ENGLISH ONLY EDITION.
Light is sown like seed for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Psalm 97:11
What the Bible says about Jesus
The True Light"In him, (the Lord Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world,…the world didn’t recognize him."John 1:4,9. The Good Seed and the Weeds“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seeds in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.”Matthew 13:24,25.
From the get-go, President Barack Hussein Obama’s motto has been “Share the Wealth”. Not his, of course, but, ours. This “Quest for Equality”, i.e., lack of individualism, i.e., forming
a collective society, if you will, springs from his love for the
teachings of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky, and his upbringing within an
American Communist Family, which led to his association with people who
wanted, with all their hearts to “radically change” America…by any means
necessary.
Obama wants to limit our freedom…by making our choices for us. And, by taking away individual achievement. For example… Thehill.com reports that
The Obama administration is moving forward with
regulations designed to help diversify America’s wealthier
neighborhoods, drawing fire from critics who decry the proposal as
executive overreach in search of an “unrealistic utopia.” A final Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
rule due out this month is aimed at ending decades of deep-rooted
segregation around the country.
The regulations would use grant money as an incentive for
communities to build affordable housing in more affluent areas while
also taking steps to upgrade poorer areas with better schools, parks,
libraries, grocery stores and transportation routes as part of a
gentrification of those communities.“HUD is working with communities across the country to
fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for all,” a HUD spokeswoman
said. “The proposed policy seeks to break down barriers to access to
opportunity in communities supported by HUD funds.”
It’s a tough sell for some conservatives. Among them is Rep.
Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who argued that the administration “shouldn’t be
holding hostage grant monies aimed at community improvement based on its
unrealistic utopian ideas of what every community should resemble.”
“American citizens and communities should be free to choose
where they would like to live and not be subject to federal neighborhood
engineering at the behest of an overreaching federal government,” said
Gosar, who is leading an effort in the House to block the regulations
Civil rights advocates, meanwhile, are praising the plan,
arguing that it is needed to break through decades-old barriers that
keep poor and minority families trapped in hardscrabble neighborhoods. “We have a history of putting affordable housing in poor
communities,” said Debby Goldberg, vice president at the National Fair
Housing Alliance. HUD says it is obligated to take the action under the Fair
Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited direct and intentional housing
discrimination, such as a real estate agent not showing a home in a
wealthy neighborhood to a black family or a bank not providing a loan
based on someone’s race. The agency is also looking to root out more subtle forms of
discrimination that take shape in local government policies that
unintentionally harm minority communities, known as “disparate impact.”
“This rule is not about forcing anyone to live anywhere they
don’t want to,” said Margery Turner, senior vice president at the
left-leaning Urban Institute. “It’s really about addressing
long-standing practices that prevent people from living where they want
to.”
“In our country, decades of public policies and institutional
practices have built deeply segregated and unequal neighborhoods,”
Turner said. Children growing up in poor communities have less of a chance
of succeeding in life, because they face greater exposure to violence
and crime, and less access to quality education and health facilities,
Turner suggested.
“Segregation is clearly a problem that is blocking upward mobility for children growing up today,” she said. To qualify for certain funds under the regulations, cities
would be required to examine patterns of segregation in neighborhoods
and develop plans to address it. Those that don’t could see the funds
they use to improve blighted neighborhoods disappear, critics of the
rule say. The regulations would apply to roughly 1,250 local governments.
Hans von Spakovsky, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, called the Obama administration “too race conscious.” “It’s a sign that this administration seems to take race into account on everything,” Spakovsky said. Republicans are trying to block the Affirmatively Furthering
Fair Housing rule. Before passing HUD’s funding bill this week, the
GOP-led House approved Gosar’s amendment prohibiting the agency from
following through with the rule.
Though segregationist policies were outlawed long ago, civil rights advocates say housing discrimination persists. HUD is looking to break down many barriers, but Gosar suggested the regulation would have negative repercussions. “Instead of living with neighbors you like and choose, this
breaks up the core fabric of how we start to look at communities,” Gosar
said. “That just brings unease to everyone in that area.” “People have to feel comfortable where they live,” he added.
“If I don’t feel comfortable in my own backyard, where do I feel
comfortable?”
Critics of the rule say it would allow HUD to assert
authority over local zoning laws. The agency could dictate what types of
homes are built where and who can live in those homes, said Gosar, who
believes local communities should make those decisions for themselves
rather than relying on the federal government.
