Survey Of Insiders On Wall Street Cheating

Common Sense Commentary: Anything and anybody not thoroughly and truthfully anchored in Jesus Christ is destined to be swept up, like flotsam and jetsam, by His opposite.  Just since the turn of the millennium, in 13 short years, the whole world has suffered a sea-change, from apparent smooth sailing, into a dead sea of corruption affecting every investment exchange, government, United Nations agency and multinational corporation on earth.  It is in such a total, global degree that it reeks with the foul odor of the "powers of darkness" pulling the puppet strings of world leadership.  Something very sinister has fallen, like a grimy, suffocating smog upon the world.  God didn't do it but obviously He allowed it or it couldn't have happened .... so like the Philistines falling upon backsliden Israel, we have apparently brought
judgment upon ourselves.  So now, Wall Street is so blatantly corrupt that to admit it openly is no big deal to them.  It is well understood that if a child has a lying father and mother, he has a license to lie without compunction or rebuke. So, when a nation has a lying leader, as the U.S. has today, everybody is given license to lie and cheat.  It is a trend, long developing, and it cannot be turned around quickly, and will only get worse before it gets better.... if it ever does.  If Wall Street easily admits corruption to the extent they do in this article, it has to be twice as bad. Like a child who confesses, "Yes, I took a cookie" when he actually got half a dozen. RB

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace  

AlterNet / By Les Leopold

       

Shocking Things Wall Street Financiers Say Off the Record About Their Bloated, Corrupt Industry

A new survey shows how brazenly immoral Wall Street is.

July 19, 2013  |  

 

 

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"A particularly troubling and consistent finding throughout the survey is that Wall Street’s future leaders–the young professionals who will one day assume control of the trillions of dollars that the industry manages—have lost their moral compass, accept corporate wrongdoing as a necessary evil and fear reporting this misconduct."

In a shocking new survey commissioned by the Labaton Sucharow law firm, Wall Street insiders say that breaking the law, screwing your clients and covering up crimes is a way of life on Wall Street. The shock is not that cheating is going on. We all know that. The shock is that these financiers would actually admit it on a survey. This should tell us that the Wall Street culture is so brazenly corrupt, so confident of not getting caught, so certain that a passive public won't fight back that those surveyed didn't even bother to lie about the fact that they were living, breathing sociopaths.

Here are some of the key findings of this sample of 250 traders, portfolio managers, investment bankers, hedge fund professionals, financial analysts, investment advisors, asset managers and stock brokers.

Catch me if you can!

"24% of financial services professionals likely would engage in insider trading to make $10 million… if they wouldn’t get arrested.  That figure surges to 38% for individuals with 10 years or less in the industry."

Screw your clients.

"28% of financial services professionals feel that the financial services industry does not put clients’ interests first."

They do it, so we have to do it too.

"More than half of respondents–52%–felt it was likely that their competitors have engaged in unethical or illegal activity to gain an edge in the market; 24% felt employees at their own company likely have engaged in misconduct to get ahead."

Guess what? We still are cheating.

"Misconduct is still widespread in the financial services industry; 23% of respondents  indicated that they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace."

To rise in a criminal organization, you have to be a criminal.

"Looking at seniority, 36% of respondents with 10 years or less experience in the industry believed financial services professionals may have to engage in misconduct to get ahead."

The boss loves it when you cheat.

"17% of respondents felt that if leaders of their organization suspected that a top performer was earning large profits from insider trading, they likely would ignore the problem. More alarming, 15% of professionals in the industry believed that if leaders of their organization learned that a top performer had engaged in insider trading, they were unlikely to report that crime to law enforcement or regulatory authorities."

