I wrote then:

Gas lines, unemployment, inflation, problems with terrorists… we have all this and more to look forward to, right down to the guy in the Oval Office lecturing us that we can’t keep our homes at the temperature we like.  At least Carter had the decency to put on a sweater and give the appearance of suffering right along with the rest of us.  President Obama can’t even do that.  These things are going to happen eventually anyway because the 40% cannot carry the rest of the country, nor should a moral society expect us to do so.  My goal is not to extend the misery; it’s to hasten the inevitable crash so we can recover quickly.

Do I want Obama to fail?  Aren’t I, as a Christian, required to pray for our president?  I do pray for him.  But I don’t pray for his success, where his success means implementing policies which harm the country’s security, kill babies, increase poverty, and decrease freedom. The Alinskyite game playing is pathetic, trying to divide us with “have you beat your wife lately?” questions designed to “catch” conservatives in being “disloyal” to the President.  Are you now, or have you ever been, a fan of Rush Limbaugh?  Grow up!  I’m not hoping for economic failure.  I’m experiencing economic failure, and I’m hoping to return to economic success.

As the natural consequences of these disastrous polices – foreign policy based on magical thinking, energy policy designed to increase costs and cause shortages, economic policy that has already stolen big chunks out of people’s retirement funds by sending the stock market back to Clinton administration levels, with no floor in sight – the country is going to suffer.  I welcome that, to the extent necessary to cause people to re-think their attitudes and comprehend the results of their entitlement mentality.  By going John Galt – reducing my income to the point that I no longer subsidize anyone else via government imposed wealth transfers – I hope to hasten the inevitable collapse.  The H.E.N.R.Y.s feel the same way; people who are in the dreaded eeevil, mean capitalist pig $250,000 bracket are cutting back on their productivity.  As they should – where does society get the right to enslave these people?  The faster the 40% opts out, the sooner the collapse, and the sooner we can correct the situation.

Think of it as praying the alcoholic in your family will hit rock bottom sooner, rather than later.  It’s time to stop enabling the entitlement mentality.  It’s time to let go of our co-dependency and desire to be liked.  It’s time for an intervention.  It’s time to go John Galt.

We certainly have massive unemployment, inflation, and problems with terrorists. I fully believe that the gas lines are coming, given Obama’s war on pretty much all methods of producing energy except the “green” methods the government heavily subsidizes and which are run by Democrat friends and campaign contributors.

I didn’t like Romney (and complained about him bitterly on this blog and at Hot Air) but I did eventually get behind him and even came to believe – eventually – that he’d be a good President. But the media won Obama a second term, with it’s “move along, nothing to see here,” coverage of scandals which would have been major if they could have been tied to Republicans.  Apart from that, people wanted to believe that there is a free lunch, and they voted in the guy who promised them one.

So, here we are. More than half of the country is drinking the Koolaid, and now more than ever, I’m not really that interested in fighting to protect them from the consequences of their actions.  To paraphrase Mencken, let them have what they demanded – good and hard.

I’m not angry, and while what I’ve written sounds bitter, even to me, that’s really not how I feel. At the end of the day, I still believe that it is God who puts the kings on their thrones.  I still believe that God is sovereign.  Since God has decided that Obama shall be in charge another four years, then I have to believe that God has done so for our good.  Jeremiah 29:11, etc. That doesn’t mean that I believe the outcome of Obama’s presidency will be good in terms of having a healthy economy or a less corrupt government or more peace in the world.  I think the path the Democrat-media complex is forcing us down will lead to another depression.  And a nation full of Honey Boo Boo voters will buy the idea that a Republican party which controls just 1/2 of one branch of government somehow had the power to cause it.  And even then, God will still be sovereign and my hope will be in him, not in a political party.

I believe another four years of Obama will be good for us spiritually.  I believe our faith in God will be renewed – all the more so since it will be blatantly obvious that government will not provide good solutions for us.  I believe our zeal for God will be renewed – all the more so since our government is already moving to disrupt and control the practice of Christianity, with open attacks on religious freedom.  After decades of Communist rule in China, there are now more Christians in China than there are Communists.  Christianity has historically flourished in adversity, and it will do so in the United States, too.

Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today.

This is what politicians want to ram down our throats in the United States. But wait, there’s more!

The Office for National Statistics figures also showed that:
* as well as 43 people who starved to death, 287 people were recorded by doctors as being malnourished when they died in hospitals;
* there were 558 cases where doctors recorded that a patient had died in a state of severe dehydration in hospitals;
* 78 hospital and 39 care home patients were killed by bedsores, while a further 650 people who died had their presence noted on their death certificates;
* 21,696 were recorded as suffering from septicemia when they died, a condition which experts say is most often associated with infected wounds.

Consider the headlines if a privately owned hospital/nursing home group had statistics like this. And consider how the media ignores and glosses over the problems with government-run healthcare, while hyping how wonderful this new, wonderful “right” to free healthcare, and as they conflate “access” to goods and services with “free.”

We need to have an adult conversation on health care reform, and to do that we need to get past the American media’s propaganda campaign.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

~ Adrian Rogers, 1931 – 2005

“No training. This was just people doing what they had to do that day.”

“You forget all about what you’re supposed to do, what they teach you in school, and you say, ‘You know what? Morally, this is the right way to go, and deep down, this is what I’m going to do.’”

“Average people. They stepped up when they needed to. They showed me, when American people need to come together and pull together, they will do it.”

“I have one theory in life. I never want to say “I should have.” If I do it, and I fail, then I tried. If I do it and I succeed, better for me. And I tell my children the same thing: never go through life saying you should have. If you want to do something, do it.”

The largest sea evacuation in history, with no planning, no preparation, conducted by ordinary people in record time.

