January/February/March 2008

Dear ones,
    It has been much longer since the last issue (Oct-Dec) than I intended, for in the past two months I have had more work than I could keep up with; and, for more than a month, I have been sick with a persistent, flu-like, viral infection, and during that month I went to Honduras to try to be of assistance to my son, Jeff. There have also been unexpected demands on what little time and strength I have, related to my Civil War sniper book, and an article for "Leatherneck" magazine. If you have access to "Leatherneck," I have an article on the history of the Yemassee Receiving Station in the March issue.
 Now, however, I am becoming well enough to think and work for several hours a day, and the ministry is blessed with funds to publish this issue. I will call it the January-March issue, even though it will go out in March, and will hope to publish the next issue early in the second quarter, rather than at the end of it. Thank you for your faithfulness, even when a newsletter doesn't come.

JOHN McCAIN IS NO HERO
    I have never in my long life seen propaganda as blatant and untrue as the ceaseless barrage of lies proclaiming John McCain as a hero. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As McCain emerged as a candidate, ABC made-a-for-TV movie portraying him as a hero who endured torture and prevailed. About the only thing in that movie that was the truth is that they got his name right. While a POW, his propaganda broadcasts were frequently heard on Radio Hanoi. By his own admission, when he was pulled from the lake in downtown Hanoi, badly hurt, the first thing he did was to identify himself as the son of Admiral McCain, CINCPAC (overall commander of all forces in the Pacific, including all forces in Vietnam). He told his captors that if they would take him to a hospital, he would give them classified military information. They did, and he did. He wrote this himself in an article for U.S. News and World Report in May of 1973, shortly after his return to the U.S.. Yet the citation for a Silver Star which hangs on his office wall says that it is for courageously refusing to give any military information during his initial weeks of capture; do you begin to see that something here isn't quite right?
    Still worse, in my opinion – much worse – is the fact that as a senator he has consistently opposed and thwarted every effort made to return our abandoned POWs still in Vietnam and Laos, or to have their existence revealed. My wife, Marty, was a POW activist while I was in Vietnam, before any prisoners were released, and continued for years after that because at least 1,500 POWs were left behind. She has written an excellent summary of the truth about McCain: McCain – Portrait of Unfaithfulness. If you would like to have a copy, just let us know via e-mail, phone or letter.
    There is also a very thorough article about McCain by Roland C. Eyears, posted on several blogs. You can search for it under the title, "The Most Flawed Presidential Candidate in History," or by the author's name, or by going to the web site of Radio Station WCLT, Newark, Ohio. If you don't have access to the internet, ask your children or grandchildren to get it for you.
    One last thought: McCain is well known for being unable to control his temper (he is known in the senate as "McNasty"); he flies into a rage when he doesn't get his way, and screams obscenities in the faces of the other senators. He is so unstable emotionally that Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss) said publicly that if McCain should be elected president, the nation would be in danger. Maybe we know now why he is so emotionally unstable.

SO, WHY ISN'T ALL THIS WIDELY KNOWN?
    The reason that most Americans don't know the ugly truth about John McCain is that when the POWs were returned in 1973 a decision was made that "You are all heroes" – that there would be no prosecution of collaborators like McCain. In spite of this, Col. Ted Guy, USAF, senior POW at the Plantation (a segment of the Hanoi Hilton), and a genuine hero, insisted on filing criminal charges against the worst of the collaborators. One of those was a Marine; unable to live with his betrayal of Corps and country, he committed suicide. The charges were later dismissed, and the rest of those traitors are living today with the same benefits as those of the faithful POWs. So, the government whitewashed all collaborators; and the only one who paid for his crimes was the one who was honorable enough to admit his error and commit suicide. In addition to that, Senators have power not experienced by the rest of us; John McCain's medical records, and his military records, are sealed.

AND WHAT ABOUT HILLARY AND OBAMA?
    Equally troubling is the fact that the sordid histories of both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barak Hussein Obama are being concealed, or ignored, by the media. What does it say about the decay of our republic when the three viable candidates for President of the United States have records that won't stand the light of day? At the beginning of the primary process there were honorable, qualified, candidates; but they were not promoted by the media, and were rejected by the voters.

