No More Excuses

We need to respect the office of the president regardless of who is in office. Remember to pray for our President the way we prayed for the last one. He’s your President, too, and you need to honor this historic achievement.

These sentiments largely come from people who fall into one of two categories: the self-righteous churchy people who only pay passing attention to politics and thought Sarah Palin was the one who said America had 57 states, or the ones who wished assassination on our President and prayed for failure on our troops.

Frankly, neither of these groups have retained any credibility with me in the area of politics throughout this process. There’s no point in addressing them.

However, a group that does need to be addressed is the race-brokers, following in the footsteps of those who have made a living profiting on race relations, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Here is an example of the attitude among the race-brokers. The following bolded text is in response to something I posted (but did not author) on facebook. I have not edited these statements, except to remove the identity of the poster.

I don't expect London to fully understand what the historical significance of this moment in the United States means to us Americans. The ignoring of the fact that only 60 years ago blacks were not allowed to be at the inauguration, and now we are inaugurating our first black President- Barack Obama. Hopefully your country can reach the point when they elect their first African, Indian, Asian, etc. Prime Minister since you beat us to the punch electing Thatcher first woman Prime Minister. So National Enquirer, I mean, London Daily Mail I reject your sarcastic congratulations...

At this moment the politics are not the issue. And what indication have I ever gave that I am judging him based on his color? What irks me is the mocking of the moment, this moment that us as Americans need to get past the ghosts of our nasty and violent past when it comes to race. And realize the work we still have to do (like distribution of the song "Barack the Magic Negro") The Dream has not been fulfilled with the election of President Obama, but it is one step closer to what Dr. King dreamed of. To not recognize this moment and to mock it's significance is just wrong. I would give the same response if a Woman, Black, Asian, Native American, or Hispanic conservative were being sworn in today. I would like to be judged by the content of my character which includes my recognizing that we have come so far and to not salute America for that and mocking it would be a lapse in judgment and indeed a character flaw.

Our first Half-rican (half African) President. And that is history. It don't mater what anyone says. Not preference over any other race just a fact and one that history books will document for all time. There are still racial barriers and racism all around this country as well as in the world. And not only towards blacks but also for whites. There is no way to deny that. When you get the dirty peering looks and the racial slurs, that is real. When both blacks and whites give you crap for being in an interracial relationship, that's a real barrier. No one should vote for someone based on race, nor one should one deny the significance of this great moment. We need to pray for the President and that our country moves past the polarizing partisanship on issues that need togetherness (Immigration, the Economy, etc.). And my party needs to, as Oprah says, get with the program. Chip Saltsman needs not to become the leader of my party. It would be a step backward for a RNC trying to reach out.

So I ask, not just the person above, but everyone who has spoken or written these same type of things: is it issues or is it race? While insisting that race isn’t the issue, the only thing you’ve talked about is race. (I also question the statement that 60 years ago blacks weren’t even allowed to attend inaugurations. Citation, please.)

Barack Obama is half-black, and that’s why you say this election is so important. You keep telling me to support this guy, respect this guy, follow this guy, and then give me no reason to do so – outside of his skin color.

But that is not who he is, that’s not the quality of his character, the essence of his nature, not by the standards we have been taught to use to assess an individual.

Barack Obama is a socialist Marxist who wants to “spread the wealth around” by stealing from the earners and giving to the non-earners.

Barak Obama wants to undermine traditional marriage by repealing the Defense of Marriage Act.

Barack Obama, who said he doesn’t know when life begins, called children “punishment,” equated pregnancy with an STD, and actively opposed mandating that babies born alive after botched abortions should be given life support, thus allowing them to starve to death or succumb to their injuries.

Barack Obama has already committed to using my tax dollars to fund abortions in foreign countries.

Barack Obama wants to weaken our security by pandering to evil dictatorial regimes such as Iran and Cuba.

Barack Obama wants to restrict our constitutional right to keep and bear arms, thus denying American citizens some of those “negative liberties” he said he isn’t too fond of.

