Our son Stephen has been on a roll recently. The other day I was complaining about how much money Medicare and Blue Cross had spent on me in the past two years. Stephen, listening to my conversation with Sheila, spoke up and said, “Let’s face it, Dad. It costs a lot to restore classics.” Then, today, again talking to my bride, I complained about all the medicines I’m taking – seven pills a day (counting two “baby” aspirin) and still not being allowed to do any meaningful work. Again, Stephen interrupted a conversation with, “To save an old wreck you have to put it up on blocks.” When we finished laughing, I gave him a job to do. 

I have been promoted (?) from three days a week in Cardiac Rehab to two days a week in what I fondly call the Cardiac Club. Receiving my certificate I said that I had it on good authority that Mary Ann and Tammy had gone to the administration and demanded combat pay if they kept having me for three days a week or else they were going to put in for psychiatric disability as a result of emotional stress. Mary Ann said the administration had promised to keep that secret.

Stephen caught six mice in his corn bin. Not wishing to either free them or kill them himself, he took them to the front yard and the cat. Baxter, who leaps our fence with ease, accompanied him. One by one, Stephen turned the mice loose. Our cat was uninterested. Baxter caught and killed four of them, only one escaping his attentions. I have an otherwise worthless seventy pound Rottweiler who is a mouser! (If the numbers don’t add up, the one the cat sniffed at ran free also. 

For murder mystery lovers, Sheila and I recommend M. C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth mysteries.  There is always humor, the murder victim is always a person you don’t like and the murderer is one who you are happy to see punished. We consider her “A Highland Christmas” the best of all. 

I was sitting on the front porch on our recent 90 degree Fathers’ Day, in clothing that would have had me arrested in any city, reading a card my bride had given me. It said, “You don’t know how I feel when your arms are around me.” I looked at her and asked, “Hot and sweaty?”

Sheila has been “hinting” that a two seated rocking bench at the Mennonite store would be nice to have, so, this morning, She and I drove up to price it. There was no doubt it was comfortable, sturdy and would fit on the porch. When I found out the price was $129, I told her I could afford it, it would be her birthday present. Then, looking at Mr. Yoder, I said, “Her birthday is coming up on the 29^th. Sheila said, “My birthday is in July, not June, and it’s on the 21^st not the 29^th.” I said, “I was thinking of our anniversary.” Her reply, “We were married in August.” “Well, August the 30^th.” “No, August the 17^th.” Then she looked at the amused owner and said, “We’ve only been married 30 years, he’ll learn in time.”

Returning home, relaxing on the porch, my bride said, “I’ve always heard about those husbands who can’t remember birthdays and anniversaries. You are so much better. If I played my cards right, we could celebrate birthdays and anniversaries every month, on the 17^th, the 21^st, the 29^th….”

Sometimes, Sheila’s sarcasm is not overly subtle, so we wandered on to the Mennonites – who are wonderful newcomers to the Furnace – and churches we have attended. I confess my problem with all of them is that I seldom see them relate Christianity and its beliefs to the problems we face in the world today. Sheila and I agree that Christianity is under steady attack in our nation and that we need more ministers – and churches – to speak out against these attacks cleverly concealed under innocuous sounding laws such as the Hate Crime legislation, late term abortion “rights” and diversity rulings - all of which sound good, but have been and are used to attack practicing Christians. 

Just as a side note, I believe it is much easier to attend church than it is to be a Christian.

I read that Obama has promised to create 500,000 new jobs this year. Yes, five hundred thousand. I didn’t realize he would need that many new government workers for his programs.

People who are old, which now includes me, and who grew up in a Christian nation can recall the joke about how a child, caught doing something that he or she knew was wrong, would say, “The devil made me do it.” The current Democratic leadership, their hands too often appearing in the cookie jar, has changed this. The new excuse is, “Bush made me do it.”

Obama is talking about putting a salary cap on top executives. Will that apply to Congress and entertainers such as Oprah and football and basketball stars? If not, why not?

The brilliant Biden, well known for being consistently wrong on important issues over the years, has been bragging about the increasing diversity of the United States. Ignoring the problems of every nation or area that has diversity (Northern Ireland, the Baltic States, numerous African nations) has anyone ever heard of the Tower of Babel? In the book of Genesis, the nations all agreed to come together in one place. The result was disaster. What is the future of a United States with multiple laws and multiple languages in which Muslims control one area, Hispanics another etc.? Brag on Biden.

The United States Constitution decrees that Congress shall make the laws and the Executive, under the President, shall enforce them. As a check on the President’s powers, all persons appointed to top level government positions by the President must be approved by Congress. Former Presidents have appointed “Czars,” who report only to the President and exercise Presidential powers, to solve emergency problems. Usually this requires only one or two during a Presidency. President Obama has appointed more in his first six months than all other Presidents combined. Articles I have read have given estimates between 15 and 21. All of these Czars report directly to Obama.  He has asked for, and received, Congressional approval on none of these appointees.  To date, only Senator Byrd of Virginia, a Democrat, has complained that Obama is usurping the powers of the Congress by placing appointees in positions of power without their receiving Congressional approval.

