I'VE READ THE BOOK AND I KNOW HOW IT ENDS

War has been declared on religion in general and on Christianity specifically. The left wing progressive liberal movement has decided that they prefer to worship the god of big government. Along with them are the radical environmentalists. They have attempted to advance the Godless and arrogant theory of man-caused global warming with the idea that man is in charge of nature instead the other way around with man being subject to the laws of nature. One would think if you are hugging a tree, you would realize that man cannot, and has never been able to, create a tree. Just a thought.

As a rule I have tried to stay away from religious matters in my columns. I have always believed that one’s religion is very private and personal and should remain that way. That having been said, and since we are in one of the most holy seasons of the year for Christians, something needs to be said about Christmas in the face of this war. As for me and my house, Christmas is the “Mass of Christ.” While we have a joyous time with the tree, the presents, and the great music, in the final analysis Christmas is a celebration of the birth of the Christ child. We never forget that and encourage you to do the same.

In a recent poll, some 67% of those polled proclaim Christianity as their religion. Christians don’t deny anybody else whatever religion they choose. In fact Christians even tolerate those with no religion, the atheists. Christians are not at war with anybody. All we have ever asked is that non-Christians tolerate our beliefs as well. Whether you choose to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday or a secular holiday, that is your choice. Please have the grace to tolerate our choice of celebration.

I believe I know the truth. I further believe that someday we all will know the truth. If you would rather hug a tree or even a politician as your religion, that’s okay with me. Just leave me and mine alone to our choice as to whom we will hug.

A short time ago I had the very good fortune of visiting with a gentleman who was a retired preacher and a sufferer of terminal heart disease. Some of you might remember him from the web. He was Tommie Joiner or, as he was known to his blog readers, Bo Lumpkin. He knew his time on this earth was short. In fact I learned just today that he had died last month.  I asked him then how he was dealing with his condition and the fact that he may soon die? His answer was both simple and profound. He said, “In many ways I’m looking forward to it because I have read the Book and I know how it ends.” Well I too have read the Book and I also know how it ends. I recommend the Book for your reading. There is a great deal of comfort in knowing how it will all end.

I hope as you look forward to Christmas that you will find comfort and peace. Comfort and peace in the knowledge that we are not alone and that a force much greater than mere man is in control.

I will leave you with this quote which was recently sent to me. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” That pretty much says it all.

Merry Christmas,

Ron Scarbro

WALKING THROUGH A SNAKE PIT

There is so much happening I don’t know where to start. How about the eighty- five year old Korean War veteran who decided to travel to North Korea for a visit?? Other than moron Dennis Rodman, who travels to North Korea for a visit? Well he came within a breath of dying in a North Korean prison camp. He decided to go walking through a snake pit and he very nearly got bit. All that was accomplished was a propaganda opportunity for the North Koreans, and they took advantage of it. They probably think they scored some big coup when in reality they just showed the world that they are nothing more than bullying thugs who take advantage of old men.

Then, in an effort to divert attention away from Obamacare and the disaster it has become, we have entered into an agreement with another bunch of liars, Iran. Because they are such good guys, they have agreed to stop their pursuit of nuclear weapons if we will end the obviously effective and crippling sanctions we and the world have put upon them. What could possibly go wrong with that deal? I’ll give you a moment or two to think about it.

This morning the latest polls show Obama’s favorability rating in a dead fall the likes of which are unprecedented. He has long since lost all Republicans and now he has lost the Independents. If I were a Democrat and I was thinking I might want to run for office or try to be re-elected, I think I would pay attention to Obama’s favorability ratings. As he goes, so goes all Democrats. Therefore, before I attempted to sell myself to the voters, I think I would try to come up with, for example, a better health care fix than Obamacare. Train wrecks are tough to be proud of and even tougher to run on.

Here’s another little item in the news. In Colorado a six year old kindergartner has been kicked out of school and charged with sexual harassment. His crime, he kissed a little girl on her hand. The charge of sexual harassment is on his permanent record. I was asked what I would say to the group responsible for this bit of stupidity if they were gathered in my living room for a discussion. First let me just say this, I doubt I would allow this group of morons in my living room. That having been said, I think I would ask them what in the world they are thinking. Is this really about sexual harassment or is it something else, like for example, forcing their definition of political correctness on the world? Do they believe they are so superior to the rest of us that they have the right and the responsibility to set the rules for all of us? Are they really so stupid as to believe that a six year old little boy even knows what sexual harassment is or that he is capable of it? By the time I got through with my assessment of their actions and my vivid pronouncements to their faces what the meaning of stupidity is, they might prefer to be in North Korea rather than in my living room.