That’s who Barack Obama really is. At least do yourself the courtesy of being intellectually honest enough with yourself to admit that you don’t care.

And just to make sure you have ample opportunity to be aware of who Barack Obama is, I’m going to add another area to the right side of my blog to track exactly what ch-ch-ch-changes he brings on my country.

Consider it my “Thank You” card to you, who voted for the historic election of a pro-abortion, pro-infanticide, pro-gay marriage, anti-gun Marxist.

Goodbye, President Bush

Thank you for eight years of pro-life, pro-gun, pro-family, pro-national security leadership that kept us safe after the worst attack in our nation's history, and subsequently liberated millions of men, women and children from tyranny. I will miss you.

And this time next year - after FOCA, government-funded stem cell research, high inflation and unemployment, socialized health care, and gun control that would make the Clintons blush - I have a feeling even some of your so-called "Conservative" critics will, too.

Via con Dios.

Required reading: National Review's Symposium on the Bush White House.

FAIL: They're At It Again

Cleveland County is trying to screw us over again.

A short while ago, Norman City Council took a section of the city and exempted it from property taxes, the idea being that it would encourage retailers to come there and generate a bunch of sales tax revenue for the city. Which sounds great. I'm all about exempting as many people and places from taxes as possible. And, so far, the plan seems to be working. Retailers moved into the area and are doing well.

But of course, we've hit a snag. Cleveland County wants a new jail. And they are supposed to use Norman property taxes to pay for that jail. And now they don't quite have the income they are used to and were expecting to put toward said jail.

The answer? Raise county sales tax!

This means that those of us who live in Moore and Oklahoma City and every other city that is in Cleveland County will get our sales taxes raised to pay for Norman's jail.

I know what you're going to say, that it's a county jail and we live in Cleveland County so it's only fair that we be taxed, too.

No. This was the Norman City Council's doing, and now they are trying to make Moore, SOKC, Noble, Box, Clothier, Corbett, Denver, Slaughterville, Little Axe, Maguire, McKiddyville, Hall Park, Etowah, Franklin, Lexington, Needmore, Spring Hill, Stella and Willow View city residents pay Norman's sales tax for Norman's jail the way we are having to pay for Norman's library and Norman's roads.

And you Norman city residents shouldn't be too excited about this, either. This is your city council that screwed this all up, and now they are literally passing the buck to you, as usual. Haven't you had enough of these guys?

This is the Norman City Council's fault. Let them fix it without penalizing the rest of us.

The vote to increase the sales tax is this Tuesday! Of course, the sneaky little creeps haven't exactly advertised it.

So, already this year, we in SOKC have had to pay extra sales tax for the Maps for Millionaires so Clay Bennet has something to do on Friday nights. And we got extra sales taxes for the transaction between Tinker AFB and GM (there's your bailout, already). We also got our property taxed raised in the summer to go towards Norman's library. Now they are trying to make us pay even higher sales tax for the jail in Norman.

Don't let them get away with it. Vote no.
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By the way, I wouldn't have even heard about this if it weren't for Rep. Mike Reynolds. He's the reason you are hearing about it and are aware that you have the opportunity to vote 'No.' Just FYI.
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UPDATE: There's been some confusion as to the nature of the city/county property tax. Let me try and clear this up. The entire county's property taxes were to be put toward the jail without the creation of a new tax. But because Norman made certain areas property tax exempt, they can't pony up their share of the building fund, so they want to increase sales tax throughout the county to make up the difference.

I will also add, we need to be concerned about the fact that this tax is being used to fund a one-time project - building a building - and that the tax will continue once the intended use for it is past, or after the building is built. It's not like once the jail is completed they're going to say, okay, finished that one, we can lower your sales tax back. Remember the Ford Center.
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Here is an image of the ballot. Note the stated yet still oddly vague supposed time-limit on the tax. (Click the image for larger view).