If enacted, the rule could depress property values as cheaper
homes crop up in wealthy neighborhoods and raise taxes, Gosar warned. It could also tilt the balance of political power as more
minorities are funneled into Republican-leaning neighborhoods, he
suggested. The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on housing
discrimination in a related case in the coming weeks. At issue is
whether government policies that unintentionally create a disparate
impact for minority communities violate federal laws against
segregation.
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs is
facing accusations that it makes low-income housing funds more readily
available in minority neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods. This
promotes segregation, critics argue, by encouraging minorities to
continue living in poor communities where government assistance is
available. Court observers say the case could have a profound impact on HUD’s rule.
“Government-Funded Upward Mobility”? Are we still in America? How does that work in cities that are already 90 % minority population, like Detroit or Memphis? As Charles Barkley pointed out a while back, Racism is not just a
one-way street. How do you think that these cities go this way? Not all
of their White citizens moved out because they wanted to. But, I digress.
On a Sunday, in October of 2008, outside of Toledo, Ohio,
Democratic Presidential Nominee Obama met a plumber named Joe
Wurzelbacher. Joe, who owned his own plumbing company, dared to ask
Obama about his proposed tax hikes. In fact, he told Obama that he did
not want to pay higher taxes, he was already paying enough. Obama told him,
Now, I respect the disagreement. I just want you
to be clear – it’s not that I want to punish your success – I just want
to make sure that everybody who is behind you – that they’ve got a
chance at success too.” …I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.
Evidently, the “fairness” Obama seeks, includes making everyone’s housing “fair”, too. No individuality allowed in the Proletariat. Welcome to the USSA, “komrades!” Until He Comes, KJ
It’s been a tough few days for the Transportation Security
Administration. First we learned about auditors slipping mock
explosives and weapons past TSA checkpoints 67 out of the 70 times they
made the attempt. That’s a 95% failure rate in an area that should have
zero failures.
In 2004, testifying before the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States, Condoleezza Rice said, “Those charged
with protecting us from attack have to be right 100 percent of the
time. To inflict devastation on a massive scale, the terrorists only
have to succeed once.”
In other words, even a 1% failure rate could be catastrophic. The TSA failure rate is 95%!
But it gets worse. This week, John Roth, the Inspector General of
the Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional committee that
his office found 73 airport workers whose names were listed in a
federal database of possible terrorists.
“TSA acknowledged that these individuals were cleared for access to
secure airport areas despite representing a potential security threat,”
Roth testified.
Have you traveled by air much recently? TSA still knows how to make
the lives of travelers miserable. They still bully too many disabled
children. They still pull elderly women out of line for extra
scrutiny. Yet they allow people known to the government as possible
terrorists to work at the airport with full access to secure areas.
How does this happen?
Psalms 127:1 explains it simply. “Unless the Lord builds the
house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman keeps awake in vain.”
God keeps giving America warnings. He’s telling us that without
Him, our systems of defense will fail. But America refuses to pay
attention. We glibly go our way as if pleasure were the ultimate
purpose in life. Heedless of God, we rush forward “as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.” [Proverbs 7:23 KJV]
Even though good jobs are hard to find, police departments around
the country are having more and more difficulty finding qualified
recruits. One of the main reasons is that they want officers who have
never used marijuana or other illegal drugs. Writing for the
International Association of Chiefs of Police, Lieutenant Wade Derby of
Pittsburg, California said, “Now more than ever, agencies are being
forced to take a hard look at the idea of modifying prehire drug use
standards to ensure enough candidates to fill vacancies.”
Answer: We live in a confused and fallen world, and that confusion extends
everywhere, so that even the most basic questions, like “what gender am
I?” become difficult for some people to answer. Some people claim they
were born as the wrong gender, or at least in the wrong body. A man may
believe he is actually a female, but his soul is “stuck” in a male body.
Such claims receive support from others who advocate a “gender-neutral”
society. But those who view gender distinctions as nothing more than
arbitrary labels or a “box” to be broken out of are actively rejecting
God’s design in creation.
Fundamental to our understanding of human sexuality is that God created
two (and only two) genders. Currently, the world likes to consider
gender (based on a social construct) as having nothing to do with sex
(based on physicality), but the Bible makes no such distinctions. The
Bible cuts through the world’s confusion simply: “Male and female He
created them” (Genesis 1:27).
All the modern-day speculation about multiple genders—or even a gender
“continuum” with unlimited genders—is unbiblical. An individual may
claim to be transgender or “gender-fluid,” but that doesn’t nullify
God’s design and purpose in creating him or her.