Finally, even though our Congress is basically, by their own choice, toothless, Obama is still going to have to explain and defend Benghazi, the NSA bugging, Fast and Furious, and the IRS debacle. Democrats running for office are going to have to deal with these scandals and they are going to have to defend Obamacare. That is the snake pit from which there is no escape.

Ron Scarbro December 11, 2013 

GLOBAL WARMING, 21st CENTURY WITCH BURNING

The Salem witch trials and burnings were never about witchcraft. They were all about control. The burnings were designed to quash any challenge to the power of the paternal society that governed those people. It probably worked for a time. I see the “man-caused global warming” hoax as modern day witch hunting. Look at the industries that have been spawned by this nonsense.

The “green movement” for example. We have automobile manufacturers designing hybrid cars because of the green movement. If you want to drive a tin box on the same highways as semis, that’s your choice. If you want to sort through your garbage separating your glass from your paper, that’s your choice. If you want to ride your little bicycle in heavy vehicle traffic, or worry about some polar bears in the Arctic, go ahead.

You might want to think about this though. One volcanic eruption on some faraway island in the Pacific or in Iceland negates all of the years of the green movement in seconds. Years and years of man’s “green” efforts are destroyed by ten seconds of volcanic eruption. Oh, and volcanic eruption is not man caused according to my best understanding.

I don’t want this to come as too big of a shock to you but, man is not in charge of this planet or of this universe. We are visitors at best. We do not control the weather. We do not control volcanic eruptions. We cannot stop hurricanes or tornadoes. We can’t make it rain and we can’t stop the rain. Our only ability to warm ourselves is with clothing and home heaters. We cool ourselves with fans and air conditioning.

Early man danced by the fire to please the weather gods. It didn’t change the weather.  

I don’t know if polar bears are supposed to become extinct. I don’t know if Dodo birds were supposed to become extinct. I don’t know if the polar ice cap is supposed to reduce and if the sea level is supposed to rise. I don’t know because I don’t have a copy of the “Master Plan” and nobody else does either. The so-called scientific community certainly doesn’t have a copy of the plan. They just run around looking for ways to make themselves relevant. Governments then take their musings and create ways to control the population.

Here is my offer to the scientists. When you can stop a hurricane in its tracks or stop a volcanic eruption, then I will start to consider your ideas as believable. When you can create rain in drought ridden areas or stop that rain during floods, then I will consider you to be the expert you would have me believe you are. Otherwise you are, to me, just individuals trying to make yourselves important and relevant to the world. Your theories and machinations are just that, theories and machinations.

Personally I hate waste. I believe in stewardship of the earth and its inhabitants. I conserve, not for some junk science theory, but because it makes good sense and it is the right thing to do. I don’t throw trash into the street and I abhor those who do. I don’t drive a tin box car and I don’t ride a bicycle in traffic.

In just the past few years we have been led to believe, according to Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich, that the world will run out of food. That was supposed to happen twenty- five years ago. We have had long gas lines because we were running out of oil. Now we have a glut. Today instead of global warming, we are experiencing global cooling. Being a Phd or a professor doesn’t necessarily make you smart. There is a difference between intelligent and smart.  

And finally this. We should just leave the witches alone. We might be better off if we burned scientists instead.  

Ron Scarbro

THE CONTINUING DRAMA OF OBAMACARE

So now the insurance companies will have another year before they have to cancel existing, what have been identified as “substandard,” health care policies. Isn’t it interesting how all of this coincides with the midterm elections? In other words the Democrats seem to believe they will get away with hiding behind yet another delay in rolling out this disaster called Obamacare.

Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz has declared that Democrats will be able to run successfully on Obamacare and is encouraging them to do so. I heard a Democrat talking head today saying that all will be forgotten in January 2014 when people who have never before been to a doctor will be able to. This is my hope. I hope the Democrats do run as supporters of Obamacare. I hope they face potential voters bragging about the fact that they voted for this disaster. I hope they try to explain why premiums for their new policies have doubled and tripled. When voters see that their co-pays and deductibles have gone out of sight, I am rather confident that they will want to thank the Democrats for this new opportunity to pay much higher premiums in order to support their fellow man by subsidizing his medical care costs. In short any Democrat who thinks this is going to be a winning issue should probably reconsider. This will be a total disaster for the Democrat party.

