The Mexican side of the border

Our church supports many missionaries. We often have the chance to meet them, see photos of the ministry that they have been called to. It’s an amzign thing to hear them speak. Just this last week, a family came back to the States from Chihuahua, Mexico. They’ve got an amazing little church. On May 3, the Mexican government shut down everything in light of the swine flu scare. Well, I should say that they intended to shut down everything. Wait, let me say that again. All the churches were told to shut down. And threatened with permanent closure, and huge fines if they didn’t do it. Our missionary friend said that May 3, 2009 would be the day the churches closed in Mexico. Meanwhile, because his church had been registered as a private residence, they continued to have services. And after they met to share the word of God, he went for a walk. And was saddened to see that the grocery stores were open. The restaurants were open. The bars were open. The public continued to meet and laugh in the streets, yet the churches were silent. Score one for the government.

Then, as this family came to visit back in the States, their oldest son was told that he couldn’t come in. Um, but he’s an American citizen, born in the United States of America. The border officials insisted that he coldn’t come home without a work visa, issued by Mexico, to enter the US, and he HAS to return in 6 months to renew his visa to be in the United States.

When his father asked why, he was told………………….
“Ask Washington D.C. Everything we do here is linked to Washington.”
The father pointed out that they were still IN Mexico, that his son was a US citizen, and that they people doing the paperwork were in mexico, on Mixican soil, doing Mexican governmental work.

“Yes, I know. But everything we do here on the mexican side of the border is linked to Washington.”

Kind of telling, in and of itself, is it not?

Congratulations! It’s an abortion!

We’ve heard you were expecting! How wonderful that is! What’s that? You found out it was a agirl? Oh that’s wonderful! Pink everyhwere! Lace, and curls and ribbons and ballet lessons-what’s that you say? You wanted a boy? Oh, well maybe next time. You know, you could get to it earlier if you really wanted. Just go get an abortion. It’s legal in Sweden you know.

Swedish health authorities have ruled that gender-based abortion is not illegal according to current law and can not therefore be stopped, according to a report by Sveriges Television.

Here’s the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/12/sweden-rules-genderbased-_n_202430.html

So now, the way science has advanced us out of the stone age, you can get pregnant, find out if your baby has an incurable disease or disability and kill it-never mind that’s the way that baby was created. And, now, you can discriminate based on sex preference too. Not only that, you can have that ultrasound, find out it’s a gender you ujst don’t want to deal with(thank you so much ultrasound technology!), abort it, heal up a bit and go and order yourself a fabulous little designer baby.

So much for the fun of good old fashioned sex, the surprise of not knowing and the joy of the blessing of a baby.

I think I’ll go hug my naturally conceived, surprise me with pink or blue, love you in each and every flaw quiver of bent arrows.

I originally posted this elsewhere a few weeks ago. Today, as I learn that yet another one of my children might have a problem, it strikes me as even more relevant. At what point do we draw the line in teh sand over a human life? I thought we had reached the end of the rope with aborting babies because they MIGHT have something challenging like Down’s Syndrome. But now to read again that they now are allowing abortions because its a boy or a girl, it breaks my heart.

When will human life no longer be discardable?

Life in The Country

A programmer from Microsoft is fed up with his job, his life, so he quits and moves up to the Montana. Two weeks go by and while thinking how happy he is with his new life, there is a knock at the door. He answers the door to find a huge rancher who extends his hand and says “I’m your neighbor Butch. I live about a mile north across the stream. I am having a party tonight and I would like to invite you.”

The guy says, “Hi Butch, my name is Bill, nice to meet you. I would love to come to your party tonight.”

Butch: “Great, but I have to warn you, there is going to be some drinking. And there is going to be some sex. And there may be some fighting.”

Bill: “That’s great Butch. I like my beer.” I’ve been up here two weeks so the sex sounds good. And I get along great with everyone.”

Butch: “Great then. I’ll see you tonight.”

As Butch begins to walk away Bill yells, “Hey Butch, what should I wear?”

Butch replies, “Don’t matter, just gonna be me and you.”

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You just got to “love” the goverment.

So you think you “own” some farmland. If you would like to keep it, you need to know a few things.

Never let it flood. If the land floods around where I live, even if it is just for a month or two out of the year. The county will try and take the land from you. They will call it a wetland and it will no longer really be yours (other than paying taxes on it). Every flat piece of ground is a “natural” wetland in western Washington, if you do not keep it drained.

If you let it go and find you have a marsh or pond forming (also called a puddle). Holidays are the best time to to fix that problem by creating “natural” drainage. Government workers are a rather predictable and lazy lot. They do use aerial photography where I live, so it is best to do the work during the rainy season. Things get grown over fast when it rains. And yes it is best not to let an eagle nest on your property. Eagles traditionally are another reason for the government to tell you that some of your land is really not yours at all. If you see a nest being started, destroy it, do it now. For a protected animal Bald Eagles are thick around here. There is nothing rare about them. They are beautiful animals, it’s a shame you can’t let them nest on your land. But only a fool would allow it.