Several World Empires Have Dominated The Globe... One More Arises Now

Common Sense Commentary: It appears to me that whatever "ism" you name, whether it presently looks good or bad, has taken, or will take, it's turn at participating in the domination of a majority of the world. This by means of treaties, unions alliances or appeasement. Past history records the "near" world-wide domination by the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Britannia, Nazis, Communists and now a marriage between Socialism, Capitalism, and false Religions, which is actually an updated form of Fascism, is arising. It's octopus arms are the world's largest, multinational banks which have branch appendages all over the globe, but are mostly headquartered in the U.S.A. Not that they love America or favor the U.S.  They care nothing for their mother countries or any other. They are Globalists and their pre-eminent love, purpose, and interest is international money and the power and privilege it buys. In my opinion, this arising great power, will be an alliance between the Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgans, World Bank, IMF, BIS, Globally focused Politicians, and "Secular" Religions .... out of which will arise the final world Empire and it's Anti-Christ head to "take care" of the peasant masses. Catholicism, Protestantism, and Mohammedanism being prominently represented as agents of the poor. What I am saying is, if it's not the true, Scripturally sound, born again church of Jesus Christ, which "... the gates of hell shall not prevail against..."  (Matt.16:18), it is subject to become part of the Kingdom of Anti-Christ, which is next to dominate the world. "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."  1 John 4:1-3.

Here is an enigmatic but informative article by Paul Farrell of Market Watch  which harmonizes with my understanding of Tribulation and Antichristic prophecy:

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Imagine 100 Goldman Sachs banks running America and the world. It’s happening. Forget politicians, Big Banks rule the world.

Reuters

Today every bank is a Goldman Sachs wannabe.

It was just a few years ago in “The Great American Bubble Machine,” a Rolling Stone feature, that Goldman was indicted by Matt Taibbi: “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Yes, till recently Goldman Sachs was boss, everywhere, the “world’s most powerful bank.” Taibbi: “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression.” What an indictment.

Today every bank in the world is a Goldman wannabe. That’s capitalism at its peak. All competing to be the world’s most powerful bank. Seriously, look around: Your world really is dominated by this amazing new innovation emerging from capitalism — a bizarre conspiracy of Big Banks, maybe a hundred Goldman wannabes. These new Big Bank capitalists are rewriting the history of the world.

But we’re getting ahead of the story. Let’s review Goldman Sachs role in creating this new Big Banks Conspiracy.

Goldman Sachs, now the role-model for all global Big Banks

In “The Great Bubble Machine,” Taibbi says Goldman was the mastermind behind every great bubble in American history since it was founded in 1869 by Marcus Goldman and his son-in-law Samuel Sachs. Yes, one bank gets blamed for America’s amazing history: Bubble 1: the Great Depression. 2: tech stocks. 3: the housing craze. 4: $4 a gallon gas. 5: rigging the bailout ... and now the latest Bubble 6: Global Warming.

Example: early on in this indictment, Taibbi focused on a chapter in John Kenneth Galbraith’s classic “The Great Crash, 1929,” titled “In Goldman Sachs We Trust” where the Harvard economist singles out Goldman’s “Blue Ridge and Shenandoah trusts as classic examples of the insanity of leverage-based investment. The trusts, he wrote, were a major cause of the market’s historic crash; in today’s dollars, the losses the bank suffered totaled $475 billion.”

That’s almost a half trillion in today’s dollars, prompting Galbraith to add: “It is difficult not to marvel at the imagination which was implicit in this gargantuan insanity ... If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale.”

That’s Goldman Sachs key to success, crazy like a big fox, a mad money machine, an awesome Bubble Machine, making history, dominating the world from America.

Goldman Sachs mantra for domination: ‘Madness on a heroic scale’

Yes, Goldman Sachs’s reputation for over a century has been grown with this “madness on a heroic scale,” winning big because of its “gargantuan insanity,” constantly pushing the boundaries of ethics, integrity and morality while year after year since 1869 this “great vampire squid” keeps winning big.

So Goldman Sachs is the gold standard against which all other banks must compete, the front-runner in profits and wealth creation, the role model that defined the moral code necessary for competing in today’s financial world.

Goldman possesses a certain bold madness and borderline ethical behavior that today has not only been adopted by all its competitors on Wall Street but has also become the moral code running the collective brain of capitalists everywhere, corporate CEOs and Washington politicians.

And today it is being rapidly adopted by business and political leaders across the developed world, wannabes all competing, fighting to be the next Goldman Sachs.

