Is It War?

When I was in the Navy, we got to hang around with Marines quite a bit. The Marines have an amazing way of taking something as stressful as what they are called to do and making it look easy and some of the strangest comments about war that I have heard have come from a Marine. I don’t think that anyone really likes war, and some would say that there is never a time for war, but the fact of the matter is that there are wars and they are not pretty.
One Marine friend of mine said that he was taught in boot camp that war was about killing people and breaking things and that is why God created Marines. That may sound overly simplistic, but in reality it is very true. Somehow we have gotten this idea that wars can be fought with minimum of either one of those things happening. If we only had a smarter bomb or better intelligence, we could not kill as many people and break fewer things. But that will only lengthen the time it takes for the ones that you are fighting to give up and surrender. Remember that old saying, “all’s fair in love and war”? There was a reason behind that saying and it wasn’t so that fewer people would die and less buildings explode. As long as we try to make a war a good one and a cleaner and safer war, we are going to be terribly disappointed. Wars are not meant to go on forever and are not meant to be political. They are about killing people and breaking things and whoever kills the most and breaks the most usually wins.
The other day my blog was about words and their meanings. War is one of those words that we have used to the point of not really understanding what it is. When I was a teen, the USA started the war on drugs. Now we have marijuana just about legalized and more people than ever addicted to prescription drugs, not to mention the most addictive street drugs that have ever existed. We have a war on poverty that has only resulted in more people on food stamps than ever before.  What we in the USA consider poverty would be considered middle class in most other countries. The latest “war” that everyone is hearing about is a war against women. Supposedly, if you don’t believe the same way about birth control as someone else, that makes you at war against half of the people on the planet. Come on people, these things are not wars.
There is one war that few recognize, but it is about killing people and breaking things. It is a spiritual war for your soul. Satan wants to kill, steal and destroy. He wants to deceive and lead souls to an eternal death. Satan wants to destroy marriages, and the lives of our children by fooling them into thinking that they are just some sort of mistake that resulted in our existence. He wants to destroy your reality by getting you addicted to drugs and alcohol. He wants people to think that the most important thing in life is the fun that you can have and that the thought of a God that is the ultimate King of the universe is only for people who are weak-minded and uneducated.
God has given us victory over all of this, but He is not drafting people to fight on His side. He is accepting volunteers and is willing to equip those who join the fight with everything needed to defeat the enemy. The Bible describes the final battle in this war as one where Satan and his followers are destroyed and their kingdoms wiped out. Those who are on the winning side will take part in a Kingdom that on this earth is only a fantasy. The Kingdom of God, where there is finally peace and war no longer exists, because the real war was fought and the enemy and his stuff was destroyed.
God knows how to win a war.

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Taxes

I will try my best not to be too political on this one, but… I received my property tax notice for some rental property that we have in another county and was shocked to see that our mobile home was assessed at just $2000 less than we paid for it. So I decided that I would make a trip to have that challenged. You can’t do it over the phone or by mail or online, it must be done in person. You can pay online, via mail or phone though. Once there, a 1.5 hour drive, it took 3 minutes for me to fill out a 5 question form and be told that it would take 6 to 8 weeks and that I needed to go ahead and pay it before it was delinquent.
I do not mind paying taxes, they do provide the government with a way to provide the necessary provisions of education, fire and police and the ever important land fill. And, Jesus said that it was appropriate to pay taxes and I want to be a good citizen and a good Christian. So what is my complaint you ask?
My mobile home is like any other mobile home, it depreciates in value every year. Not to mention that even regular homes have depreciated in value over the last few years due to the struggling economy. For the last 5 years my mobile home has gone up in value twice and stayed at that value for three straight years. This is a single wide, 1999 model mobile home. It is not on the same tax bill as the land that it sits on, so that does not account for the value at all. In fact, thanks to our legislators, once I feel like I don’t want to live in or rent this anymore to someone, I can’t even sell it and have it moved. Any mobile home over 10 years old can not be moved in this county so it must be torn down and taken to the land fill I am paying for. So really it looks like it is of even less value since it turned 10 years old, 2 years ago.
We had a friend look up the blue book value of this and it was not even half of what the tax bill claimed it to be valued at. So I asked the lady if they found my claim to be valid and adjusted the value of the home, would they go back a few years and refund me the money that I was overpaying. She said, “Oh no! We can’t do that!” I asked her if I owed back taxes if they would require me to go back and pay them and she said, “Why yes we would.” I said to her, “That doesn’t seem fair now,does it?” To which she said, Sir. Will that be all today?” I told her it would and wished her a Merry Christmas.
I don’t use the land fill in this county. I don’t use the schools in this county and judging from the people who are educated there and now working in the tax offices, they don’t use them either or they aren’t learning much when they do. I rarely complain and pay my taxes on time. I just wish that when I over pay, that they would do what is right and give my money back.
But that is the problem with paying more taxes. The more you pay, the more they keep, and no one gets anymore service from them. The schools are not any better, just ask someone who has kids in them. The police and firefighters don’t get paid what they deserve and the people in the tax offices are not doing their jobs to the best of their ability. But at least people who don’t work will get a check in the mail and people who don’t legally belong in our country will receive a free education and medical treatment. But most importantly, I get to throw my trash in what ever land fill I choose between the two counties that I pay taxes in. Hopefully one day I will get rich and can pay even more taxes to cover the lazy, the illegal, and the bureaucrats who get paid from my hard work through all these years.