There was this old couple’s place, not far from where I live. They stopped using their land as pasture, but still lived in the house. They were going to sell it off in a few years, when they retired. A farm next to them unintentionally pushed up a small ridge against their land. The water level went up during the winter. Not too badly, it was not worth doing anything about it. The ducks liked it during the winter and spring, and it was dry before any mosquitoes hatched . The county came by and called their back 10 acres an endangered wetland. They had to put a fence around it and are not even allowed to walk in their own back yard. Yes they had their land stolen from them. And no they were not paid for it. I just got to just love those noble folks with their progressive politics. No I don’t love them, I don’t even respect them.They are just thieves being paid by the hour, out of the taxes being paid by the people they are stealing from.

So remember to kill a beaver on sight, use weed killer on anything that looks like wetland vegetation. And drain it fast, even if you like ducks. And never ever get a permit, unless you want the land stolen from you. Beware of Seattle people (or the big city closest to you) buying the land next to you and making a little hobby farm out of it. They will turn you in every time they think something you are doing is bad. And those people think everything is an environmental crime. So make certain you point your French drains toward their land. Yes they tend to be too stupid to understand these things and end up with a fence around part of their land. Yes a part of their property, where they are not even allowed to walk. Sometimes there is justice in this world.

Medically negligent-a parent’s worst nightmare

I’m not as stunned as I wish I could be. A Minneapolis judge has ruled, despite a family’s objections, that they must allow their son to be evaluated to see if he would benefit from chemotherapy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090515/ap_on_he_me/us_med_forced_chemo

This is just insane. A parent chooses(in the best of cases-I’ll admit there are some parents who don’t give 2 hoots for their child’s welfare) to give the best to their children.
If my children were to ever be diagnosed with cancer, I would fight tooth and nail for the treatment *I* saw to be best for them. The bad thing to chemotherapy is that it’s a poison that you hope kills the cancer before it kills you.
This family’s religious rights are being violated. The courts will rule that because they allowed one treatment, they violated their own religious rights. Perhaps this family had no knowledge of the dangers or the exact nature of chemotherapy. The hard reality is that most doctors have a “I’m the doctor and I know better than you do” mentality. They frequently assume that people know without question what all the treatments entail and when they are questioned, talk down to them.
My family uses naturopathic and holistic treatments almost exclusively. We do use allopathic treatmetn when it’s become patently obviuos that I cannot treat it myself. But to know that a judge might order me to hand my children over for poison just infuriates me.

When did we abdicate our authority as those that deem what’s best for our family and how can we get it back?

With Liberty and Justice for All?

I have heard stories of the poor being penalized in the United States. Stories such as the one here ,outrage the social justice freak in me. However, I read a story today that has taken the cake. While our government hands failing banks trillions of tax payer dollars, while this economy is creating homeless families in numbers not seen since the Great Depression, while jobs are being lost at an explosive rate, and the Fed can’t account for 9.7 trillion dollars of OUR money–while the government is evicting Americans from tent cities forcing them to shelters, New York has decided that charging the homeless rent is a good thing.  That’s right. Taking advantage of homeless people and families who are working and trying to save to get out of shelters are now being charged up to half of their income as rent. This only applies to the poor who are actually trying to make a better situation for themselves by finding and keeping jobs. The people who do not work, of course are not being forced to pay anything. (story link here)
The policy of rent for shelter was enacted in 1997, but never enforced until this month. I guess in a failing economy, when a city does not have the privilege of printing money out of thin air like Washington does, the appropriate course of action to get more money is to squeeze it out of every citizen who can cough it up. Usually this money grabbing scheme is carried out in tax hikes, or police ticketing for speeding at 3 whole miles over the speed limit. Somehow though, the sudden enforcement of this law is particularly disgusting and smacks of tyranny.

Lets get something straight. There are those who are a “soak” on tax payer dollars. Drug addicts who are homeless, those who will not support their children, drunks who can’t hold a buck in their pocket longer than it takes to buy a bottle from the corner liquor store are people who line up for shelter and food every night of the blessed year, and they are not ever turned away or forced to spend a single cent for it. Charging those who are working to get a leg up in an economy that keeps knocking them down, is only forcing them to stay in homeless shelters longer. Then again, this is what the Mafia would consider a “deal”. Protection for dollars. It’s a deal that never ends. It’s the same logic – pay, and you stay. Except the paying families will no longer be able to save for an apartment to get out. The more money they make, the more money government takes. Maybe they should all quit and collect welfare for life, because it seems as if that’s what the government would prefer.

WTF
has our country come to when we shovel billion upon billions upon more billions of dollars on big banks
then force the working homeless to shell out half of their wages to sleep in a cot in a room shared with 20 other people??