You just don't expect someone (Farrell pictured) from the Main Street Media to write something like the above article and get it published in Market Watch. That, in itself, boggles the mind like a contradiction inside of a contradiction inside of a contradiction.... RB

Technology Has The Power ... Now... To Control The World

Common Sense Commentary: This magnificent level of technology, which will obviously have endless uses for good, also has endless potential for unlimited government control. When government has that kind of potential, history shows us they use it. This will be used, then misused, then abused, but like other losses of our freedoms, it will slowly become the norm, accepted by the masses.  Where does it lead?  Like everything else government touches, it leads eventually to a dictatorship.   The time will come when we will not only lose all privacy, we will also lose our freedom. This level of technology reveals the means and method which the principalities, powers, rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places will take in it's absolute control and installation of the Anti-Christ. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places". Eph. 6:12. RB


The 2100 MegaPixel Government Camera .....

There's no privacy anywhere ! Right Now!

 

WHAT WILL THINGS BE LIKE IN ANOTHER FEW YEARS? ? ?

"This picture was taken with a 70,000 x 30,000 pixel camera (2100 MegaPixels.)  These cameras are not sold to the public and are being installed in strategic locations.  It can identify a face in a multitude of people.  Place the cursor in the mass of people and double-click about four times (or 'finger-spread' on a device.)  Scary sharp"   or use the "zoom slide" at the top left corner of the picture.  It may take a few seconds for your merely consumer-level computer to do the zoom... 

http://www.gigapixel.com/mobile/?id=79995

Well Dear Readers, It's Settled, We Are Moving To Mexico

Common Sense Commentary: It's not purely an economic decision, you all know I love the Mexican people and almost moved there, as a missionary, many years ago. Now, taxes are so high and health care failing, in the U.S., and since Christians are becoming the favorite target of our Muslim, Socialist government,  Mrs. Blair and I are going to bite the bullet, before it bites us (ha ha), and move to a more Christian  climate ..... We will miss you all so please visit us at our new resort "Mexicogringo".  An anonymous, but well informed patriot wrote this letter for us, to our President, seeking his help with the red tape involved.  Your Forever Friend, Rayburn Blair

 

MOVING TO MEXICO

 

Dear President Obama:

 

I'm planning to move my family and extended family into Mexico for my health, and I would like to ask you to assist me.

 

We're planning to simply walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and we'll need your help to make a few arrangements.

 

We plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws.

 

I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here. So, would you mind telling your buddy, President Pena Nieto, that I'm on my way over?

 

Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:

 

1. Free medical care for my entire family.

 

2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.

 

3. Please print all Mexican Government forms in English.

 

4. I want my grandkids to be taught Spanish by English-speaking (bi-lingual) teachers.

 

5. Tell their schools they need to include classes on American culture and history.

 

6. I want my grandkids to see the American flag on one of the flag poles at their school.

 

7. Please plan to feed my grandkids at school for both breakfast and lunch.

 

8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.

 

9. I do plan to get a car and drive in Mexico, but I don't plan to purchase car insurance, and I probably won't make any special effort to learn local traffic laws.

 

10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from their president to leave me alone, please be sure that every patrol car has at least one English-speaking officer.

 

11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my housetop, put U S. flag decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.

 

12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, or have any labor or tax laws enforced on any business I may start.

 

13. Please have the president tell all the Mexican people to be extremely nice and never say critical things about me or my family, or about the strain we mig ht place on their economy.

 

14. I want to receive free food stamps.

 

15. Naturally, I'll expect free rent subsidies.

 

16. I'll need income tax credits so that although I don't pay Mexican taxes, I'll receive money from the government.

 

17. Please arrange it so that the Mexican Government pays $4,500.00 to help me buy a new car.

 

18. Oh yes, I almost forgot, please enroll me free into the Mexican Social Security program so that I'll get a monthly income in retirement.

 

I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all his people who walk over to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that President Nieto won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely.

 

Thank you so much for your kind help.

You're the man!!!

Monkeys In 747 Cockpit Fiddeling With The Controls

Common Sense Commentary: Over my 36 years as a pastor there were numbers of times when some new staff member of our church, Christian schools or our other ministries would come to my office and explain to me why my methods of managing our extensive ministries were wrong, and how "he would do it". It didn't seem to occur to them that we had arrived in our city with six children, no job, no money and no church, and, by God's grace, had founded the church, three Christian Schools, a children's home, the city rescue mission, the city food bank, a television station and other ministries, had very little debt and had the years of experience to match it. These enjoyable occasions were some of the best entertainment I had. I would listen, but seldom heard anything of real merit. I did give them credit for courage if not judgement. One of these young men later suggested that he wished I were President. This idea only confirmed to me that my first judgement of his judgement was correct .... the folly of immaturity. First, I couldn't get elected; and second, if I did, I would either be impeached or assassinated the first year. I asked another of these young men what he planned to do when he left his position with us. He quickly answered, "I'm going to Baltimore and do the same thing Jerry Falwell has done .... only bigger". The last I heard of him he had decided to be a shoe salesman.... an honorable profession but something short of his liberal imagination.