Also, they want to increase the sales tax a full percentage! That would make Cleveland County sales tax over 9%, making it the highest in the Central OK area. That'll be great for the economy.

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The measure passed 63%-37%. That's still 36.5% more than I expected. At least we tried. We'll get 'em next time.

Obama Doesn't Understand Insurance

This was written by my brilliant husband, State Farm FSR extraordinaire! Really clears up the insurance issue.

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I should have gone on about this earlier, but I didn’t feel it necessary, or really, I just didn’t want to take the time. I wish I would have before because I could have pointed out many of Obama’s misunderstandings and explained things to you better. However, one issue recently mentioned again is more than enough.

Obama says he wants his healthcare plan to cover pre-existing conditions. Even if everything else he wants to do was a viable option – which it’s not – this one thing would cause so many problems it would totally disrupt the entire industry on its own. Aside from that, healthcare companies wouldn’t cover them on their own so it’d take a government takeover. This would trigger more problems than I could list if that happened.

However:

Getting coverage for pre-existing conditions sounds great. If you have some major sickness, you would want your carrier to pay for your care because they would have had to pay if you had coverage before you were diagnosed with your illness, right? Great idea….you may think…

Covering pre-existing conditions is an impossibility with insurance! Let me point out that health insurance companies will cover you for things you already have like high blood pressure or minor arthritis, maybe asthma, but not for something like cancer or diabetes, or any other major disease that can result in major treatment needs coming up. You will pay an additional rate if you have high blood pressure because you are a higher risk, just like people who have tickets or accidents in their driving history will pay more for car insurance.

Now you may say at this point, “Insurance companies are being greedy, they can’t do that. They can’t cover me for one thing and not for another.”

Let me give you an example with something you are probably more familiar with: your car insurance. Obviously, you know you have to have car insurance to have coverage when you have an accident. Say you don’t want to pay for the insurance (like 33% of drivers here in Oklahoma) so you don’t buy it. You are then involved in an accident where you are at fault. Just call up the insurance company and pay your first month, they’ll cover it, right? No, that would be called a pre-existing condition. You’ve already wrecked your car, they are not going to pay for that or the other person you hit. It just can’t happen. They would go out of business; it’s unethical to get a service for which you have not paid. You should have had insurance before you got in the accident.

Apply this same principle to health insurance. If you’re sick with something before you get insurance, they can’t give you new coverage. You should have already had health insurance. Even if you had to quit your job because of health, you have something called COBRA already available where you can keep your insurance for 18 months after you have quit working, regardless. Also, you can get in a state insurance pool that does not exclude anyone for anything.

No insurance company can reasonably cover pre-existing conditions. If the insurance company said they would do this, no one would get car insurance and then the rate all the good drivers would pay would be so astronomical it would be unaffordable, more than it already is. Insurance is about spreading risk. The insurance company has people (actuaries) who do lots of math all day and estimate out how many people are going to have accidents on average and they set premiums accordingly. People trying to get coverage for something that cannot be estimated would drive the industry into the ground. It’s not greedy to make money, it’s how business has to work. The insurance industry employees thousands of people and they have to earn a living just like every other industry. Did you know that Wal-Mart makes a profit? So does the movie theater, the restaurant….everyone does. They would go broke if they covered pre-existing conditions. No one would pay for insurance until they needed it. The companies would get stuck with major bills for major health conditions and would not be able to pay the claims of people who really paid for the service.

Insurance is designed as a transfer of risk system. You get it when you don’t need it to pay out when you do need it. You can’t buy life insurance when you just found out you have cancer and only 3 months to live. It doesn’t work that way. It goes back to welfare, wanting something for nothing. Society can’t function that way. Insurance definitely can’t function that way. They can’t pay for the guy who wasn’t responsible and didn’t take care of his insurance and let the guy who is responsible stuck with the bill.

Hope this makes sense. Bottom line, let competition rule the health insurance industry. Competition is what has driven this country forward and we are on the verge of letting it all go.