All you are hearing in the media is the problems with the roll out web site. I believe that is the least of the problems with Obamacare. The real problem is going to show itself when they get the web site fixed, assuming they ever do, and people start understanding what has happened to them. At that point the messed up web site will seem like a Sunday School picnic. Doctors are bailing out of the system in droves. Hospitals are refusing to accept government insurance patients. People are getting their “sub-standard” health insurance policies cancelled by the millions. The replacement policies are far more expensive with higher co-pays and higher deductibles.

Obama has seen the plight and decided to delay some of aspects of Obamacare for one year. That will take it through mid-term elections and all will be forgotten. At least that is what they hope.

Well I have some bad news for Wasserman-Shultz and the others. What we are seeing is the tip of an iceberg which will doubtless melt all over the Democrat Party. Even the most liberal media outlets, all except MSNBC that is, but never mind, nobody watches that network, are lamenting the ongoing problems and are dreading the ultimate implementation of Obamacare. If you are a Democrat and the New York Times gets after you, you know you have a problem. If you are a Democrat facing re-election in 2014 and you are looking at the polls showing Obama in total freefall, you know you had better look for a different platform.

The drama will continue for a time. This nightmare will end though. It won’t be pretty but end it will. Hopefully we will have learned that our government has limitations, created by our founders, for a reason. And hopefully our government will learn as well.

Ron Scarbro

LET'S TALK RACISM

For the past several years liberals have been screaming that America is a racist country as a way of explaining Obama’s difficulties. Oprah Winfrey, on a recent trip to Great Britain, criticized our country claiming that we just aren’t giving Obama a fair chance because he is black. In other words the liberals, both black and white, are indicting our country as racist because their hero, Barack Obama, is a failure as president. They seem to believe that if we would just accept him and all of his liberal policies, Obamacare for example, everything would be better.

Well I’ve got some news for the liberals of this country. America is not a racist country. For Obama to have been elected, millions of white Americans had to vote for him. After all, the total black population of America is 12%.  If they all voted for any single individual, they couldn’t elect him.  If this were a racist country would millions of white Americans have voted for a black man?

Now let’s get real. Obama’s signature legislation, Obamacare, is a bonafide disaster and it has nothing to do with Obama’s race. Obama himself was ill prepared for the job of president from the outset. No amount of changing the subject is going to fix that. Secondly, Obamacare is a Democrat program, period. It has never garnered a single Republican vote and in fact the Republicans have tried on many occasions to defund it. Unless and until the Democrats get rid of it, it will be a yoke around their necks. If they think for one moment that they can go into the next election as champions of Obamacare and think that will be a winning strategy, I say go for it. The sooner the Democrats are found out the sooner sane politics can return to America.

Obama’s policies and programs are not unpopular because he is black, they are unpopular because they are just bad policies. Obamacare is not unpopular because Obama is black. Obamacare is unpopular because it is bad law. And speaking of Obama’s blackness, as I recall he had a black father and a white mother. So then he is half white and half black. In other words he is as white as he is black. Speaking for myself, I don’t like either half.

Liberals need to understand a few things. Making excuses for Obama’s failed presidency by accusing caucasian people of racism is racism. Liberals blaming one race of people for a failed presidency is the true meaning of racism. Refusing to hold him responsible for his failures is unfair to all minorities who might try to follow in his footsteps in politics.

I understand the liberal’s dilemma. America’s first black president has been, to say the least, a big disappointment. His legacy will be tough for them to get over. His sloppiness and general lack of preparedness for the office will continue to be apparent to all.

I take no pleasure from Obama’s lack of success. After all it is America who will suffer from his time in office. Personally I look forward to the opportunity at some point of electing another black person to this highest office. The people I would consider however would be much better prepared for the job, people like Condoleezza Rice, or Thomas Sowell. In fact there are many black people who would bring America back to her greatness.

Going forward, let’s pledge to leave racism in the past. Let’s judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.

Ron Scarbro

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT LARRY

Let me tell you about Larry. I met Larry in 2009 when I was researching a column about WWII veterans. He looked for all the world like the eight-plus decades of life he had experienced. But, there was a twinkle in his eyes. Even though his body bent under the pressure of his years and his toils, he was a man with a mission. I will share with you as he shared with me.

As a youngster Larry served in the Army as a clerk typist. That would be the military’s definition of a stenographer. His assignment was to go to Germany and record the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi killers and thugs which were captured by the allies at the close of WWII. Larry was a witness to history. He sat in the courthouse and looked into the eyes of these monsters as they attempted to explain away their crimes. He listened as they tried to justify their murderous acts. He told me he still sees them in his sleep.