I am now 82, and as I observe the caliber of this weedie crop of federal politicians running our country, in Washington, I'm getting that old feeling I used to have when a 22 year old novice came to tell me how to improve my management skills or why I should double everyone's salary....on faith.  "The monkeys are in the cockpit fiddling with the controls".  Our federal government is Detroit .... with a printing press. One Congressman said, "We know what needs to be done, but we couldn't be re-elected if we do it." What ever happened to integrity? The people running Detroit should have known 20 or 30 years ago that their city would eventually go broke, but if they had done what they knew they should, they would have been voted out of office. The Motor City was controlled by the automobile unions and spent itself into oblivion. The monkeys were in the cockpit fiddling with the controls. It is said, "The way to catch a monkey is to put an orange in a jar with an opening the size of a monkey's slender hand. He will stick his hand into the jar, grab up the orange and keep trying to extract his full fist but will never release the orange.  Detroit and the U.S. government have been run by "The greedy monkey method" for many years and it has become the only method the politicians comprehend.... "Grab all you can get and never let go".  The monkeys are fiddling with the controls and have ridden the steering wheel of Motor City America in a crash dive into the ground, and it's too late to change directions after you crash. The U.S. printing presses are reeved up to a screaming whine, smoking and boiling hot as the wheels fly off, hundred dollar bills float to the floor and the thing groans it's dying breath.... in a terminal heap. Monkeys do quite well in their natural element ... the jungle ... where they can steal from each other and fight for control over all the other monkeys, but flying a 747 requires more than graspy hands, long arms and a toothy smile. RB

  Does This Tell You Anything?

The United States is 3rd in Murders throughout the World. 

But if you remove just 4 cities: Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC and New Orleans, the United States is 4th from the bottom in the entire world for Murders. 

And these 4 cities also have the toughest Gun Control Laws in the United States. 

Does This tell you anything? 

PS: These 4 cities are also run by DEMOCRATS!

Imagine that!!!

"If Obama had a city it would look like Detroit ... and his Chicago is headed that way.

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A Principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."

-- Thomas Jefferson

But Thomas, what's debt to a monkey? RB

How Big Is An Immence, Collosal, Mammoth Thing ?

Common Sense Commentary: The national, federal gov. debt is so mammoth that no human being can get their mind around it. Only God can measure such immense numbers. We can type them on a page but truly comprehending $17,000,000,000,000 is not within our human brain power. However, here is CNS News.com's  effort to measure it as nearly as is humanly possible to do so. RB


From CNS News.com

July 26, 2013 - 11:11 AM
By Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr.

 

National Debt Stacked in Dollar Bills Would

Stretch from Earth to Moon Five Times

The U.S. national debt would reach 1.1 million miles into space if stacked in one dollar bills.

According to the latest available data from the U.S. Treasury, the total public debt outstanding is $16,738,105,803,858.21.

A dollar bill is .0043  of an inch in thickness.

$16,738,105,803,858.21 multiplied by .0043 equals 71,973,854,956.59 inches.

71,973,854,956.59 divided by 12 is 5,997,821,246.38 feet (6 Billion feet).

A mile is 5,280 feet in length.

Thus, the national debt would stretch 1,135,951 miles into the air.

To give this length more perspective, the national debt (stacked) could circle the Earth at the Equator 45.6 times.

It would also stretch nearly five times the distance of the Moon from the Earth (238,855 miles).

 

Rayburn's comment:

And most of that hard earned tax money simply went down the dark drain hole of socialism ... wasted... but we are worse off than before it was spent and given away.

