The headlines of the day make me ill.  Our country is caught in a vise grip of secular humanism, in conjunction with the slouch towards neomarxism, which is manifested in this "appease disease" we currently see on display.  The inexplicable worship by the proles of their Paper Messiah and his porous platitudes surges onward.  The post-Christian world stares at truth and yet fails to recognize its identity.  If men's hearts are not changed, they will find ways to oppress others.  You can count on that.  A dead faith has no compassion, no communion, and therefore has no conversion.  Our only hope is that God, in His sovereign election, will change the disposition of the heart to effect a good response. 

God has not called us to sit for truth, He's called us to stand for truth, and I applaud those of you who understand the internal, external, and infernal nature of the battle.  It is easy to become an insecure wimp, relying on human opinions and longing for human approval.  What is needed is a muscular faith that refuses to relent and retreat.  Remember that the Blood will never lose its power.  Always choose principle over popularity.  Let us therefore listen carefully and appropriate all His truth as we fulfill our duties as churchmen, family members, and citizens and shun the insensitive and superficial responses that we expect from others.

Brothers and sisters, the Hope and Change has finally arrived!  This result was bourne of your tireless efforts to register necro-proxy voters, unadulterated devotion to Gaia, progressive tithing, and living an actions-without-consequences lifestyle.  The immaculate coronation of the Most Merciful Lord Barack Obama Messiah has reached fruition.  Finally, a leader untainted by reality!  Glory!  And the heavens and earth rejoice and say Amen!  Hallelujah, Praise the Lord Almighty Obama!  The Savior of the Universe has ascended to his rightful throne.  Lift it up and testify!  I tell you, there has never been a more magical moment in all of my life.  Enraptured with emotion, I openly wept as the convulsions overtook me and my spiritual conversion took place.  I have received the Spirit of the Most Merciful!  Let the multitudes of believers gather to worship him and sing praise.  Lift it up!  Lift it up!  Praise the Lord Obama!  He reigns in the most high!  Praise be the day that the government intercedes and overtakes your life, and rescues you from your own thoughts, ideas, and personal property.  Question not the authority of the Obamessiah.  Say Amen!  Rejoice and be glad!  Your Savior commands you to empty your bank account for the lazy and indolent.  Surrender to the agenda!  Atone for your white guilt!   It is time for white to get right.  Say Amen!  Let the power of redistribution take place in your life today.  Grovel and sacrifice for your proletariat utopia.  Brothers and sisters, rejoice, for your reeducation draweth near!  Can I get an amen?

Things are finally beginning to feel slightly normal around here.  I have been caught up in a strange "hurricane aftermath" fog, and have been dealing with the resulting effects of that.  You may have heard about Hurricane Ike, which decimated the Texas coast, particularly Galveston and Bolivar, and parts further inland.  Thankfully, my household--human and animal alike--emerged unscathed.  We were pummeled with hurricane-force winds (gusting up to 90-100 mph) for about 12 hours straight, as we never got the "eye."  It was weird to feel the whole house house swaying and creaking with each blast of wind.  But, the house withstood the tremendous gusts of wind, sustaining only minimal damage.  Watching the wind snap trees like toothpicks and rip through and destroy our horse barn was incredibly nerve-racking.  Of course, I didn't confine the horses during the storm because they have a better chance of survival if they can move around.  But, it was sad watching them stand out in that mess and brace themselves.  

As soon as the winds died down, we had to rush out into the rain with the chainsaw and start cutting all the trees off the fence and restring the wire.  The neverending tree-cleanup resulted in subsequent, head-to-toe poison ivy.  We also had to deal with no power or water for 10 days straight, which was really inconvenient, but self-sufficient people prepare for such things.  The deafening sound of a generator will also make you a little crazy.  During trying times, it is easy to slip into "woe is me" mode and sit around moping and feeling sorry for yourself.  But, driving around our neighborhood, I realized how blessed we were to still have a livable house.  We kept ourselves busy with work, which mostly consisted of clearing trees and brush.  Many elderly church members needed help, as well as assorted family, friends, and neighbors. 

