SOLVING OUR PROBLEMS


I can’t tell you how many people are beleaguered with seemingly insurmountable problems. I run into them all the time - so many things in our lives seem to be impossible.

What to do?

Money troubles, family issues, job pressures, illnesses and romance and relationship worries. These - and so many other problems - haunt us all - rich and poor alike.

Now, what to do about this?

Some turn to addictions to cope - drinking, drugs, gambling, sex etc. - thinking that these will help them ‘survive’ their travails. (Of course these only compound the problems.)

Others believe - naively - that the ‘government’ can and will somehow help. Oh, really? Remember Ronald Reagan’s joke about, “Hi, I’m from the government and am here to help you.”

Government usually does not help - even when well intentioned; it usually only makes the problem worse.

It seems that so many of us miss the obvious: we have a built-in Problem-Solving Mechanism - and don’t use it enough.

It is called either ‘prayer’ or merely ‘talking to God’ - simply, easily and any way that makes you comfortable.

Maybe Sunday School or some early religious upbringing turned you off religion - or it taught you the wrong things. But if you are ignoring this built-in Problem-Solving Mechanism, you are living life while running on an almost-empty gas tank.

Here is a key question: do you really believe that you were created and birthed and put here on Earth to be miserable and unhappy?

Why would any god do such a thing?

No, God would not have done that. Instead, He gave us so much - and then he learned from the early days of mankind’s atrocious behavior - that a ‘software manual’ and a ‘teacher’ were needed to ‘teach’ mankind how to live and prosper and - yes - to be happy.

So God gave us two things: the Bible and His only son, sent here in the form of a human being. Their role? To ‘teach’ us God’s path, God’s way to live and prosper - and to be happy.

How obvious it all is.

And yet so many of us miss it all the time.

So many disdain religion - or so many have been improperly taught (in many cases they are ‘over-taught’) that they are turned off. And thus they are not availing themselves of this incredible ‘power’ - asking God for help, advice, guidance and peace of mind.

It is all so simple: Ask and you shall receive.

It does indeed work. But not always the way you think it should; it works the way God knows it should.

All you have to do is talk to God; explain your situation simply and then ask God for help. Period.

Then relax and forget your problem and stop worrying because worrying does not help anything or anyone.

Your problem - somehow, someway - will improve over time. They always do. Or, if they don’t, God will give you - if you ask - the strength to adjust to the new situation.

Along with this simple Problem-Solving Mechanism, there are the simple rules of life - taught through stories in the Bible - illustrated and often shown in vivid detail through the life and death of Jesus Christ.

If you live your life in accordance with those lessons and rules, you are going to be happy and fulfilled. You will be living the life God put you here to live.

It is indeed simple.

Too bad so many people miss this Key to a Happy Life.

If you think you are missing out, take the plunge and try talking to God. He will hear you - and He will help you.

Guaranteed.

JONBENET, IRAN AND ISRAEL



We are at war in Iraq; sadly, our soldiers are dying daily plus so many badly injured troops coming home daily to a new life of rehab and challenges. We are also at war - in Afghanistan, world wide and here at home- against Al Qaeda. Our ally, Israel, is in a mess of a conflict with Hezbollah. Iran is flexing its muscles. Two Fox News Channel correspondents in the Gaza strip were kid napped and haven’t been heard of since.

So what happened last week?

JonBenet Ramsey’s murder case - 10 years old - knocked every other story off the news for 3 days!!!

Some weird little guy in Bangkok claims he did not kill her - “it was accidental” - and he is suddenly better known than any 2008 presidential candidate.

And no one believes he even did it!

Why and how can this happen?

Precisely because of the unrelentingly bad news coming from the Middle East these days.

JonBenet is an escape - an unsolved riddle - with all sorts of weird and duplicitous and incompetent players involved.

Everyone has an opinion - and we’d all rather talk about this case than focus on the awful facts facing us from the Muslim world.

Americans know that we have stepped into a major hornet’s nest over there - and there is no real solution to that mess. It will haunt us for years to come.

We all are searching for a leader here to emerge who can frame this thing in a way that gives us some hope that things might get better. But McCain? Hillary? What a joke they are! We must do better.

More and more you hear the same talk written here over a year ago: the need for an Independent Third Candidate.


Meanwhile, over in Israel, we have just seen what was always unheard of: Israel becoming soft and being unprepared for a war. And, in fact, losing against Hezbollah in the sense that an Israeli enemy is still standing, still arrogant and already prepping for another deadly encounter.

How did this happen?

Overconfidence combined with an Omert Government that lived off the past triumphs of former Prime Minister Sharon. As always happens with a new government, they faced a ‘test’ of some sort: Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, 9/11 etc.