And Washington wonders why we don't trust them or their public relations debt., the national news media. They have cut the legs from under the greatest nation that ever existed on earth. Seven Trillion is a huge, historical, record setting debt but...Is that what I meant when I asked, "How Big Is An Immense, Colossal, Mammoth Thing?"  Naaaah, stupid men created the federal debt. What I really meant was, how big is God if He can create this.....  scroll down...







https://www.youtube.com/embed/XE0aAZE0kp4?feature=player_embedded

Escaping The Five Walls Of Slavery The World Calls Freedoms

Common Sense Commentary: "....and, behold, if the plague be in the walls...." Lev.14:37

The wicked of this world are clear about what they believe in and what they deny. Not just by their words, but by their actions they reveal what they are for, and therefore what they oppose. To gain acceptance by the unaware, they swear, by their words, that they are "for freedom". But their actions more perfectly define their words. They are for freedom from restrictions, freedom of their ""animal" hungers and instincts, freedom for their sexual deviations, freedom of their fleshly volition (will), and freedom to abort any unwanted, inconvenient complication.... though it be holy. These things they call their "civil rights". But there is a very uncivil aspect to these assumed "rights". What they "say" they are "for" is another way of saying what they are really against. There is another and more definitive side of these so called freedoms. Freedom from restriction is actually freedom from God's word and will. Freedom of "animal" instincts is freedom from creationism's Creator (evolution), the religion of unbelief. Freedom for their sexual deviation is, in reality, anti-holiness. Freedom of human volition (will) is, in effect, freedom from faith. Freedom to abort a baby is, in truth, anti-human exceptionalism (we are not animals to be slaughtered, but created in the image and likeness of God).

These five so called "freedoms" are, in fact,  five walls enclosing their servile inmates in a clear state of slavery to fleshly lusts and not "freedoms" at all, but depraved, human compulsions. The Bible is more a bill of rights and freedoms than it is a book of restrictions. The Christian is truly free to live and love, worship and trust, hope and help, give and receive, forgive and believe, work and anticipate, enjoy and laugh, sleep and finally rest in peace.... free of those five prison walls, full of plague, the world calls "freedoms".    Those within the confines of these prison walls do not see them as confinement but as exclusive, excluding those they see as peculiar believers in a personal God. They do not even want those "unscientific" believers in Jesus in their exclusive space. So they strengthen their incarcerating walls and refuse him/her entry into their elitist presence. Any university student who has a strong faith in Christ need not seek credentials in the fields of science.  Even if they earn such degrees, they will find those walls refusing them entry into that field of endeavor. That private prison is locked up tight and closed to believers, but the inmates think it is the believer who is blind, enslaved and left out .... when it is they themselves. RB




"Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken ...." Jer.51:58

Dying Old Man Writes His Two U.S. Senators His Final Thoughts

Common Sense Commentary: When a person knows they are dying soon, everything is reduced down to the naked truth, the most urgent issues, their last will and testimony.
There isn't time or energy to beat around the bush, be diplomatic, or waste words. When you are dying, lying is the last thing you want coming out of your mouth. When your final days are draining out of your feeble life, love of family, friends and country,  as well as the God of your eternity, compel your last words to be few and true. Here is the last gasp of concern for his country and countrymen of a dying, old American. RB

April 3, 2013

Senator Patty Murray
Senator Maria Cantwell
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a Command Sergeant Major , U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt important - honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of our various governments. I have served my country,paid my taxes, worked hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and artifacts.

Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at my country and my government. I shall only point out a very few things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year!  Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.

Last year, the president spent an estimated 1.4 $billion on himself and his family. The vice president spends $millions on hotels. They have had 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of Representatives and Senate have become America 's answer to the Saudi royal family. You have become the "perfumed princes and princesses" of our country.

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. "Obama Care," a bill which no more than a handful of senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "one percenters," consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (for which, of course, you plan to blame the Republicans, anyway).

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know - (1) How to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote ) who are looking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called "safety net" has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps - pretty much all Democrat voters - and the program is
absolutely rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional oversight?

I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the second oldest profession (politics), bears a remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.

As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 - 1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." I'm only guessing that this applies to the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than Congress?

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use, and what health care we must buy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the consumer more and more every day.

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me "You'll just have to take a pill," while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.

The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might be generated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe that you, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares. This letter will, however, go on line where many others will have the chance to read one person's opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $17 trillion national debt for which your children and ours, and your grandchildren and ours, ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up the tab.

