The Miracle on the Hudson A Mans Story

Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III was the pilot of US Airways flight 1549. Upon take off the veteran commercial pilot of 29 years immediately noticed that there was a serious problem with two birds having gotten into the engines. It was serious but he knew what to do at every turn.

As I heard the story over and over again how he headed for a runway but lost power and was forced to do the only thing possible: Land on the Hudson River, I get chill bumps. He miraculously set it down on the water without destroying the fuselodge or the wings. It was a miracle he kept the plane together.

Almost immediately ferrys on the river moved in and all 155 passengers got off and the last one was Captain Sully after he checked to make sure all passengers were off several times.

This Man is a real American Hero he started flying at the age of 14, he served as a pilot in our military, and after 29 years as a commercial pilot the critical time came when his lifetime of experience led him to handle the plane without power and land it perfectly on the Hudson River. He made all the right moves but i'm sure you have heard the story.

He acted as American men have always acted and I understand that the other men on the plane were calm and organized letting the women and children get off first. You see thats how real men Act.

Thats how we all hope we will respond if the time comes that we can put our lives on the line. He did it, those passengers did it. Let me take a moment to compare these men and the men in our armed forces, to the enemies we face all over the world. Enemies which hide in mosques, fight disquised as civilians or worse as women. Enemies which hide behind their women and children. Enemies which bomb schools and buses. Enemies which chop off our soldiers heads on film. Enemies who want to destroy America. Enemies that are defended at times by well meaning or....are they well meaning, sometimes I wonder Americans. These Americans have perhaps forgotten how our men really act. Well this is a reminder. Our heroes are like Sully they land Airplanes on the Hudson river saving 155 lives they go house to house at huge risk to avoid hurting the innocent. Our enemies land planes in our towers just to destroy innocent people and and strap on bombs in subways and schools and.....They would Like to Again.

God Bless America and God help her to have more men that we can call heroes.

Tylenol Cold and Sinus and Christmas

Christmas has been under attack in our country for several decades of this I have little doubt. From the Merry Xmas signs which look funny anyway which remove "Christ" from Christmas literally and replace it with "X" to the latest craze "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" in all the advertisements. The question is how important is that fight and is it the real problem.



Several years ago my throat started aching and I had a headache and a cough. Someone pointed me to the Tyenol Cold and Sinus. Well this stuff was amazing. I took it for over a week and when I would take it the pain would go away and everything was just fine. Then I woke up one morning and happened to look at my throat in the mirror. It was really really bad. I had a serious visible problem and I was quite sick and all that time I had been covering it up fighting symptoms and doing a very good job of it. Instead though, I had gotten more sick and if I hadn't looked in the mirror I never would have seen the real problem.

It could be said that there is now a generation in this country that wants to take Christ out of Christmas and forget the religious aspects of Christmas. Sure I will agree that this is true enough, but I think that this is just the headache that is a symptom of the real problem. I would assert to you that we have far fewer Christians in this country that people believe and that they have raised up a generation in which, there is plenty of protest against attacks on Christmas, truly that backlash is just another in a long list of things that we can do to make ourselves look or feel like Christians. Today its commonplace for all manner of excessive activities to be celebrated: living in sin like(living together in fornication or homosexuality), drunkedness, lying and deceit, profanity, boredome(not being able to settle down), spending(massive credit problems among our common people), and one of the biggest excesses(Christmas time when we eat, drink, and spend in excess) and so called Christians are spending their time protesting about Christ being taken out of Christmas when they do little to deal with any other problems. These protest are superficial when truly God fearing Christians know that the true trouble is that God judges the heart.

What do I mean? I mean that having a generation rise up that allows Christmas to have some of Christ taken out of it is minimally important truly, when compared to the fact that we now also have a generation that in fact does not fear God and his imminent judgement.

