Verse: Destroyed for lack of knowledge:

Hosea 3:6: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

That verse way written to Israel, but does it apply to us today?

Look at the things that the people were doing that were listed in Hosea.

swearing
lying
killing
stealing
committing adultery
blood toucheth blood (incest)

Do we, in this modern era, do these things? Do you do these things?

When I watch the news today, there's whole lot of swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, and incest going on. Some of it done by people who should know better. They are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

But why don't they know better?

Because the folks they look to for guidance and advice and teaching don't teach them it's wrong. And that group of teachers are the people this verse is directed to. But notice the last sentence.

"I will also forget thy children." (The people they teach)

It makes a difference which teacher you pick. So read the Bible and see if the teacher is correct. There will (eventually) be a test, and you don't want to miss this question.

Dark Moon: The Birth

The beginning of a story I posted on Ions.

"You must take the baby now, while I still breathe for him."
"I've found a torch. We will have light." Quentin could not see Borders blackness of the cave, but the torch smelled fresh enough. He dropped to his knees and pulled flint and steel from a leather pouch suspended from his shoulder. An ember glowed on the second strike, and the torch flared with little help from him.
Borders lay with legs splayed, her back against a rock. Her face was pallid, and flecks of light red foam sputtered at the corners of her mouth. The arrow in her chest swayed slowly when she breathed. "I'm cold," she said.
"The ground is cold and damp." Quentin knelt beside her and wiped the bloody froth from the corners of her mouth. "I'll make a fire."
A stone ledge had been hewn into the rock, though what kind of tools were used, Quentin did not know. The rock was smoothed and polished, almost like glass, and indented slightly. At one end, in a shallow pool of water, a million small creatures awoke. they pulsed in unison, or so it seemed, and filled the cavern with an eerie yellow light. Beside the ledge, an ivory colored chest, the hinges and hasp turned black with age. The legends spoke of such a place.
Borders ran a gentle hand over her bulging belly. "The pains have stopped," she said.
Quentin gently opened Borders dress. The flesh around the arrow as purple and puffy, and there was very little blood. He gently ran his hand under Borders' back, feeling and probing, until at last he found what he was looking for, a small hard bump well to the left of the spine.
"The arrow head is just below the skin. I'll have to push it through, cut it off, and then pull out the shaft."
"The baby," Borders said, and her head dropped toward a shoulder. She remained immobile several seconds before her head snapped up, and she stared wide eyed at Quentin. Her hand shot out and grabbed Quentin's tunic, and though she grimaced with pain, she sat forward and pulled Quentin toward her. Behind her, the rock ledge seemed to shimmer slightly, and the pulsing light flared for an instant.
"Take the baby now! Take the baby and go into the void," Borders said through gritted teeth. The wildness in her eyes subsided, and she fell back, exhausted.
"It will kill you if I take the child.? Quentin glanced at the ledge, and the pulsing in the pool seemed to quicken. "No one knows what lays beyond." But even as he spoke, he pulled the dagger from its sheath. He began to hum a soothing sound as he carefully cut the cloth away from Borders' stomach. Still humming, he went back toward the front of the cave, and found Bordens' pack. It was in disarray and almost empty, but the leather sewing kit was still intact.
There was a tinge of blue around Borders' lips when Quentin returned to her. She lay with her eyes closed, and swaying of the arrow was slow and gentle. Quentin knew Borders had said a soothing sound of her own, and he was careful not to break the mood.
Quentin laid out needle and horse hair thread so he could find them quickly. He wiped the blade of the dagger on the leg of his leather britches as he prepared to make the cut.
"That's an interesting way to get a baby out, but not one that I recommend." The voice was soft and bemused and seemed to be whispered directly into Quentin's
Quentin scrambled backward, swinging the dagger wildly, but it did not find her mark.
Instead a little man in a multi-colored robe seemed to shimmer into his view. He bent forward with his hands on his knees, and smiled almost gleefully as he surveyed Borders.
By Dulap's horn!" The little man squinted. "That's a Taluvion arrow!"
Quentin rocked to her feet. "Who are you?"
"I haven't seen an arrow like that in two and half hundred years." The little mused. He man turned and walked toward the pool. His hand seemed to shimmer as he dipped it in and turned.
"But who the hell are you," Quentin looked around quizzically, "And what place is this?
"This little one is peaceful now, but when she wakes up, she'll be as mean a snake." The little man started toward Borders, but Quentin leapt between them
The little man held up a cautionary finger, and his manner changed subtly as he brushed pass Quentin and bent over Borders.
"You can call me Cully, or you can call Colin, but you don't have to call me anything at all. You won't be here that long."
"I can fix the damage this barb has done." The little man continued, as he pulled the arrow out of Borders' chest, "But I can't fix what you have done to her."