Save The World?

I was sent a disturbing email today from a friend whose company is circulating a warning to its employees about the new light-bulbs and their dangers. The pictures that went with it were very graphic and showed a person’s foot that had been cut by a broken bulb and how the mercury in these bulbs caused massive damage to the foot. I have to be honest with you, I would rather have the earth warm up a half a degree over the next 50 years than to suffer this kind of damage from a light bulb breaking. But nobody questions the “green” people, ’cause they are saving the planet.
When are we going to stop having knee jerk reactions to “science” that is wishy-washy at best. Are you willing to cut down on CO2, which is produced by every air-breathing animal on the plant, far more than our cars produce, and is absorbed by plants, which in return give off oxygen, (remember real science?) in exchange for light bulbs that contain deadly mercury? How does this save the planet? We quit making thermometers that used mercury because there is no doubt that mercury kills, but save the planet, kill the foot lights are okay?!?!
What about the electric car? Has anyone thought of the dangers that are going to come from these? First, the hypocrisy. “Green” people have been telling us about the evils of plastic for a long time now. How it sits in landfills for thousands of years without breaking down. Here’s an idea, leave it out in the sun for a few months and watch in deteriorate. But these same people want us to use lots of large batteries that are housed in plastic to run our cars. What about the chemicals that are in these plastic laden batteries? You mean to tell me that they are safer than the bi-product of us exhaling? I can’t wait for the interstates to be shut down for days due to hazmat teams having to clean up toxic chemicals from the two electrics cars that are saving our planet. I just hope the wind doesn’t ever stop blowing or it never rains again so that the clean energy needed to charge these cars save us from the evil fossil fuels that are reliable and not as toxic as the light bulbs we are being forced to use.
I read where global warming was real. The scientist had determined that the average temp in Antarctica had risen 1.24 degrees over the last 40 years. The average summer temperature there is -17.5 degrees Fahrenheit. So if that is the adjusted temperature for global warming, ICE STILL DOESN’T MELT! And if the average temperature in your neck of the woods is 65, 75, or 85, what changes in your life if now it is 66.5, 76.5, or 86.5? The answer is…nothing.
My dad taught me as I was growing up not to litter, not to pour oil down the drain, and how to keep my car running at its peak efficiency. He made sure that if we went fishing or hunting or camping that we left the place cleaner than when we arrived. I don’t believe in being reckless with our planet, but also don’t believe that humans can destroy it, short of an all out nuclear war. The Bible says that the planet will be here until God decides to wrap it up, not man. I am going to trust God over the weird science of today that is often tied to political motivations and government grants, oh yeah, that goes back to political motivations.
Its time that we began to use our common sense and not be afraid to question something just because it is popular. I love the new light bulbs for the fact that they last a long time. I like being able to make pigs out of watermelons and using the light bulbs as the pig’s tail. I am just not willing to blindly say that it is a better bulb because someone who overlooked the dangerous mercury in them, tells me that it will save the planet. I am not going to buy a car that runs off electricity until someone tells me that it is okay to walk through the chemicals that will spill out if I am in a wreck that busts these planet saving plastic encased batteries, AND…they can prove to me that rechargeable batteries in my car are better than the ones that I just through away because they only lasted 10 minutes in my flashlight. I don’t want to drive my 100 miles on a charge to find out I can’t get home because the next charge only takes me 90 miles.
Think about it.