My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to destroy this country I deeply love and put it so far in debt that we will never pay it off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your power. For you, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.
Sincerely,

Bill Schoonover
3096 Angela Lane
Oak Harbor, WA 98277

Only In America! If We Look Stupid, It's Because We Are

Common Sense Commentary: Some things are so extremely bad as to be impossible for humans to accomplish, but which plainly prove the existence of a real, diabolical, but brilliant Devil. RB


(10) Only in America ... could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a
$35,000.00 a plate campaign fund-raising event.

(9) Only in America ... could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when they have a black President, a black Attorney General and roughly 20% of the federal workforce is black while only 14% of the population is black. 40+% of all federal entitlements goes to black Americans – 3X the rate that go to whites, 5X the rate that go to Hispanics!

(8) Only in America ... could they have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner (the head of the Treasury Department) and Charles Rangel (who once ran the Ways and Means Committee), BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

(7) Only in America ... can they have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.

(6) Only in America ... would they make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege, while they discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just 'magically' become American citizens.

(5) Only in America ... could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."

(4) Only in America ... could you need to present a driver's license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.

(3) Only in America ... could people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).

(2) Only in America ... could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars more than it has per year - for total spending of $7-Million PER MINUTE, and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money.

(1) Only in America ... could the rich people - who pay 86% of all income taxes - be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who don't pay any income taxes at all.

A word from Jesus to Christians: "Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. " 1Jn.44.

Fortunately Christians don't have to participate in the insane logic and actions of the unreasonable, illogical and contemptuous worshipers of "self" in this country. RB

What Is God's Name ?

Common Sense Commentary:

The Bible ascribes dozens of titles to the God and Creator of the universe: but what is His name? His name is translated "LORD" (all caps) in the Old Testament Hebrew, and is used several thousand times. another Hebrew word translated "lord" (lower case) is "adon" and simply means sir, owner or master (boss) about 200 times. Historically, people have used titles rather than names when speaking to or about those in authority. A third Hebrew word translated "Lord" Heb. Adonia (capitalized) and means "my owner" or "my master", and is used about 400 times. But God's name, "LORD" (all caps), is translated several thousand times from what is known as the "Tetragrammaton", and means "four letters". The four letters are YHVH or JHVH and they both mean, "HE WHO IS". The Tetragrammaton's YHVH and JHVH are obviously unpronounceable, but are theonyms of the name of God. When God Himself uses His name, He does not, of course, say, "HE WHO IS". That is in the third person, which would be how we would speak of Him to another person. "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is ...." Heb.11:6. In our prayers, we would speak directly to God, in the second person, and say, "LORD, YOU ARE". But God would say, of Himself, "I AM". And that is exactly what He told Moses His name is, in Exodus 3:13-15. God had spoken to Moses out of the burning bush and told him to go tell Pharaoh to "Let my people, Israel,  go free". Moses was wanted for murder in Egypt and his kinsmen, Israel, were slaves to Egypt's Pharaoh, and Moses knew neither would believe him when he complicated their lives and angered Pharaoh. So he answered God..... "And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT (WHO) I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD (YHVH) God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations." Exodus 3:13-15.  So God's name is "I AM", "YOU ARE", "HE IS".

To make YHVH / JHVH pronounceable, three vowels were taken from other titles of God, Elohim and Adonai and placed in the three spaces between each of the four letters to make them pronounceable and therefore transliterated YHVH to YEHOVAH and JHVH to JEHOVAH. Both are in the third person of "I AM" .... "HE WHO IS". LORD, in all caps, is almost always used in conjunction with "God", thus, "LORD God" or "HE WHO IS... God."

Jesus, like God, and as God the Son, also said, of Himself,
".... Before Abraham was, I am." John 8:58. He also said..... 

"I am come in my Father's name...." Jn.5:43. 

"I am the bread of life ...." Jn.6:48.

"I am the light of the world...." Jn.8:12.

"I am from above...." Jn.8:23.

"I am he ...." Jn.8:24.

"I am the door of the sheep." Jn.10:7.

"I am the good shepherd ...." Jn.10:11.

"I am the Son of God ...." Jn.10:36.

"I am the resurrection ...." Jn.11:25.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life ...." Jn.14:6.

"I am the true vine ...." Jn.15:5.

"As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he,
they went backward and fell on the ground." Jn.18:6. RB