neighborhood has been inundated with a flood of raw seweage, and your home has the foul mess all the way to your ceiling.

What do you think would be the MOST LOGICAL step to take to eradicate the problem?

Raise the ceiling or pump out the crap?

Your opportunity to place your hand on the pump handle arrives this November. To do nothing is to further guarantee that your children and grandchildren will drown in the crap we've left behind.