Toward the front of the cave, the scraping clawed paws on stone, and the skittle rocks: Something was coming.
"Hurry, now!" The little hastened to straighten Borders' clothing. "Pick her up!"
"What's coming?" Quentin was seized with an alarm not like any he had felt before as the little man commanded.
"The hounds!" The little man had already started up some narrow hand holds in the shear rock wall.
"That way be wondrous creators, and lustful people, and deep felt love." he pointed to tunnel half hidden in the gloom. "Or bathe in the pool.
The little man had disappear from sight but he voice echoed
"Choose! And choose wisely. You will not pass this way again."
nnnn

An Open Letter of Apology to Illegal Aliens in the United States

I think this sums up the feeling of many American citizens.

An Open Letter of Apology to Illegal Aliens in the United States

January 30, 2007 · 2 Comments

On behalf of the many Congressmen and women I have helped to elect in the last near three decades of my life, who have refused their obligations under the Constitution and their promises to me that led to my votes to elect them, I wish to apologize to you for your mistaken understanding that you are entitled to the same rights, privileges and freedoms your born, naturalized or amnestied brethren have earned in the United States of America.

Through the years, while hoping you would follow your promises made to me and to others to become legal citizens, we have educated you and your children for free, provided your free healthcare, and made you the recipient of thousands of programs to assist you, free of charge, along your way.

Despite being the wealthiest and most compassionate nation on Earth, our resources are nevertheless finite. There is a bottom to this well of funds we continue to expend on your behalf. Yet our government continues to do so to the direct detriment and flagrant discrimination of the legal citizens of our land. Regardless of politics, one day soon, this well is going to run completely dry.

Our hospitals are overwhelmed by your needs, and their subsidies for providing you free healthcare are shrinking as they continue to care for more and more and more of you. And we the legal taxpayers of this country cough up more and more money ourselves to keep our hospitals afloat. The unwed birthrate among illegal Hispanic teenage girls alone is the highest of any group in our country, more than three times the teenage pregnancy rate of whites and Asians, and one-and-a-half times that of African-American girls. And your numbers of teenage pregnancies only continue to grow. In the first three months of 2006 at Parkland charity Hospital in Dallas, 70% of all births were babies born to illegal aliens. Parkland, once one of the most reputable trauma centers in the US, and where JFK was taken after his assassination on downtown Dallas streets, is now a birthing center with more than 16,000 births recorded yearly.

Our elementary, middle and high schools are failing miserably to educate your children, as well as the millions of our own children born and naturalized in this land. About a fourth of Texas teachers are uncertified at the time of their hire in our frantic need to place educators of any definition into our classrooms. Our Texas classrooms are so overpopulated that we currently have one of the highest teacher-to-pupil ratios in the country, which has drastically lowered our ability to provide a quality education to all children. Our social groups struggle harder and harder to collect the donations necessary to see that your children have the free school supplies necessary to complete their education, in addition to providing these same compassion-born generosities for children born to legal citizens living in poverty. And the situation is growing worse as more and more and more of your children enroll.

We have even gone so far as to provide many of your children, even when they are also illegal aliens, with special financial aide and the privilege of being charged the in-state tuition fees for college that we don't offer to any of our legal residents and students beyond our state lines. And we provide this huge slap to the face in flagrant discrimination to the many students from foreign lands that have endured the exhaustive process of obtaining special Visas to attend our schools revered as some of the best in the world.

Our automotive insurance companies are reeling from paying for the millions of dollars in damages to-date to repair insured vehicles because they have no means of collecting from you when the damages are your fault, because you (as illegal aliens) are not insured. We legal citizens pay higher and higher premiums for insurance, so that you don't have to pay a penny, but still drive across our land. Latinos account for 43% of DUI arrests in Texas, and 45% of DUI arrests in California, according to our respective Departments of Transportation statistics for 2005. The majority of these arrests are Latinos with multiple previous DUI charges, so it is no wonder why more and more and more of our innocent citizens are being slaughtered and maimed on our roadways, nor why so very many of those causing DUI accidents either flee the scene or fail to appear in court, and merely disappear into your hidden world of anonymity to repeat the offense again.