Am I alone in remembering that when Clinton became President one of his first acts was to fire all of the Inspector Generals and replace them with people of his own choosing? There was no outcry and little publicity from the press or television news at the time. Then, when Bush became President he fired three Inspector Generals for not doing their jobs. He was roundly criticized in major newspapers and television news programs for this act. There was no hint that they were investigating any people that he liked, in fact there was no hint they were investigating anything. Now, Obama has fired two Inspector Generals, both of whom were investigating, and in one case finding proof of, misdeeds on the part of persons who were wealthy and politically prominent Obama supporters. I have not seen this reported by the mass media, only by the Drudge Report.  So much for the news reporting system which supposedly provides an informed citizenry.

I have read is that Obama declared himself a citizen of Indonesia at one college. Critics are now challenging his Constitutional eligibility to be President. I put little credibility into the value of these challenges. Everyone knows that Obama will lie for his own good at any time or place, why should he have been any different when it helped him get money as a college student?

I enjoyed the cartoons on Townhall.com today (Jun 22), but thought the one could have been improved. It showed an older couple looking at a beat-up, rusted pick-up truck surrounded by weeds with the caption, “…buy some gas and turn it in for our $4,500 clunker payment.” With my broken chest, bad heart and aching back, I thought a better one would be to have two women standing looking at an aged, bearded man in a rocker and wondering, “Is that $4500 clunker payment restricted to cars?”

Christian Nation

By

William D. Dannenmaier

In one of his speeches, Senator Obama said that the United States is “no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers” (Christian News Network: June 28, 2006). I thought of his claim while listening to a sermon on Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt.

What he said is simply not true. Just as Moses led the children of Israel, leaders of the Pilgrims and Quakers led their people out of the discrimination and poverty of England, Holland and Germany to America. Here, they and their descendants established a government based on the principles that all people are created equal before God and that all people should be equal before the law. Most importantly, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, under the leadership of William Penn, accepted all peoples as equals before the law, without regard to their race or religion. You could be a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or an atheist, it didn’t matter. What did matter was that you obeyed the laws based on Christian principles. In that sense, an important sense, it was a Christian state. 

I know little about Israel, but I have slight experience. While teaching in Canada I bought a book written by a Christian Israeli. He documented that the Christian community in Palestine had supported the Jews in their struggle for independence. He also named Christian communities that had fought with the Jews that were forcibly removed from “strategic” areas to other areas in the new nation. His own family, he reported, had lived and farmed in the interior of what is now Israel for generations. One day the Israeli military decided it wanted his family’s home and farm. The family went to court and the judge ruled in their favor, but the military ignored that, demolished his home and took his land. I gave that book to a student, intending to purchase a new one after I returned to the United States. Later I was sorry. The book, published in England and available in Canada was not available in the United States.

I have two other, lesser, examples.  A friend of my youth, Alex Tecklin who owned a tailor business and whom I came to know well during my years as a stockboy in men’s clothing at Famous Barr, offered me a partnership when I went to see him after leaving the army. In a later visit he told me that he, an orthodox Jew, was closing his business and migrating to Israel, his religious home. A few years later I encountered him in downtown St. Louis. When I expressed surprise he said, “Israel was disappointing, it is not a democracy, it is a military dictatorship. 

In a second incident, years later, I had a student at AustinPeayUniversity who liked me and ran a business. He came to offer me a job, having received a contract as a minority business owner. Chatting – I wasn’t interested in the job – he told me his history. Originally from Cuba, with a Hispanic name, he had migrated to Israel and served in the Israeli army. After completing his service, he migrated to the United States. I told him Alex’s story and he agreed. He said it was a military dictatorship and hard on any citizen who did not belong to the correct, orthodox, minority. He said that was why he left. 

In terms of the United States being a “Muslim” nation, I don’t believe that and wouldn’t want it. I know a lot more about it from the refrain on newspaper articles on Muslim’s killing innocent people who happened to belong to the wrong sect even though they were Muslim, not to mention what they do to non-Muslims when they control a nation and administer its laws. I have also read some of the Muslim Qur’an. Once you get past the first two or three short surahs (chapters), which are almost condensed versions of the first few books of the Old Testament, you find a religious document, which places women in a second place, Christians and Jews in an even lesser place and advocates death for all other minorities. How is it possible for laws based on such a religion to co-exist peacefully with laws based on Christian principles? The answer is, “It can’t!” For proof examine the problems of Holland and Belgium. 

I know less about Buddhists and Hindus, although I occasionally read articles about Buddhist mobs attacking Christians and Hindu mobs burning Christian churches and killing adults and children alike in varied far eastern nations. I’m always sorry for those Christians and, if I consider it, glad I don’t live there.

Mr. Obama may want the United States to be a land of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other religions and laws, but I don’t. I want it to continue to be a nation based on Christian principles, which permit people of other faiths their beliefs provided their practices do not violate our Christian based laws.