Just something to think about :)

My Golden Rule of Conservatism

Whats the Golden Rule? The original Golden rule is: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". This rule answers many questions if you apply it but, it does require thinking and application. You see if you were to think, "I wont steal his money because I wouldnt want him to do the same to me", that is kinda easy and many questions are that simple. On the other hand sometimes you have to think deeper you have to look past yourself and actually put yourself in the other persons shoes. For instance, you might think certain profanity is acceptable and therefore if someone said @@@@ to you it wouldnt bother you but you must think deeper. If I had that persons beliefs would it bother me? Is this a male or a female i'm thinking of?....Perhaps you are trying to decide if you should speak to someone about something? You might ask yourself: Would this benefit me if I were in their shoes? Is it necessary for their progress? and many other questions. Hopefully you get my drift perhaps sometimes you must apply a simple rule more thoughtfully than it first appears.

So my golden rule of conservatism? Dont ask the government to take over your responsibilities or the responsibilites of others.

I hope you will think deeply about this. See if you believe it and if you do? Apply it broadly and thoughtfully.

I have not been blogging recently. I will try to start back and i will try to give some of my own personal rules for my readers to consider.

Problems in Lending

Lending Agencies are facing serious issues or are actually going out of business. I find this to be a symptom of our larger problem and the contagin that causes the current crisis.

I will deal with the contagin part first and then will begin to deal with the larger problem.

Yes problems in the lending field are a part of what is causing our current economic crisis. So lets look at some reasons for that.
1. Making bad loans: Bad loans are bad for the person recieving the loan and the company lending. Because the person recieving the loan going to eventually fail in a purchase or even worse a business venture. This sets him back further than he was to start with. Often times when you take on a loan you are in what appears to be a good financial situation but when you forclose you are in a poor financial situation.
The Lender faces a different set of problems. Since most loans default during the first few years they have taken little profit and that is lost because they dont forclose immediately they wait to see if the loan can be worked out. Their payments arent happening and they have a large portion of money tied up that should be making them money elsewhere. Also during the current crisis their other end(the collateral or the assest that is borrowed against) has been decreasing in value instead of improving in value. An example that might hit home is: If you were renting out a house for 1 year and had made a rather large investment in it. You would be depending on not just this years payments but future payments. If instead of having these payments you had only the couple of months payed and then stopped receiving payments. You would be set back a good bit, but you could recover fairly well when you evicted the renter after two months delinquency and got another renter. So you evict them which isnt fun, but are shocked to find that your house has been torn to pieces and requires another loss. Thats what banks are facing. The loans are going bad and the assets are losing value also. Both problems by nature is a crisis.

2. Declining asset value: I have covered this to a degree in the previous section. I will point out a few other angles. Banks are backed by a large amount of assets and are required to keep a certain amount of liquid assets to cover any potential withdrawals or requirements for collateral. You can see that if the overall assets are declining in value this will put a squeeze on the banks value and shrink the pool of liquid money. This is why local banks in areas unaffected by the economic crisis are not facing many problems. Also the banks are sometimes tied to each other with regular loaning between each other that allows them to take higher investment risk. This is just not going to happen now. The interbank loaning for short term needs is down to a minimum.

Now If they dont want to loan money as a result of declining asset values and small cash pools. Normally they raise interest rates and only lend to proven creditable sources. This makes sense because the higher interest rates slows the rate of loans because people want to take fewer loans for higher interest rates. Also the lending to proven creditable sources makes sense because those people or companies who pay their bills do not present nearly as many problems during the periods where their assets are losing value. Why? Because people that pay their bills continue to pay their bills and the assets doesn't have to be sold.

Finally they will require more strict downpayments. Why? because if you payed $20,000 earnest or downpayment you will almost certainly pay the final $80,000 for your loan because even if you couldnt. You could almost always sell the asset for more than $80,000 even if there was an issue. Making declining asset values much less of a concern.

My next blog will deal with this issue further.