Olmert was so focused on the mess in the Palestinian Authority after Hamas’ huge January victory that he and his generals and their supposedly top-flight intelligence had no clue that Hezbollah was dug in with 10,000 Iranian-supplied missiles.

What a failure of intelligence!

Olmert will not last long as Prime Minister; his approval ratings in one month have fallen from 78% to 40%. He will not be in office a year from now.

Israel is in a stunned state of total shock. 58 years of successful defense again Arab attackers lulled them into believing they couldn’t lose. But, as we are re-learning all over again in Iraq, guerilla warfare where the ‘enemy’ mixes in with innocent civilians is a whole different ball game.

Plus, the PR war is always totally against Israel. The UN is totally against them - witness Kofi Annan’s disgraceful pre-judgement about the UN observers’ deaths early on.

All in all, Israel is de-moralized and angry - especially at their own government’s incompetence and selfishness( Olmert is being investigated for somehow buying a luxury apartment in Jerusalem at a cut-rate and their General Harrutz spent the day before invading Lebanon selling his own stocks). 60% of the Israeli people opposed the cease-fire that their own government agreed to!

And that cease fire agreement made no mention of the two captured Israeli soldiers. Can you imagine that? Can you believe Israel wouldn’t have made that an absolute deal-breaker?

They should have made one thing clear: we get the two men back alive - or we level Lebanon, Syria - and we systematically kill the leaders of Syria and Hezbollah.

Look for Big political changes there - and for a renewed military toughness reflecting the will of the Israeli people.


Iran: is growing more assertive and confident by the day.

Why?

Because they know Bush is weak and our operation in Iraq is a disaster.

Last week on CBS’s Sixty Minutes, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad specifically mentioned Bush’s declining approval ratings. So, obviously, Iran sees Bush’s political weakness here - mostly brought on by the failure in Iraq - and figures they can afford to taunt us and rub our noses in our weakness.

Oh, by the way, one other idea: Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nazrallah, is apparently holed up in the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. Israel wants to kill him. Here is an idea for you: why doesn’t Israel just shoot their way into the Embassy and grab this murderous bastard? Oh, sure, protocol says you can’t do it...sovereignty etc, diplomatic immunity, all those striped-pants niceties...well, if there is any one country in the world that doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to invading someone else’s embassy, it is Iran!!! 1979 showed that they couldn’t care less about the ‘sovereignty’ of another country’s embassy.

Wouldn’t that be a delicious irony?

ISLAM’S WAR AGAINST US


The biggest news of last week was not the Israeli-Hezbollah cease-fire or the failed plot to bomb 10 cross-Atlantic jets or Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut Democratic primary; no, the biggest news - almost five years too late - was President Bush’s statement that we are at war with “Islamic Fascists.”

It is about time!

Ever since 9/11, President Bush has pussy-footed around the basic fact here: we are at war with the radical element of Islam - and maybe with all of Islam because no Muslims ever seem to try to clean up the mess created by their religious brethren.

Just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush White House was celebrating Ramadan in the East Room with a big, fancy dinner while the President extolled Islam as “a peace-loving religion.”

Oh, really?

Perhaps Team Bush was courting Muslim votes; or perhaps they were hoping Islam was ‘peaceful,’ but the plain fact is that Islam long ago declared Jihad against us.

November 4, 1979: Tehran: a group of so-called ‘students’ over-ran the US Embassy and seized all American personnel as hostages. That was the first - blatant - act of the Holy War against the West - and in particular - against the United States.

Within Islam itself there are many different strains: the Wahabi strain, Sunni, Shia. They often hate each other more than they hate us. They live according to their own civil law - the Shariah - that over-rides local or national or federal law.

To use logic to understand these people is a waste of energy.

They simply do not think like we do.

Their values do not mesh with ours: their view of women, the superiority of men, the use of ‘martyrdom’ - these are all views on life that will never fit in with our way of life.

Here in the United States, the Muslim population has fit in quite well. They chose to live in the United States - presumably to enjoy the freedoms we have - and they have comported themselves well. Perhaps they, too, are now disdained by their Muslims brothers around the world for becoming part of the West? (The American Muslim population does provide convenient hiding places and cover for terrorist cells; plus there are repeated instances such as the 1000 cell phones-in-the-truck guys who may be home-grown terrorists.)

Some believe that Osama bin Laden has declared a defensive Jihad against America for several reasons: A) Our troops’ presence on Muslim lands; B) Our support of corrupt Muslim governments (Saudi Arabia, Egypt etc., which exploit Muslim people); C) Our plundering of Arab oil; D) Our support of Israel; E) the pathetic conditions of the Palestinians.

In this view, we Americans are at fault - mostly due to our consumption of oil and our support of Israel.

Of course, these radical Muslims want to “wipe Israel off the map,” as Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated.