The entire town of Gilchrist, where we owned property and spent so much time building/remodeling houses, is gone, with the exception of about 8-10 badly damaged dwellings.  I ventured out there this weekend, as they finally allowed people onto the peninsula to view their property.  I cannot fully describe to you in words what I witnessed.  A once thriving, laid-back, little beach town is now a desolate, forgotten tsunami.  The previously serene landscape is littered with debris as far as the eye can see.  The Crystal Beach area (namely the part we refer to as "the zoo") fared a little better because that is the widest part of the peninsula (about 3 miles), whereas Gilchrist is barely 1/4 mile wide, and probably less now with all the erosion.  So, houses in Gilchrist got walloped from the sea and from the bay. 

The storm surge pushed debris nearly 5 miles inland.  There was nothing left of any of the houses that our friends and family owned, nor is there any trace of the historical "Breakers" house that survived the 1900 storm.  It was truly heartbreaking and just downright shocking.  We were able to identify my father-in-law's house by the few remaining reddish tiles on the remnant of his slab where the downstairs bathroom once stood.  Picking through the rubble buried in the sand, we found pieces of his teak wood floor and some miraculously unbroken dishes.  We also found some items buried in the sand across the road, including our new extension ladder, fully intact.  The only remnant of the exterior portion of the house that we could find were a few of the shingles.  God only knows what happened to the rest of it.  Survivor accounts detail how the storm surge pushed houses off of their pilings, where they floated in the water, crashing into each other like bumper cars and eventually breaking apart.  It is hard to even imagine that, particularly as I traversed through a graveyard of people's personal effects.  I took quite a few pictures of this depressing scene and will upload them as soon as I get my other computer working again.  Quite frankly, I don't know if the government will let anyone rebuild out there.  They said they want to wait a year before making a decision. 

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Now that the initial "hurricane crisis mode" has passed, I am able to focus on other things, like this economic situation.  With false valuations enticing investors to make poor investments and various pressures distorting the proper operation of the markets, there is cause for concern.  But first, how is it that people can be so apathetic about the world around them?  I made a comment at the breakfast table ("no socialism for wallstreet crooks") a couple of days ago to some relatives, and they had no clue about anything.  Faces of blank, blinking eyes and mouths agape just stared back at me.  I am not saying you have to have an unnatural obsession with it, but at least have a rudimentary understanding of things.  Apathy is just insulting.  Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.   

I am not an expert insider on the interworkings of various and sundry financial institutions, but I don't think it is fair for taxpayers to bail out banks and GSEs (whom the FBI is investigating a little too late) who issued ruinous, subprime mortgages to people on foodstamps with no known source of income or steady employment.  Equally irritating are the in-over-their heads, high-risk borrowers who just closed their eyes and signed off on mortgages they could not afford (i.e., adjustable rate) and now want government intervention.  I am sorry, but that is just too damn bad.  The government cannot and should not be the insurer of every need or desire.  Our country is already deeply in debt and being sold down the river piecemeal to foreign entities (a scary thought).  That last thing we need is more debt so we can grovel before the Chi-Coms and hope they buy it.  That is just crazy to me. 

I would also like to know how people were able to obtain these mortgages with such ease.  For all of my various mortgages, constructions loans, car loans, etc., I was put under a microscope to prove that I could afford the loans.  Perhaps this is because I do not belong to some special group, and thus didn't qualify for the benefit of this grand, ACORN-esque social experiment, which resulted from strongarming lending institutions into doling out financial assistance to those who cannot pay it back.  Property ownership is something you earn, not something you are entitled to.  The whole thing is just absurd infinitum.  Instead of this botched, socialistic maneuver to centralize economic control in the hands of a few (as opposed to a true, free-market economy that distributes power to multitudes of workers, inventors, investors, and consumers) and further devalue the dollar, why can't we just cut spending in general?  Foreign aid is just one of the many areas where we could cut spending, along with cutting taxes (corporate and capital gains).  It makes no sense whatsoever to send billions of dollars overseas when our own country is overextended and drowning in debt.  We need to focus on saving the Republic.