OBAMA'S PASTOR: "GOD DAMN AMERICA"
    Barak Obama insists that he is a Christian; yet his denomination (United Church of Christ) is perhaps the most liberal of all, and a passionate supporter of the "gay" agenda. His pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is a racist who hates (and frequently condemns) all whites, especially Jews, whom he preaches should be exterminated. He says that Jesus was a black man who was killed by rich white men. He is also vehemently anti-American, and preaches that white America created the AIDS virus to kill blacks, that our foreign policy is one of murdering people in 3rd World countries, and that we should not sing, "God Bless America." Rather, he has preached, we should sing and proclaim, "God Damn America." This is the man Obama calls his spiritual mentor and leader. And, incidentally, this man is also Oprah Winfrey's pastor; I wonder what he thinks of her new, pagan religion. (More on that next time). (Fox News, AP, ONN, et al)

WEATHER CHANNEL FOUNDER:
"GLOBAL WARMING" IS A SCAM!
    "Global warming" has become the rallying cry of the far left, including radical environmentalists, who see the existence of man as nothing but a contamination of the Earth. As more and more godless celebrities, lunatic professors, and shameless politicians join the cry to "save the planet" from people, the media trumpet the call to arms against mankind and private property rights, especially the freedom to own automobiles and function normally. Meanwhile, serious scientists continue to deny the claims of the alarmists of the left, pointing out the natural warming and cooling cycles of recorded history, and remind us that human activity produces only a tiny fraction of the CO2 that plants and animals release into the atmosphere. The problem is that serious scientists who deny the validity of "global warming" are completely ignored by the media, or are shouted down by the lunatic left. Even the Weather Channel has taken up the cry to "save the planet."
 However, no less authority than meteorologist John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, has gone public with an article denouncing "the myth…the scam…of global warming." He says, "The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic…There is no runaway climate change…Our planet is not in peril."
    Meanwhile, Al Gore, the self-appointed prophet of "global warming," profits from the scam. When he ran for president, his net worth was between $1 and $2 million. Today, 8 years later, his net worth is estimated at $100 million. (Fox News, ICECAP, et al)

PLANNED PARENTHOOD AND BLACK GENOCIDE
    Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a racist atheist, whose dream was the culling out of those members of the human race that she deemed inferior and unworthy of the right to live. She had a Hitleresque dream of a "purified" human race, cleansed of the inferior, mentally handicapped and all Negroes. Among other things, she wrote that eugenics (selective breeding) is "the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems." She lamented "the ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning, class of human beings, who should never have been born at all." Getting more specific, she wrote, "We do not want the word to go out, that we want to exterminate the Negro population." The spirit of Margaret Sanger is alive and well in Planned Parenthood (PP) today. Eighty percent of PP's abortion mills are located in minority neighborhoods, and one-third of all abortions are performed on black women, even though blacks represent less than 13 percent of the population.
    In March, the student magazine at UCLA, acting on tips, hired an actor to call PP offices in several states. The calls were recorded. The man would say that he had some money to donate to pay for abortions, but wanted to know if it could be given to abort only black babies. He was told that that would be no problem. When he would say that he thought the fewer black babies born the better, the PP representatives voiced agreement, or at least sympathetic understanding for his position. This, of course, has been extremely embarrassing for PP, but nothing much has changed. Clenard Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.org, a group concerned about the abortion of 50 percent of all black babies in the U.S., has written, "No other ethnic group in the United States has been decimated more by abortion than [the black] community. The war being waged against innocent captives in the womb is led by Planned Parenthood." (WND/BP)

WE ARE NOT POWERLESS
    Ford Motor Company, the auto industry Goliath, has been brought down by a little David in the person of Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association. Ford, which has been aggressively promoting the homosexual agenda with financial support, has also targeted the very wealthy homosexual community with advertising campaigns directed at the "gay" market. The Human Rights Campaign, the largest and richest of the homosexual pressure groups, rates corporations annually for their support of the "gay" agenda; in this year's report, Ford scored a perfect 100 percent. Two years ago, after Ford executives repeatedly ignored requests from AFA to cease its love affair with the homosexuals, Don Wildmon called for a boycott of all Ford products. From the beginning of the boycott, Ford sales have plummeted, dropping an average of 8 percent per month for 24 months. I, and 780,364 other concerned Christians, whom Ford executives never heard of, signed the AFA boycott petition In early March Ford agreed to cease its support of the "gay" agenda, and Don Wildmon called off the boycott. Together, and with leaders like Don, we are not powerless.