Our jails overflow with illegal aliens arrested for crimes committed after breaching our borders and sneaking onto our land, and we pay for this also, as well as the cost of deporting some of these criminals, who would rather go “home” and sneak back in another day to avoid their further incarceration following the adjudication of their crimes in court. And we pay for the court costs, too, and your attorney fees all along the way. Then you steal over our borders again to repeat this seemingly endless cycle.

Not too long ago, we allowed you to obtain jobs here without any documentation at all. Not long after that, our President Ronald Reagan granted you amnesty, since our Congress was (and remains) spineless in its inability and refusal to find a real solution to the problem then of your numbers, which are dwarfed by your numbers today. Then, following public outcries, our employers were finally forced to require proof of your citizenship, which you falsified with remedial results. Further public outcry, and later the bombing of our World Trade Center in New York City by terrorists who hate us and you, and our freedoms and wealth, forced you to become much more sophisticated in lying about your citizenry to be able to work. Since then, you have stolen the identities of Americans alive and dead to continue to remain and work, and you have allowed thousands of profiteering criminals to line their pockets with the monies of your desperation in selling you those false identities.

Insofar as you taking jobs away from our legal citizenry, I don't blame you for that, for taking advantage of any opportunities that came your way. That is why you came, and you would have been fools not to avail yourselves of everything that has been given you. Instead, I blame the greed of the hundreds of employers who took advantage of YOU and used YOU to keep them from having to participate in a fair and competitive marketplace and fraudulently keeping down the costs of their doing business. And our government - as recently as the last week - refuses to hold employers accountable beyond a token wee slap on the wrist if caught.

There are many citizens in dire need of jobs in the US, but none other than you who could be forced to accept a job for as little as you have. This they were able to do to you because you, as illegal aliens, could be threatened with discovery and deportation if you complained. You didn't complain. Instead, you showed up in masses and we can deny neither your work ethic in your jobs, nor your networking to get there first. Without you, the companies would have enjoyed less profits, or merely passed along the higher costs of doing business to us, who by our patronage (or lack thereof) would force them to be smarter and more competitive, or face demise at the hands of businesses who would.

Our government deliberately looks “the other way” as you commit tax fraud daily. While your income is taxed when paid by check, real or electronic, and you further contribute to social security taxes you cannot ever access while an illegal alien, you neither file nor pay further income tax as all legal citizens must by April 15th of each year. Further, when your income is paid in cash, which you prefer, you pay no tax whatsoever, yet continue to benefit from the organized society those taxes provide us all. Instead of contributing to your own expense to us of your living and working here illegally, you send every penny possible back to your homeland to help pay exorbitant “coyote” fees to sneak your relatives into our country, too.

We have even made it easy now for you to vote in Mexico elections here on US soil, and prevent you from having to leave and then sneak back in to continue your lives here.

Make no mistake, we welcomed you to our country, and we always will, regardless of your race, creed, or nation or origin. We merely expect you to either stay here temporarily, seeking visitor status in full respect of our laws and covenants, or become a legal resident and citizen and stay forever. In return for your citizenship, we offer you all that you have received anyway and more, as well as the ability to vote and help us grow as a nation that has always embodied honor and diversity.

“Our forefathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” But understand clearly that Abraham Lincoln was addressing the citizens of the United States when he spoke those famous words on the Civil War battlefield of

Gettysburg. And no, illegal aliens are NOT equal to legal citizens. Otherwise, your amnesty, a legal forgiveness of your crimes in entering illegally and living here since, would never be necessary or discussed. And I oppose this with every ounce of my being.

I apologize to you today, because I believe in my heart the day is not long away when we will be forced as a nation to seal our borders, because people with motivations other than seeking a better life, motivations to do our nation and our citizens harm, will sneak across and enter illegally on your very heels and do their evil deeds to you and us. You have set a fine example for our enemies to follow, and have shown them how easily we enable your continued crimes in breaching our border.