Children growing up in this confused world are bombarded with messages
of confusion. Little boys are told they don’t have to be boys; girls are
told they might not really be girls. Whatever they feel they are is
what they are—boy, girl, or a mixture of the two. The world tells them
it doesn’t matter. The confusion and ambiguity are reinforced in many
ways: gender-neutral days at school, the banning of terms such as boys and girls
in the classroom, the proliferation of unisex restrooms, curricula that
promotes homosexual marriage, etc. It’s little wonder that some people
grow up struggling with their sexual identity. But our Lord warned
against leading children astray: “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things
that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone
through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into
the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of
these little ones to stumble’” (Luke 17:1–2).
Some people today state that they have “felt like the opposite gender
since they were children.” But how would one know that? To what are they
comparing their feelings? How people feel is all they know, and, for
each person, how he feels is “normal” for him. Any comparisons to other
people’s feelings would only be an assumption. Some people may become
convinced that they “felt like the opposite gender” at some point in
their lives, but they don’t truly have a baseline comparison.
Given enough conditioning, any one of us can be convinced that we
identify more as the opposite gender. Too often, certain individuals are
labeled as cross-gendered because of natural differences in mannerisms
and responses, and those individuals “back-paint” the concept into their
understanding of their childhood.
But this reimagining of one’s childhood is different from wishing to be
another gender. A person can wish he was the other gender for many
reasons, but that doesn’t make it internally so. A parent can instill
that desire in a child, or a child can observe benefits enjoyed by the
other gender and desire them. The child can also desire to be seven feet
tall, but it doesn’t change reality.
The Bible says that God created “male and female” and He pronounced His creation “very good” (Genesis 1:27, 31).
God’s plan was perfect, but, as with everything in mankind’s sphere,
perfection was corrupted by sin. Sin brought anomalies, and we would be
hard pressed to understand where the touch of this contamination ends in
the creation. Could an anomaly sometimes occur in gender, physically or
mentally? We acknowledge that a person can be born with a combination
of male and female organs—although one’s true, biological sex can be
determined through medical tests.
This we know, that we are involved in a spiritual battle for our souls.
The world seeks to conform us to its mold, which is why we must be
transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1–2).
Satan attempts to deceive us and urges us to question God’s plan. One
of the devil’s ploys is to make us dissatisfied with how God made us. To
some he whispers, “You’re fat and ugly.” To others, “You’re stupid and
clumsy.” And to still others, “You look like a boy, but you’re really a
girl.” In each case, the underlying message is the same: “God messed up
on you.”
This we also know, that the whole creation groans for release from the curse and damage of sin (Romans 8:20–22).
The ruin wrought by sin is addressed through the redemption of Christ.
Through salvation, Jesus Christ grants us forgiveness of sin, reverses
the effect of our poor choices, and compensates for our brokenness.
Each of us faces a different set of battles. Yet Christ sets us on the path to victory. Hebrews 12:1–2
states, “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so
easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out
for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and
sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” The cross is key.
Jesus pioneered our faith, and He will perfect it. His victory will be
ours as well.
Some may battle heterosexual temptation, greed, pride, anger, or any
number of sins. Someone else may battle gender confusion. Regardless of
the battle with sin and the devil’s lies, the question we must answer
is, “Is Christ and His redemptive work sufficient for our battles?”
Jesus definitely claims to be sufficient for any and all of our battles,
and He desires to sanctify us through His Word of truth (John 17:17).
As children of God, we should be content in this life (Philippians 4:11; 2 Corinthians 12:10).
We realize that we all have limitations, physically, mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually. But through Christ those limitations will
not interfere with the plan God has for us to honor Him and serve Him.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to
give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
If a person feels he or she has been born as the wrong gender, the
answer is not gender-reassignment surgery, hormone therapy,
cross-dressing, etc. Those are simply worldly ways of acquiescing to the
devil’s lies. “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6).
And God does not make mistakes. The one who feels he or she was born in
the wrong body needs, first and foremost, to experience the
transformative power of Christ. When we “participate in the divine
nature,” we escape “the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:4).
Well, it appears that a veteran police officer’s career has been sacrificed on the Altar of Political Correctness. Foxnews.com reports that…
The police officer whose video-recorded actions at a
North Texas pool party have drawn national attention and comment has
resigned from the police force. Officer David Eric Casebolt resigned Tuesday from the McKinney Police
Department after almost 10 years on the force. His resignation was
confirmed by his attorney, Jane Bishkin of Dallas. A viral video showed him pushing a bikini-clad girl to the ground on
Friday and brandishing his gun at other black teens after he and other
officers responded to complaints about the pool party at a
community-owned McKinney swimming pool. McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley had placed the 41-year-old former
Texas state trooper on administrative leave after the incident. Bishkin declined to say where Casebolt is now and said he had
received death threats. The attorney said she would release more
information at a news conference Wednesday.