WHAT COSTS MORE THAN THE WAR IN IRAQ?
    While Barak Hussein Obama daily preaches about the awful cost of the war in Iraq, and how much more the government could give away in welfare programs if that money weren't being wasted in Iraq, there is another war that is costing much, much more than the war in Iraq. That war is the war of invasion by illegal aliens, one which seems to trouble neither Obama nor Hillary. The total cost of the presence of illegal aliens in our land is estimated to be $383.3 billion per year. (confirmed by Snopes.com)

SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO ILLEGAL ALIENS
    While the Social Security system is quickly going bankrupt, the U.S. Senate voted to extend social security benefits to illegal aliens. Voting to approve this insanity was John McCain, with 10 other Republicans, and 36 Democrats.

IS LIBERALISM A MENTAL ILLNESS?
    Although not all Republicans are conservatives (a prominent example is McCain), and there really are a few conservative Democrats (such as Rep Gene Taylor, D-Miss), the Democrats are the party of left-wing liberalism, and the Republicans represent the remnant of conservatism. When in late 2007 a Gallup Poll asked Americans what they thought about their own mental health, 58 percent of Republicans reported having excellent mental health, while only 38 percent of Democrats saw themselves that way. This did not surprise prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.; he believes that liberal political and social beliefs lead to mental illness. "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded. Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."
    Dr. Rossiter posits that the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority by the following: creating and enforcing perceptions of victimization; satisfying infantile claims to entitlement; augmenting primitive feelings of envy; and by rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
    He summarizes: "The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly defined by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood, and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind. When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains, and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious." (WND)

HOMESCHOOLERS ARE BEING SOUGHT
    After years of being rejected by most universities, home-school graduates are now being sought by many universities. Why? Because in time those universities which have accepted them have seen that home-schoolers perform better as a group than do public school graduates; they are more self-disciplined, more mature, and have mastered the tools of learning. Barmak Nassirian, Deputy Director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, says that it has taken about a decade for home-schoolers and colleges to get to know each other better. In other words, it has taken that long for the colleges to catch on.
    Incidentally, home-schooled children continue to out-perform graduates of public schools. A study entitled "Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers Across America," which included 5,402 home-schooled children from1,657 families, found that home-schooled children scored 30-37 points higher on standardized tests than did public school students. (FOF/BP)

A PARTICULARLY BAD COMPUTER VIRUS
    There is a particularly destructive computer virus making the rounds, seeking hard drives it may devour. It will come (as they all do) as an attachment. It is wise never to open an attachment from someone you don't know; but, even if you get one appearing to come from a friend, and entitled "Invitation" or "Postcard," delete the message without opening the attachment, then delete it from your "deleted messages" file. Snopes.com confirms this.

MARTY’S CORNER
    We are constantly bombarded with strange and troubling proclamations regarding Christianity, via politicians, so-called “stars,” liberals and the intellectual elites. Most recently, the advocating of Liberation Theology at Barack Obama’s church (of 20 years) surfaced to the forefront. Once again, your mind spins and you wonder just what is liberation theology? I went to an excellent resource, Watchman Fellowship (www.watchman.org), which is a truly Christian organization whose mission has been to fill a crucial need in the Church as a Christian counter-cult and watchdog ministry since its inception in 1979. The definition (with minor editing) follows:         
    Liberation Theology: A movement that attempts to unite theology with social and religious concerns about oppression. It finds expressions among blacks, feminists, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans, but it is most closely identified with the shift toward Marxism among Latin American clerics who espouse revolution. Most traditional doctrines of Christianity are de-emphasized or reinterpreted. Jesus and the Bible are defined and interpreted in light of a class struggle, with the gospel seen as a radical call to activism (or even revolution) promoting political and social answers usually in the form of classic Communism.
    A good definition of Liberal Christianity was also listed and informative so I’m including its definition for your assimilation and awareness.
    Liberal Christianity: A movement that seeks to retain religious and spiritual values of Christianity while discounting the infallible authority of the Bible. Its origins are in the German Enlightenment, notably in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the religious views of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Liberals reject the stated authorship and historical accuracy of many books of the Bible. They are skeptical concerning many or all of the biblical miracles, preferring naturalistic explanations or viewing miracle accounts as legend or myth. They often deny or reinterpret in mythical terms such doctrines of orthodox Christianity as the virgin birth, atoning death, and even the resurrection of Jesus. Liberalism has been most influential in mainline Protestant denominations and is rejected in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity.