Larry’s mission today is to make certain the world never forgets these monsters and the holocaust they caused. When Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, first saw the death camps and the gas chambers used by the Nazis, he ordered that cameramen and photographers record the scene in detail. He believed that for sure down the road some SOB, his words, will deny that any of this ever happened. Eisenhower wanted to be sure that there was sufficient photographic evidence of the horrors he was witnessing. He was concerned that history might someday try to be re-written. Today we know that there are already morons proclaiming the holocaust was a hoax. It is rarely taught in schools anymore. To some, it is ancient history. How sad.

Larry traveled as his health permitted, spreading the word about the holocaust, the death camps, and the perpetrators of it all. He had prepared a pamphlet with graphic photographs of the camps and of General Eisenhower. I was pleased to have heard and seen his presentation.

I just recently learned that Larry now resides in a senior assisted living facility since his wife of many years died and he doesn’t get to go out so much anymore. I can assure you that he is not wasting his time though. No, he is spending his time teaching and entertaining the other residents of that home with tales of the horrors and of the victories he witnessed. He is begging the residents to never forget and to never let their children forget. Larry still is on his mission.

Larry, you see, is one of the few remaining WWII heroes still among us. He is one of the last of the “Greatest Generation.” He truly witnessed and participated in history and in this season of the celebration of veterans, I hope you will take a moment to remember not only people like Larry, but all of those who have served. I especially hope you will think of those WWII veterans whose sacrifices made our country the free home we love. Everyday their numbers shrink. If you ever get the opportunity to hear the stories from one of these esteemed veterans, I encourage you to do so. Sadly their time with us is growing short.

God bless you Larry and all veterans who have served us so well.

Ron Scarbro

SOMEBODY STILL LYING

If you like your current health insurance policy, you can keep it. Turns out that was a lie. Not a mistake, a lie. If you like the doctor you now have, you can keep him. Again, not a mistake, just another lie. Why would it be necessary for Obama to lie to us in order to get Obamacare on the books? Well I remember a time when I went in to the doctor for a procedure. He told me that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. Well it did. I asked him why he would tell me that it wouldn’t hurt? He said if I told you the truth I would have had to chase you down the hall to do the procedure. That, of course, is why Obama has lied to America. Had he told the truth it would never have gotten off the ground. So, he lied to us. He lied to Congress. Now we are left with the aftermath of his lies.

Insurance companies are canceling existing policies because they do not qualify under the requirements of Obamacare. It now seems even though you might be sixty years old, your health insurance policy must offer birth control protection. It must also include treatment for alcoholism, maternity benefits, and drug rehabilitation. If your policy doesn’t have those coverages, they are deemed to be substandard. In other words, you must buy and pay for coverage you will never use in order that those who might need that coverage will be covered.

And don’t worry about that little statement in the application for Obamacare about your expectation of privacy. Why should you expect privacy anyway? Your government needs all the information they can get on you so they can keep track of your movements and your thoughts. They need to be sure that you don’t say anything your President might not like. Besides everybody knows that whatever you tell your government is secure. They won’t tell anybody, right? Just ask the IRS. As a side note I am aware of a lady whose job it was to enter doctor’s files into a computer. She worked for a private firm who did that sort of thing. One day she ran across an acquaintance who was being treated for a very private condition. She shared that information with me. We thought it was funny but in looking back, that individual’s expectation of privacy was a joke. Just like yours is on a government website.

What we now have is a mess of lies. President Obama has lied. Kathleen Sebelius has lied. There are more whoppers coming out of Washington than from Burger King. Some have said they’re not lying, they just don’t know any better. Okay, which is worse, liars or incompetents?  And if Obamacare is so bad that the authors of it have to lie to make it happen, should it be the law?

Some are saying that Obama and his handlers knew all along that Obamacare wouldn’t work but pursued it anyway in order to bring about a single payer system. I disagree. I don’t think either Obama or his handlers are that smart. To me they are all just clueless stumblebums.

The simple answer is to change the makeup of the lawmakers. Let’s get rid of these career politicians and start with fresh blood. I care less about their political party affiliation and more about their character. And character is what has been missing. We need some adults in Congress. We especially need adults in the White House. What we have now is what we have chosen by our votes. It is obvious to even the most liberal that ours have been bad choices. We desperately need a change.

Ron Scarbro November 6, 2013