By now, anybody who is reading this has heard the story behind this police officer’s resignation. Parents were swimming with their children in the community pool in a gated community in McKinney, Texas. The use of the pool was supposed to be just for the residents of the
community. However, a local DJ got the bright idea to…well…let this
member of the community tell you… Of course, the Main Stream Media, the “Perpetually Aggrieved’, and
the Professional Race-Baiters, including their cadre of “Professional
Protesters”, descended upon McKinney, spinning a different narrative,
which has become their modus operandi. Remember “Hands up! Don’t Shoot!”? What is going on around us? It appears that America is experiencing a trifecta of “Caitlin” Jenner, Youth Mobs, and Petulant President Pantywaist. Is America “going to Hell in a hand basket”? Benjamin Franklin said,
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
What Dr. Franklin was talking about is the fact, as you’ve seen me
state time and time again, that with Freedom comes Responsibility. Our
actions have a direct effect on those around us. Furthermore, man is a corrupt animal. Every child learns how to lie,
at an early age. That is why we are told as parents to “raise a child in
the way in which they should go”. And, as those of us my age have observed, in the last couple of
generations, there are less parents heeding that admonition from God’s
Word. Walk into any Walmart across America, and observe the behavior of
children and their parents. It have become almost impossible to walk
though a Walmart without almost running over a kid. And, please don’t
stand there and wait for an apology from the mother of the “precious
darling”, those come few and far between. To be bold, a lot of these undisciplined children, grow up to be
young adults, who seem to be allergic to responsibility. These are the
ones, who, after college, refuse to leave home. Like the movie title,
they experience a “Failure to Launch”. Their every breathing moment is a quest for self-fulfillment, and an all-consuming involvement in a love affair…with themselves. This selfishness guides their political ideology, as well. Usually
these individuals become, either Liberals, or, they identify themselves
as (l)ibertarians. Those who identify themselves as Liberals, believe
that their intellect is innately higher than the rest of us, and,
therefore, they should be able to be the Elite Class, political party in
charge of our nation. Those who choose to identify themselves as
(l)ibertarians, claim to believe in Fiscal Conservatism, and Social
Liberalism. There is also a different sort of Libertarian in America….those who
believe in the Constitution and the liberty of the individual. These
“Constitutionalists” are not the ones to whom I am referring. Where the problem arises is the fact that Liberalism, (l)ibertarian,
and Libertine all share the same root word “lib”, which means “free”.
The word “Liberty” contains that word, also. The problem is, “Freedom” or “Liberty” without
conscience, is licentiousness. And, unrestricted licentiousness will
destroy an empire. If man is left to his own devices, he usually builds his own Golden Calf. And, I am afraid that is what has happened in this sacred land.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.- 2 Corinthians 3:17 (ESV)
America’s Progressives, who are presently in power, are
relentless in their mission to remove the God of Our Fathers from “the
Shining City on a Hill”. Just as the Ancient Greeks and the Roman Empire, through
their acceptance and acquiescence to the trappings of a morally bankrupt
society, allowed their enemies, foreign and domestic to overrun them
and destroy their civilizations, so is our nation, carved out of the
blood and sacrifice of those who have gone before, in danger of allowing
the Tyranny of the Minority to subjugate the rest of us, including the
74% of us who claim Jesus Christ as our Personal Savior. The thing about a slippery slope is: once you start down it, its hard to climb back up. The Good News?
I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. – John 12:46 (ESV)
Jesus Christ is over all…and, He loves us. Stay strong, Americans…and PRAY FOR OUR NATION. Until He Comes, KJ
Reblogged fhttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015 By Bill Bonner Of Bonner And Partners While we were thinking about what was really going on with today’s strange new money system, a startling thought occurred to us. Our financial system could take a surprising and catastrophic twist that almost nobody imagines, let alone anticipates.
Do you remember when a lethal tsunami hit the beaches of Southeast
Asia, killing thousands of people and causing billions of dollars of
damage? Well, just before the 80-foot wall of water slammed into the coast an odd thing happened: The water disappeared. The tide went out farther than anyone had ever seen before. Local
fishermen headed for high ground immediately. They knew what it meant.