I apologize to you today, because our politicians never will, since doing so would risk their dethroning at the next election by your sympathizers. And this is really their fault, you know, for not following the laws and obligations placed upon them by our Constitution that they gave an oath to follow and protect, as well as from the electorate whom they promised to respect and represent.

The day will never come when the United States does not welcome you to join us and take full part of the many rights, freedoms and amenities we enjoy as legal citizens, or to a lesser degree as legal visitors. But the day is coming soon when we citizens will force our national, state and local elected leaders to no longer allow you to be here illegally with impunity.

I apologize to you today, because we should never have led you to believe otherwise.

Sincerely yours,

An American Citizen

source:

http://eheavenlygads.wordpress.com/2007/01/30/
an-open-letter-of-apology-to-illegal-
aliens-in-the-united-states

Linux

Vector Linux 5.9 Standard Released.

Linux addicts and aficionados had a little something extra under the Christmas tree. Vector Linux 5.9 Standard. And Vector Linux 5.9 Deluxe was released before the first of the year. Vector Standard is a free download and Deluxe is available at the company store. http://vectorlinux.com/

For those users who don't know what Linux is, it an alternative to Windows, and most distro include the basic software you need on the install disk.

I bought the Deluxe version which includes a second disk of almost 700 megs of extra software, so I am set for the new year.

I don't want to do a full software review right now. I don't know how much interest there would be one. But here is the blurb from the Vecter Linux home page. It is good software. Try it. Like it. Buy it.

Speed, performance, stability -- these are attributes that set VectorLinux apart in the crowded field of Linux distributions. VectorLinux is a lighterweight, fast, Linux operating system for Intel-AMD x86 compatible systems and is based upon Slackware, one of the original Linux distributions. Slackware is the true 'Unix' of Linux distributions and its popularity stems from the fact that it is a robust, versatile and almost unbreakable system. VectorLinux has improved Slackware to produce a bloat free, easy to install, configure and maintain operating system that is second to none. We include automatic hardware configuration, unique administration tools and easy software package management via the Gslapt/slapt-get system. VectorLinux is considered to be the fastest, non-source Linux distribution on the planet!

Give VectorLinux a try and discover the difference........ Welcome home.

It's a mad mad mad mad world

If ever this mad, mad, mad, mad world needed "It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world" it's now! (1970 re-release)

That movie was release in 1963, and re-release in 1970. I think it should be re-re-release today.

Like all great comedy, it has an element of tragedy. To quote  one  reviewer,  "...But underneath all the slapstick and shouting, holding the whole movie together, is that incredibly cynical message. It is a movie about kind, decent folks turning into law-breaking lunatics and ruining their lives for the sake of money. The subplot with Spencer Tracey realizing his entire life has been a waste, and then ruining what life he has left, is one of the most tragic story lines I have seen. But it's also pretty darn funny.

All the critics need to lighten up and see this for the absurd, delirious, hysterical farce it is."

And that's the way of life. We go from the absurdly ridicules to the sublime, to the deadly serious in the blink of an eye.

Sometimes when I look at the headlines, I think the whole world has gone crazy.

 

And the advertisements for mood enchanting drugs and sleep aids are going great guns. We may all be crazy, but we'll be a happy bunch, who sleep well at night!

 

But there is a dark side to this, too. 

The word Pharmacy is based the Greek root word Pharmakia

Pharmakeia = administration of drugs to the ill
Pharmakon = magic or poison (there is no such thing as magic, but lots of poison)

The word "Pharmakia" is Greek for witchcraft and Sorcery as used in the New Testament when we are warned against using witchcraft etc. 

 These drugs can be extremely beneficial or they can be a curse. It is up to us to discern the differents. But we're taking a lot of them. I read that we're popping so many mood drugs that their breakdown products in urine, gushing into waterways, have accumulated in fish tissues. When we've gotten to the point of poisoning fish, you know we're talking about a lot of drugs.

Happy fish.... I like that. 

   

 

Stepping Out

Stepping  Out.

I'm really stepping out of my comfort zone, here. But there are some things that need to be said, and some things that are better left alone. Some of the things in this blog may be out of your comfort zone, too, and some of thought may seem truly weird. But it's like a jig-saw puzzle, and all fit together and make a whole picture. We don't have all the pieces yet, but I can tell you that it's a big puzzle, and it will take a long time to get the whole picture.  Maybe a lifetime...