Don’t let that happen. Vote for freedom, vote to keep our Republic strong.

Open Letter to Joe Lester

Dear Joe Lester,

I am writing to tell you I will not be voting for you. I will be recommending to any Cleveland County voter I encounter that they do not, either. Please let me explain why.

Early in the primary race, I met you and heard you speak at the Frontier Country Republican Women’s meeting. During your speech, you mentioned that your most recent “law enforcement” experience was that of 12 years of involvement in Campus Security at the University of Oklahoma.

Being the only female at the meeting having attended college within the last decade, that piece of information was deeply troubling to me. As a recent college graduate, I know first-hand that the term “Campus Security” is an oxymoron. As omniscient as campus security officers are about parking violations, never once in either of the campuses I attended was a campus security officer personally involved in protecting a student, though students’ cars were broken into, students were held up on campus, and there was even a girl randomly and brutally attacked in her dorm, which Security didn’t respond to for hours.

This is why I am a strong advocate of Students’ Right to Carry. Aside from the fact it is clearly a Constitutional right, without it, students like me – unarmed female college students - are what’s known as “prey” on college campuses. Even at OU, unless she is lucky enough to be assaulted while already using a callbox, a female student’s chances of walking away from an encounter unscathed are basically nil. So, I’m sorry, but no one who has ever been involved in “Campus Security” has any business being anywhere near real-life law enforcement.

Secondly, you made a point of emphasizing that you were being supported and endorsed by David Boren. That’s right – that David Boren. Oklahoma’s most liberal Governor in the last 30 years, maybe more. Now, I realize you have no control over who donates to your campaign or makes a statement of support. And I also realize that you have a good personal relationship with David Boren through OU. But the fact that you would stand in the middle of a room of Conservative Republicans and proudly state that he is behind you concerns me. This gives me cause to doubt your own stated Conservative principles.

Both of these reasons are why I did not vote for you in the primaries. And honestly, that would have been enough to turn me away at the run-off vote. But, you’ve made the decision even easier with your recent campaign behavior.

Back several years ago, Mark Hamm was involved in a car accident. He was cited at fault, and received a ticket. His insurance company was supposed to pay off the ticket prior to the date he was to appear in court. The insurance company did not act in time, but did not notify Hamm of their lapse. Therefore, he was not aware he still needed to appear in court. Years later, someone noticed the ticket hadn’t been paid and issued a warrant. Once notified, Hamm paid the ticket.

But is that how you represent the story, Joe? No, it isn’t. I know, because I have gotten your mailer regarding it. And just the other night, I received a phone call from a supposedly “bipartisan” polling place trying to retell your distorted version of this story, implying that Mark Hamm had been issued a warrant for a deliberate, recent conflict with the law. This is false.

As a candidate running against another Republican, negative campaigning is unacceptable. Ronald Reagan told us to never speak evil against another Republican. After the particularly nasty primary races that I and many other Cleveland County Republicans were involved in that involved similar gross smear attempts, mailers and phone calls of this nature leave a particularly bad taste in my mouth and in the mouths of many other voters.

Joe, as a Christian who emphasizes his missions background, openly engaging in smear campaigning by deliberately misrepresenting another Christian’s background to other Christian voters is not only damaging to the Republican party but to the Body of Christ. I realize now, after the primary races, that not all Christians take that seriously. But I do. And many others do. And you should.

Now, I realize that I’m not a very important person, and my opinion doesn’t matter any more than any other person’s opinion. But I am a voter. And I will not be voting for you tomorrow.

Not Against Flesh and Blood

The political landscape of the State of Oklahoma is currently a front line in spiritual warfare.

In an unprecedented move, an openly gay man, Jim Roth, is running for a statewide office. He was previously appointed Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner by Governor Brad Henry when the position was vacated last year by the previous Commissioner. Now, that seat is up for election, as well as one other, and he could very well be the first open homosexual to be elected to office by an entire state. The fact that this is happening in Oklahoma and not, say, California is even more significant. Because of this, gay activist organizations from across the nation are pouring money into his campaign.