But the tourists went out onto the beach looking for shells! The same thing could happen to the money supply…
There’s Not Enough Physical Money
Here’s how… and why: It’s almost seems impossible. Hard to imagine. Difficult to
understand. But if you look at M2 money supply – which measures coins
and notes in circulation as well as bank deposits and money market
accounts – America’s money stock amounted to $11.7 trillion as of last
month. But there was just $1.3 trillion of physical currency in circulation –
about only half of which is in the US. (Nobody knows for sure.)
What we use as money today is mostly credit. It exists as zeros and
ones in electronic bank accounts. We never see it. Touch it. Feel it.
Count it out. Or lose it behind seat cushions. Banks profit – handsomely – by creating this credit. And as long as
banks have sufficient capital, they are happy to create as much credit
as we are willing to pay for. After all, it costs the banks almost nothing to create new credit. That’s why we have so much of it.
A monetary system like this has never before existed. And this one
has existed only during a time when credit was undergoing an epic
expansion. So our monetary system has never been thoroughly tested. How will it
hold up in a deep or prolonged credit contraction? Can it survive an
extended bear market in bonds or stocks? What would happen if consumer
prices were out of control?
Less Than Zero
Our current money system began in 1971. It survived consumer price inflation of almost 14% a year in 1980.
But Paul Volcker was already on the job, raising interest rates to bring
inflation under control. And it survived the “credit crunch” of 2008-09. Ben Bernanke dropped
the price of credit to almost zero, by slashing short-term interest
rates and buying trillions of dollars of government bonds. But the next crisis could be very different… Short-term interest rates are already close to zero in the U.S. (and
less than zero in Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden). And according to a
recent study by McKinsey, the world’s total debt (at least as
officially recorded) now stands at $200 trillion – up $57 trillion
since 2007. That’s 286% of global GDP… and far in excess of what the
real economy can support.
At some point, a debt correction is inevitable. Debt expansions are
always – always – followed by debt contractions. There is no other way.
Debt cannot increase forever. And when it happens, ZIRP and QE will not be enough to reverse the process, because they are already running at open throttle.
What then? The value of debt drops sharply and fast. Creditors look to their
borrowers… traders look at their counterparties… bankers look at each
other… …and suddenly, no one wants to part with a penny, for fear he may never see it again. Credit stops. It’s not just that no one wants to lend; no one wants to borrow
either – except for desperate people with no choice, usually those who
have no hope of paying their debts.
Just as we saw after the 2008 crisis, we can expect a quick response from the feds. The Fed will announce unlimited new borrowing facilities. But it won’t matter…. House prices will be crashing. (Who will lend against the value of a
house?) Stock prices will be crashing. (Who will be able to borrow
against his stocks?) Art, collectibles, and resources – all we be in
free fall.
The NEXT Crisis
In the last crisis, every major bank and investment firm on Wall
Street would have gone broke had the feds not intervened. Next time it
may not be so easy to save them. The next crisis is likely to be across ALL asset classes. And with
$57 trillion more in global debt than in 2007, it is likely to be much
harder to stop. Are you with us so far?
Because here is where it gets interesting… In a gold-backed monetary system prices fall. But the money is still
there. Money becomes more valuable. It doesn’t disappear. It is more
valuable because you can use it to buy more stuff. Naturally, people hold on to it. Of course, the velocity of money –
the frequency at which each unit of currency is used to buy something –
falls. And this makes it appear that the supply of money is falling
too.
But imagine what happens to credit money. The money doesn’t just stop
circulating. It vanishes. As collateral goes bad, credit is destroyed. A bank that had an “asset” (in the form of a loan to a customer) of
$100,000 in June may have zilch by July. A corporation that splurged on
share buybacks one week could find those shares cut in half two weeks
later. A person with a $100,000 stock market portfolio one day could
find his portfolio has no value at all a few days later.
All of this is standard fare for a credit crisis. The new wrinkle – a
devastating one – is that people now do what they always do, but they
are forced to do it in a radically different way. They stop spending. They hoard cash. But what cash do you hoard when
most transactions are done on credit? Do you hoard a line of credit? Do
you put your credit card in your vault? No. People will hoard the kind of cash they understand… something
they can put their hands on… something that is gaining value – rapidly.
They’ll want dollar bills.
Also, following a well-known pattern, these paper dollars will
quickly disappear. People drain cash machines. They drain credit
facilities. They ask for “cash back” when they use their credit cards.
They want real money – old-fashioned money that they can put in their
pockets and their home safes…
Dollar Panic
Let us stop here and remind readers that we’re talking about a short
time frame – days… maybe weeks… a couple of months at most. That’s all.
It’s the period after the credit crisis has sucked the cash out of the
system… and before the government’s inflation tsunami has hit.