THE DEATH OF THE REDEEMED
AND THE UNREDEEMED
    What a difference there is in the death of the unredeemed and the death of the redeemed! The unredeemed often die in terror, seeing and feeling horrible things, sometimes screaming to be kept back from what they see and feel. For the unredeemed, death is the final tragedy in life; it is the entry into an eternity without God, one so horrible as to be beyond the imaginings of man to describe. Dante, with all his brilliance, attempted to describe it; but his thoughts probably fall far short of the awful reality. The prophet Ezekiel made it clear that redemption is a choice, one available to every man; and he expresses eloquently God’s desire that no one die lost. In Ezekiel’s account, we can hear the heart-cry of God: a plea for the unredeemed to repent and live (Ezek 18). I believe that it is not overstatement to say that the death of the lost breaks the heart of God. This basic fact of life is confirmed in Peter’s second letter to the Church (II Pet 3:9).

PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN INSTITUTIONS
    For 40 years, the Harris Poll has annually measured the confidence of the American people in various institutions. This year, the armed forces ranked highest in public confidence at 51 percent. Others included Small Business at 47 percent, Organized Labor at 11 percent and the Press at 10 percent. Congress scored lowest at 8 percent. (PWB)

A POINT TO PONDER
    Secular humanists reject the idea that there is any such thing as unchanging truth. Flowing from this is limitless moral and ethical confusion, including the rejection of time-tested concepts of education. The idea of the traditional teacher, one who has studied and acquired some knowledge, and who labors to pass that knowledge on to students, is offensive to them. If their “change agents” have their way, there will be no more teachers; they will be replaced by “facilitators” who stay unobtrusively in the background, while the unstructured children share their ignorance with one another.

A POINT TO PONDER
    “Mohammed established Islam by killing; Jesus established the Church by dying.” (“Blood on the Sword,” T.C. McK)

OUR CHRISTIAN HERITAGE
            “Today I was buried with Christ in baptism, and arose to walk in newness of life.” (Pres. James Garfield, journal entry on his conversion, 1850)
MILESTONES
Died     1 March - Cpl. Fred Merritt, USMC (Ret) in Cartersville, Ga. Fred was severely wounded in Korea and never fully recovered. If you see the "100 best war photos" making the rounds on e-mail, Fred is No. 24. He and his wife Betty Jo are two of the people I most admire.

A FINAL WORD
    Treasure and use each day as if it were your last, and never give up hope; God has a limitless supply of new beginnings, and He makes beautiful things out of broken pieces.

    You are precious,

 (Sources: AFRN-American Family Radio News; AP-Associated Press; BAR-Biblical Archeology Review;BBC-British Broadcasting Corp.; BP-Baptist Press; C-Charisma; CBN-Christian Broadcasting Network; CR-Congressional Record; CSN-Calvary Satellite Network; EP-Evangelical Press; Fox (Fox News); FOF-Focus on the Family; FRC-Family Research Council; GN-Good News Magazine; HC-History Channel; IMG-Israel My Glory; JP-Jerusalem Post; LAT-L.A. Times; Mil-Military Magazine; NR-National Review; NM NewsMax.com; NW-Newsweek; NYP-New York Post; NYT-New York Times; ONN-OneNewsNow; PBS-Public Broadcast System; PWB-Pastors' Weekly Briefing; RTLB-Right to Life Education Foundation Bulletin; RTLGC-Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati; USAT-USA Today; USNWR-U.S. News and World Report; VOM-Voice of Martyrs; W-World Magazine; WP-Wikipedia; WND-World Net Daily; WT-Washington Times; WW-Washington Watch.)