Cool free service  o’ the day: Take Them A Meal.  Our church is big on saying “I love you,” with food when someone is sick or has died.  This service coordinates those “food chain” events beautifully.  Automatic email reminders, and everyone can see what everyone else is bringing so there are no duplicate meals.

Hey, remember the case of the N.M. Christian photographer who was fined nearly $6,700 for “sexual orientation discrimination” when she refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony?  It’s being appealed.

Did you know a bunch of people are still without power, a full four days after that storm?  Instapundit reader Wayne Fiebick wonders “Where is the outrage at President Obama at the lack of Federal response that there was over Bush/Katrina?”

The GOP is already beginning the process of weaselling out of an Obamacare repeal. Mitch McConnell says it will be Really Hard and gosh, he’ll give it the old college try, but maybe we ought not to get our hopes up. Mitt Romney’s advisor  agrees with Democrats that the Supreme Court is wrong about the mandate being a tax, and hey, maybe we should just drop the whole issue during this election season.  Sometimes it’s just too much trouble to fight a massive government encroachment into our lives and freedom, isn’t it?  Calm yourselves, citizens. Have a nice cup of tea, and let Nanny State take care of you.

I needed an mp3 of the Indian national anthem for a project I’m working on, and it is surprisingly cool.  I wonder if performers botch the lyrics as often as people botch them for our national anthem.

Before Obamacare was rammed down our throats, conservatives acquired videos of liberal after liberal affirming that Obamacare – excuse me, Obamatax – was a stepping stone to a single-payer system like the ones implemented in the UK and Canada.  This is just the latest example of why government-managed healthcare is bad – the guy was in the hospital for a hip-replacement surgery and he died from dehydration.  You might expect the staff to be shocked and ashamed something like that could happen in their hospital.  Instead, while the grieving family

held his lifeless body, they were asked by a nurse whether they had “finished” and could she “bag him up now,” the hearing at Westminster Coroner’s Court was told.

This won’t hurt a bit!

But no, we shouldn’t worry about death panels or any problems whatsoever with Obamatax. It’s going to be GREAT.  Just you wait and see.  Liberals excuse this sort of thing every time it’s brought up. “Oh,” they exclaim, “that’s just one example out of X number of thousand treated, most people receive fantastic care. And it’s free!”  Well, it’s free, except for the massive taxes they pay to support the system.  If a privately owned clinic did this to a patient, we’d see liberals wailing and gnashing their teeth about how for-profit healthcare killed a patient.

Independence Day is Wednesday (the name of the holiday is NOT “July 4th” or “Fourth of  July”) and the thought that’s been going through my head all week is that the country we’re handing down to my 22 year old daughter’s generation is substantially less free and less wealthy than the one I came into as a young voter.

Piper offers some very sound advice:

Don’t press the organization of the church or her pastors into political activism. Pray that the church and her ministers would feed the flock of God with the word of God centered on the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. Expect from your shepherds not that they would rally you behind political candidates or legislative initiatives, but they would point you over and over again to God and to his word, and to the cross.

… If the whole counsel of God is preached with power week in and week out, Christians who are citizens of heaven and citizens of this democratic order will be energized as they ought to speak and act for the common good. It’s your job, not mine. Don’t look to me to wave the flag for your vote. Or wave the flag for your candidate.

… My job is to feed the saints with such meals that they go out strengthened and robust and able to do the study and do the courage and do the action needed as salt and light in this world. And that will go away if you insist on the church and the ministry being the political leaders. It will and we can point to many where it has.

Yes.  And beyond that, it is baffling to me why people would look to their pastor for political leadership.  I go to my pastors for spiritual instruction; that is their expertise and they have gained my trust with many years of instruction, leadership and not least, their personal examples of humility and sanctification.  If they suddenly started preaching politics – in other words, building a kingdom here – I would find another church where the pastors are keeping their eyes on the prize.

Pastors generally have about an hour – or in some churches, less – to reach their congregation. In our church we have 20-30 minutes of worship, announcements, and greetings. Then we get down to business with a sermon averaging 70 minutes, sometimes followed by an altar call.  And that’s it. Some churches get in a Wednesday service, which is typically much less well attended than the Sunday morning service.  Anyone who thinks that a pastor should, in the brief window of time available to him to instruct his flock, waste even a minute of it on politics, is in my opinion an idiot.

• He’s very knowledgeable about health care.  Obamacare is likely to be struck down in a couple of days, so having Jindal out on the stump reassuring voters that the GOP doesn’t hate sick people and effectively conveying an alternate plan would probably be helpful.
• He’s the son of immigrants, and could probably rebut Obama’s recent immigration pander pretty effectively.
• It’ll shut the left down at least a little on the racism accusations.  (No, I’m just kidding. Of course it won’t.  It’ll ramp them up, because they’ll give him the “Uncle Tom” treatment.)

What else is there? I got nothin’.

When I first heard the story of the bus monitor, I was furious at the little punks, and heartily sorry for her.  This nice, 68 year old woman reminded me of my own grandmother, and I wanted the punks who abused her punished publicly and severely. I was delighted that a fund had been set up.  And at that point, enough had been donated for her to have a really, really nice vacation with her family, and even after taxes, end up with a year or two’s worth of her $15K salary besides, so if she wanted, she could retire early.  Wow! I thought. This is amazing! I wrote on Facebook. With $150,000, she never has to set foot on a school bus again!

Now the total is approaching $350,000, and it’s just overkill. Stop it, already.

Okay, it’s a free country, and people are perfectly entitled to donate money to whomever they want.  And it’s very exciting to see this nice old lady basically win the lottery.  I’m not sure why exactly I’m grousing except that it just feels so excessive at this point. Am I the only one who’s getting annoyed?