As Ben Bernanke put it, “a determined central bank can always create positive consumer price inflation.” But it takes time! And during that interval, panic will set in. A dollar panic – with
people desperate to put their hands on dollars… to pay for food… for
fuel…and for everything else they need. Credit may still be available. But it will be useless. No one will want it. ATMs and banks will run out of cash.
Credit facilities will be drained of real cash. Banks will put up
signs, first: “Cash withdrawals limited to $500.” And then: “No Cash
Withdrawals.”
You will have a credit card with a $10,000 line of credit. You have
$5,000 in your debit account. But all financial institutions are
staggering. And in the news you will read that your bank has defaulted
and been placed in receivership. What would you rather have? Your
$10,000 line of credit or a stack of $50 bills? You will go to buy gasoline. You will take out your credit card to pay. “Cash Only,” the sign will say. Because the machinery of the credit
economy will be breaking down. The gas station… its suppliers… and its
financiers do not want to get stuck with a “credit” from your bankrupt
lender!
Whose credit cards are still good? Whose lines of credit are still
valuable? Whose bank is ready to fail? Who can pay his mortgage? Who
will honor his credit card debt? In a crisis, those questions will be as
common as “Who will win an Oscar?” today. But no one will know the answers. Quickly, they will stop guessing… and turn to cash. Our advice: Keep some on hand. You may need it.
Amidst the media euphoria surrounding the former Bruce Jenner’s gender reassignment surgery and cover photo on Vanity Fair,
a 74-year-old transsexual who deeply regrets his decision has come
forward to caution those who think that transgenderism solves people’s
psychosexual problems.
In a CNN interview
on Tuesday, Walt Heyer warned viewers that the relief accompanying
gender reassignment surgery doesn’t last. After Jenner expressed
exhilaration over the Vanity Fair cover, Heyer responded that such elation is normal, but transient.
Heyer acknowledged that “this is really the most exciting time in a
transgender’s life.” It is, he said, “the debut,” when “all the things
that you had hoped and thought about are coming about.” From personal
experience, however, and from the many transgender people who write to
him, Heyer says he knows “this doesn’t always last.”
“It’s sort of like, you know, going down to the bar and you’re having
a good time and you drink it up good and then, you know, you wake up
with a hangover,” he said.
In an essay
earlier this year, Heyer offered a chilling autobiographical account of
abuse and gender confusion, sexual reassignment surgery, a short
reprieve from anxiety and eventually deep regret at his decision.
Heyer, now reverted to his male identity and married to his wife for 18 years, spends his energy raising public awareness of the disastrous penalties of gender reassignment. “Changing genders is short-term gain with long-term pain,” writes
Heyer. “Its consequences include early mortality, regret, mental
illness, and suicide.” Clinical studies would seem to confirm Heyer’s conclusions. A review
of more than 100 international medical studies of post-operative
transgenders carried out in the UK in 2004 found “no robust scientific
evidence that gender reassignment surgery is clinically effective.”
In a published online column, Heyer commiserated with Jenner’s situation. “As a former transgender myself,” he wrote, “I found it painful to
see Jenner looking so fragile, exhibiting an uncertain nervousness
throughout the interview. I see Jenner and my heart sinks with sadness;
my stomach aches in pain.” “When Jenner said, ‘I want to know how this story ends, you know?’ a
rush of concern filled me. I know one possible outcome of the
story—great pain to kids, wife, family and even to himself. I want to
yell at him, ‘Stop! The bridge is out,’” he wrote.
Heyer’s prognosis for Jenner is not bright, though he admits there is always hope:
As long as the television lights are on and the cameras
are rolling, being in the spotlight he enjoys, Jenner will be fine. But
when the lights go dim and the cameras are no longer rolling, he will
face the most difficult time of his life. His celebrated change of
gender could turn on him and become the cause of deep depression, which,
left untreated, according to those who study the causes of suicide, is
the number one cause for suicide.
Having been incorrectly diagnosed and pressured into a sex-change
operation, Heyer is deeply sensitive to the plight of the many young
people today who are confused about their own sexuality and receive
mixed messages from a society eager for them to take steps that can
never be undone.
“Instead of encouraging them to undergo unnecessary and destructive
surgery, let’s affirm and love our young people just the way they are,”
he wrote. Heyer has little patience for “enlightened” parents who think they
are doing their children a favor by playing up their confusion and
catering to their “dreams of being the opposite gender.” Though
motivated by a desire to be open-minded and supportive, this parental
behavior is ultimately destructive, says Heyer. Walt Heyer now runs a website, SexChangeRegret.com, as well as a blog, hoping in this way to educate the broader public on the tragic consequences of transsexualism.