Next month, several major high school districts across our state are participating in the Day of Silence, an event created to recognize the oppression of homosexuals as inhumane. Students are encouraged by faculty to participate by wearing special t-shirts, taking a day-long vow of silence and handing out literature promoting the event. Obviously, the students who refuse to participate will be easy to identify.

Now, of course, this is America. As Americans, citizens have the right to live the way they want to live, promote what they want to promote and donate to whom they want to donate. They can say what they want and do what they want, and are protected by our Constitution, as they should be.

However, this is one of those times when being a Christian can conflict with being an American.

As a Christian, I take civic duty very seriously, as you know from previous blogs. The welfare of our country has been placed in our hands. And when America says something is okay but God says it’s not, the choice should be obvious. Christians, American Christians, should tremble in fear when their fellow citizens openly and publicly refute the Word of God as unnecessary, irrelevant, and untrue. And when we have the power to stop or at least resist the deliberate, militant march of organized sin, we should run to the forefront of the fight.

Are we to fight homosexuals and their sympathizers? Not really. We must realize who it is we are really fighting against. Make no mistake, sin is sin, and anyone who encourages the social acceptance of sinful living, Christian or not, will have to face the consequences.

But we are not struggling against the sinful and the hateful. We are struggling against the powers of evil, “against spiritual wickedness in high places.” That phrase has never been so plain to me before. Recognize the Enemy for what he is, the Great Deceiver, and recognize the sinner for who they are, the Deceived.

But, with that, recognize the need for truth. God is loving and merciful, or else he would not provide us an escape from our sin. But God is also just and holy. He cannot tolerate sin, and pronounces harsh penalties against those who not only practice it but promote it.

It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to stumble. (Luke 17:1)

I know your works--your love, faithfulness, service, and endurance. Your last works are greater than the first. But I have this against you: you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and teaches and deceives My slaves to commit sexual immorality and to eat meat sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality. Look! I will throw her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her practices. I will kill her children with the plague. (Rev. 2:18-23)

We have an obligation to proclaim the truth. To publicly recognize sin as sin is certainly offensive, but also loving. After all, if we are Christians, and we believe Hell is a real, physical place, why on earth would we be ashamed of warning those we care about away from it?

Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not give up. Instead, we have renounced shameful, secret things, not walking in deceit or distorting God’s message, but in God’s sight we commend ourselves to every person’s conscience by an open display of the truth. (2 Cor. 4:1-3)

We need to understand that the world is meant to be offended by the truth of the Gospel, because it is offensive to it. It is not unloving, but it is at odds with the world and those who cling to it. And while it may hurt and be difficult, Paul talks about the result of such offense, or “grief”:

“For although I grieved you with my letter, I do not regret it…Now I am rejoicing, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance. For you were grieved as God willed…for godly grief produces a repentance not to be regretted and leading to salvation, but worldy grief produces death.” (2 Cor. 7:8-10)

So, Christians, you must decide why you are so embittered against, embarrassed by, ashamed of, or in any way opposed to a fellow believer who stands in the public arena proclaiming the Word of God as truth. Why do so many to try and distance themselves from someone who does that, by saying things like, “she makes Christians look bad” or “I don’t really think that should have been said there/to them/that way.” Are we taking a stand for Christ when we join the world in denouncing those who proclaim his Word? Why do we make excuses for protecting those who need to be broken?

Do you remember how you came to Christ? Do you remember what it took to make you realize you needed a Savior? It took brokenness, guilt, shame, conviction, and an honest look at yourself as a sinner in need of forgiveness. And if that’s what it takes to be cleansed and made new by God, why do we try and shield others from going through that? Why do we try and let our loved ones take the “long way” to Jesus by trying to give them a feel-good version of Christianity without honestly telling them what the Word says? Why do we assume that being nice is enough to bring people to Jesus?