Now, let’s face a few facts:

1) The USA is not going to lose a war against Islam - or against the radical wing of Islam; the more they try these acts of murder, the angrier and more determined the American people become.

2) We are not going to allow Iran or their proxies to “wipe Israel off the map”; Israel is smarter and more clever - and, when necessary, even more brutal then their enemies. They will do anything to survive.

3) The anti-American feelings inside the Muslim world have clearly been exacerbated by our unnecessary pre-emptive invasion and occupation of Iraq; oddly, America gets no points for having deposed one of the Muslim world’s most brutal dictators - Saddam Hussein - and the ‘gift’ of freedom and Democracy to 35 million Iraqi citizens.

4) The Muslims are committing - my term here - ‘social segregation’ - by choosing a backward path as the rest of the world zooms ahead into science and technology. Schools that teach only the Koran - the Madrassas - and ignore math, science, computers and learning all the tools we need to prosper in the 21st century - are a signal that much of the Muslim World is choosing a Path to Nowhere.

5) Politically here at home, we need to re-think every aspect of our conduct of this War with Islam. Our foreign policy, energy policy and domestic policing policy all need to recognize that some of the Muslim World is dedicated to dying - and taking as many of us along with them. That makes fighting them much more difficult.


Conclusion: we are one assassination away from the radical fundamentalist Muslims getting very sophisticated nuclear weapons: if Pakistan’s Pervez Musharref were to be killed - and they have tried several times - the radicals who dominate Pakistani intelligence and the lower officer corps of their Army would seize control of their nukes.

It is not unreasonable to see Osama do to Pakistan what he has done to 2 other Muslim countries he has lived in - Somalia and Afghanistan - and basically run the government from behind the scenes. You can bet he has plans to kill Musharref and take control of the nuclear arsenal.

We better wake up to the evil nature of our enemy - and what they are planning.

HOUSE COLLAPSES



In just the last several days, knowledgeable political analysts on the right have come to a startling conclusion: the Republicans are going to lose control of the House of Representatives in November - and there is a 50-50 chance that they’ll lose control of the US Senate as well.

What has happened to bring so many analysts to this consensus:

1) Iraq is sliding more and more into an obvious civil war. And last week’s Senate testimony from Centcom Comndr. General John Abizaid and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Peter Pace that the “sectarian strife” was very possibly moving toward a civil war was a startling admission by the two military men overseeing the Iraq campaign.

When they confirmed the very real possibility of a civil war that sent shivers up and down the spines of dozens of GOP incumbents running this November. And the White House - already consumed with the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict - is at a loss over how to keep painting an optimistic picture of a deteriorating reality in Iraq.

Make no mistake about it, the GOP had hoped - so said Karl Rove - to make Iraq the centerpiece of their fall election strategy. The line was going to be: “If you want to cut and run, go with the Democrats; If you want to be strong, stick with Bush and the Republicans.”

But that clear-cut approach isn’t working anymore; Iraq is such a mess - with little hope remaining of any type of success - that the majority of voters are now troubled over the entire effort.

Politically, Iraq is not helping the GOP.

Neither are escalating gas prices and the ongoing immigration disaster - which Bush has so mishandled as to divide his party.

The Democrats are, of course, totally inept, incompetent, and immoral; so what else is new?

The voters are disconsolate over the direction of our country. All surveys show that the American people are pessimistic about their future - and cynical about their government officials.

If indeed the House and or Senate switch hands this fall, it does not mean anything for 2008. It is a vote on President Bush and the Republican leadership. And any pick-ups by the Democrats will be strictly anti-Bush and anti-GOP - not pro-Democratic Party.

But we all know they will mis-read their new ‘mandate’ and proceed to launch a million investigations of the Bush Administration; they will spend all of 2007 ripping Bush and the Republican Party to shreds.

That’s politics.

As for 2008, this deteriorating domestic and foreign situation argue all the more for the Independent Third Candidate written often about in this space. Neither party inspires any confidence - and the 2008 candidates are indeed a desultory bunch.

What we have yet to see is a conservative version of the Left’s MoveOn.org: a conservative grassroots and netroots group that taps into the passions of the right. There is widespread anger “out there” over immigration, amnesty for the 20-30 million illegals already here, Dubai Ports World, international trade agreements that seem to ship our jobs overseas and a federal government that is spending money like the liberals used to.

All of this anger and alienation is just waiting to be tapped. And none of today’s Republican candidates - not McCain, Rudy, Allen, Romney - none of them have a clue how deep this anger is or how to “get” it.

2008 is the ideal time for a new candidate - not a part of the ongoing mess in DC - to emerge and re-assert Reagan Conservatism.

That candidate can win the White House in 2008.

Now comes the Big question: who is he and when will we see him?