His books include an autobiography, A Transgender’s Faith and Gender, Lies and Suicide. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter @tdwilliamsrome
I'm a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching
college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards,
studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my
student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I
am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I
take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my
students.
Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I
wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes
scare me — particularly the liberal ones. Not, like, in a person-by-person sense, but students in general. The
student-teacher dynamic has been reenvisioned along a line that's
simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every
student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance,
after any affront, and a teacher's formal ability to respond to these
claims is limited at best.
What it was like before
In early 2009, I was an adjunct, teaching a freshman-level writing
course at a community college. Discussing infographics and data
visualization, we watched a flash animation describing how Wall Street's
recklessness had destroyed the economy.
The video stopped, and I asked whether the students thought it was effective. An older student raised his hand. "What about Fannie and Freddie?" he asked. "Government kept giving
homes to black people, to help out black people, white people didn't get
anything, and then they couldn't pay for them. What about that?" I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with
that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty
dishonest, and isn't it good that someone made the video we just watched
to try to clear things up? And, hey, let's talk about whether that was
effective, okay? If you don't think it was, how could it have been? The rest of the discussion went on as usual.
The next week, I got called into my director's office. I was shown an
email, sender name redacted, alleging that I "possessed communistical
[sic] sympathies and refused to tell more than one side of the story."
The story in question wasn't described, but I suspect it had do to with
whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people.
This is the last post on this blog. I am leaving Sweden for good
shortly, and will no longer be following its descent from what was once
the third most prosperous country in the world. Frankly, it’s just too
damn depressing.
I was born and raised in Sweden, which leaves a cultural mark even
though I moved to USA in the 1990s and have spent the better part of my
adult life as an American. Coming back for a few years has been a
shocking experience.
When I was a child, Sweden was a dull yet very safe place to live.
Yes, there was a heavy blanket of socialism and collectivist values
covering everything, but there was a core of pragmatism beneath the
redness. The intention and goal was always to benefit the citizens, even
though they went about things in a backwards manner. Prime minister Löfven
Today, it’s as if the inmates are running the asylum. The politicians
are participating in a chicken race of “goodness” where everybody tries
to one-up each other in caring for the citizens of OTHER countries while
Swedish retirees, school children, handicapped and other vulnerable
categories of people are thorougly ignored. Violence is exploding.
Jihadist Trojan horses are flowing through the porous border along with
the tens of thousands ID-less refugees. But what makes me the most pessimistic about Sweden’s future is how the social fabric itself has been undermined.
Now, to be clear, it is my opinion that modest immigration is healthy
for society and beneficial for trade, cultural development and so
forth. Protectionism as a concept is counter-productive, while free
trade and the ability for skilled labor to go where they’re in demand is
beneficial for everyone. Having said that, what Sweden is doing is something completely
different. The once homogenous population has been forever altered by a
rapid and massive addition of people from vastly different cultures and
value-systems. 26,8% of the population is now foreign-born or with at least one foreign-born parent, and the national census bureau estimates that some 150 000 per year will arrive to the country of just 9,8 million residents.
There simply is no possible way to absorb and assimilate such volumes
of people, period. Then you are merely creating ethnic enclaves, which
due to incompatible language, culture and job skills become ghettos,
which in turns brews crime, misery and extremism. Once the inflow has
exceeded the capacity for absorbtion, further immigration only makes the
problem worse.
It’s like someone having read that a cup of green tea per day is
healthy, so they make it a policy to chug four gallons per day, every
day. It’s a good thing overdone to the extreme until it becomes toxic. Then you have the Swedish school system. There really is no nice way to put it; it’s a complete disaster.
The minister of education is a man-boy who spends his time making
Youtube-videos showing heart-signs with his hands to boost school
results, while university-level students can’t read and comprehend the
course literature. Education minister Gustav Fridolin
Since there is a delay in the changes in the school system, it is only in recent years the full impact
of the knowledge-averse “progressive” school system is starting to be
felt. Hard facts are largely irrelevant; the important thing is to sit
in a group and discuss things until a consensus is reached. But with no
hard facts to base the conclusions on, it becomes an exercise in
futility because it’s all random assumptions and opinions. As a
university-level history student (!) was quoted as saying in newspaper
Svenska Dagbladet the other day: “Why would all these dates matter? Who cares in what order things happened?”
That’s not exactly fertile soil for creating the researchers and engineers of the future. Financially, Sweden is an oddity in that it never had its real estate
correction when Lehman Bros went belly-up and the housing market
everywhere in the West crashed. Sweden just kept steaming ahead, which
means housing is ridiculously overinflated. In Stockholm, the real
estate prices increased 19% and in Gothenburg 24% in the last 12 months
alone — from an already sky-high level. Tear-down abandoned house from 1932 with small, unremarkable lot in the outskirts of Stockholm. Current bid: 7,5 million SEK, or close to $900,000.
As a result, personal debt of the Swedish population is at an
all-time high. To keep all this afloat the normal mortgage interest
rates are at 2% with central bank Riksbanken at -0,25%, and yet a
significant portion of the borrowers are hanging by a thread. If and
when foreign banks and investors decide it’s time to turn their backs on
Sweden (as happened in the early 1990s) there’s going to be a lot of
pain.
Then you have the financial obligations going forward. Like much of
the western world, there is a demographic change where fewer tax-paying
adults are to support a glut of retirees. What makes it especially dire
for Sweden is that in addition to the old Swedes, there’s also a ton of
elderly immigrants that are granted “family visas” based on younger
relatives having been granted asylum. They’ve never paid a dime in
taxes, yet enter the system with full benefits from day one. In theory,
this would be made up for by the younger relatives working and paying
taxes. Sadly, this is not the case; while ethnical Swedes have a 82% employment rate, immigrants only have 57% with non-Europeans coming in at just 51%.
If Sweden was a person, it’d be like the guy with three mortgages,
seven maxed-out credit cards and four collection agencies chasing him
that just signed a lease for a brand new BMW X6. Simply put, there’s a
lot of red ink in the future; it just hasn’t been fully realized yet.
Finally, there’s the sorry state of the Swedish defense. After
decades of constant slashing of the defense budget, the extent of
Swedish ambition is to stall an invader for a week in a limited area.
This with war raging in Europe, Russian missiles pointed at Sweden in
Kaliningrad, and Russian submarines and bomber jets openly thumbing
their nose at Sweden as they intrude on Swedish territory on a regular
basis. The power vacuum in Scandinavia is so tangible you can almost
hear a sucking sound as you fly over it. This, too, will require massive
investments when the penny finally drops amongst Swedish politicians.
So while I can’t claim to be any kind of authority on macroeconomics
or social predictive models, I see red lights across the board. In some ways, I’d compare the country to a farm. Previously, Sweden
acted like a sensible farmer and planted wheat here, carrots there,
potatoes over there et cetera, by implementing free schooling, sound
infrastructure investments, state-financed research and so forth. A few
decades later, they reaped the rewards and climbed the prosperity
ladder.
In the late 1960s, this pragmatic line was abandoned as leftist
idealist Olof Palme took over. But there was plenty to harvest from
previous years, so Sweden continued to be the land of milk and honey for
a good long while. Then things started drying up, and the process has
been one of gradual erosion and decline since the 1990s.
The famous Swedish health care system is a good example. 120 000
hospital beds in the late 1960s became 20 000 today. Cancer patients are
put on waiting lists for months. Entire emergency wards shut down for
summer. The crumbling Swedish railroad system is another symptom I examined in-depth last year.
The aforementioned defense that now consist of about three fat generals
and a rusty rifle (bullets withheld for budgetary reasons).
A sensible farmer would see the problems for what they are and hurry
to plant new seeds, so as to return to bountiful harvests of wheat,
carrots, potatoes etc. Instead, the Swedish politicians goes by dogma
and plants what they think SHOULD grow. So they plant M & Ms, hot
dogs and pretzels. The results won’t be fully evident for a few years
yet, but as the last reserves of the old harvests are depleted, things
will get… Interesting.
From what I can see, there simply is no plausible scenario where
these social tensions and future financial committments will not lead to
a downward spiral of hardship and strife. I hope I’m wrong. I really
do, because I have friends and family I care about that will remain here
to see it all play out. But I won’t. I’ll be back in the US being mad at Obama for being a
lying scumbag. Every country has its problems. USA has its corrupt yokel
in office, just as Sweden has Stefan Löfven.
I’d like to thank you for having followed this blog and your many
insightful comments. It’s been a wild ride at times with heated debates,
but it’s been fun — even when I got hatemail from both left-wingers and
right-wingers over the same article. :)
Well, it appears that a veteran police officer’s career has been sacrificed on the Altar of Political Correctness.
Education minister Gustav Fridolin
Tear-down abandoned house from 1932 with small, unremarkable lot in the outskirts of Stockholm. Current bid: 7,5 million SEK, or close to $900,000.
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