Rethinking Economics

I am no expert in any field and yet I feel fairly qualified to question some things surrounding our current economic situation. I will tell you my reasoning for this. First off, I have some significant questions that are not even touched upon by the mainstream media. I think they are logical and the fact that they are not addressed in even a cursory way should concern us all. Second, I have put some efforts into trying to digest much of the information that is presented. Third? There is a third and I believe this is critical. I believe that even people who are very poor in mathematics or handling money, or politics can and should be able to understand much of what is out there. I find that there is this myth that its all too complicated your average joes just cant get it. I hope to debunk that through a series of blogs. I will concentrate on one point tonight.

A scary concept that is part of the new worldwide economy. That concept is that credit is the lifeblood of an economy. On this I mean only to question this and let your decide for yourself.

1. Credit defined-An arrangement for deferred payment of a loan or purchase: there are several definitions but I believe that this is they one that they are using when saying this. In other words they ability to borrow money and set up an arrangement to pay it over a specified period of time(key for later information).

2. What is actually meant here is that mainly large companies are having trouble getting short term loans. This is the first sign of credit problems. Why should this concern us? Well Large businesses are good for their loans so if they arent getting loans it causes issues first because they are used to doing business with these short-term loans but more importantly we must see the reasons for this. The reasons are that the lending agencies are having a shortage on Liquidity(available cash). They cannot make these short term loans because if they do that money will be tied up for a short time and during that time there is a danger that too many people will withdraw in some way too much money. I can explain this much further but the key is...this is considered the tip of the iceberge as far as credit issues.

3. This is my key and I think that although people know this they dont place proper importance on it. The issue? Lending Agencies are facing serious issues or are actually going out of business. Why doesn't the media talk about this as the real problem? I think its because it doesn't fit with the big businesses are evil mentality that many want to tell themselves. You see if a lending agency is having to declare bankruptcy that means that they are not making money. This is one of the secrets to understanding the problem. Lending agencies are companies like any other and they must make profit. If they are not something is wrong. I will attempt to address this in my next blog.

Against warrantless wiretapping?

In the years since our mainstream media drug warrentless wiretapping out on the world stage for all to see, including Al'Qaeda I might add, I've noted that there have been no cases of its use against some innocent American reported by our ever vigilant media.
I view warrentless wiretapping like a gun. Law enforcement need this weapon to defend vs those who would use our modern communications as coordinating devices from all over the world. A gun in the hands of those who would do ill is quite dangerous, but its not the gun that is the actual problem it is those who would do ill with it. So the wire tap is not the problem its those who would do ill with it.
Suddenly i'm a bit more concerned with these wiretaps just as I would be concerned with guns in the hands of criminals. There is some recent evidence that those on the left side of the isle will inappropriately use those things which they have access too. Joe the Plumber had a massive amount of background checks in the days just following his rise onto the national scene. This appeared to be party insiders who wanted to bring down a normal American citizen. Now just imagine if they could tap his phones without a warrant? Would they? All indications are...well I'll let you decide that. Even more concerning is that the MSM seemed to have the same idea as the Democratic party insiders.
Warrantless wiretaps are a scary thought of course but are they the right thing for our country? I believe they are. I recommend you put them in your file of things you really dont want to think about but sometimes are necessary: Nuclear Weapons, Flies, and surgeries.
The greater concerns though are who will be using them. The abuses of these background checks should be a reminder that we should be careful how we vote. As I look back at all the outrage over the pontenial abuses that would come from these wiretaps I'm reminded of the old addages"Whoever smelt it Dealt it" and "The guilty dog barks the loudest" telling us that those who raise the horrible concerns are often those who are thinking of doing horrible things. Who we put in office could be the next person with access to these dangerous weapons. These people should be sober minded and careful. Let us Pray that they will.

Whats so special about Small Town Conservatives?

Today I would like to tell you some things that make small town conservatives and small town people in general, special.



1. Faith: Faith is certainly not shunned. Many of us still believe in God and actually think we can and should reference His laws in our decision making. Our core beliefs affect all our decisions.



2. Personal Responsibility: Many of us can accept our personal mistakes as "mistakes".... things that we could have forseen and therefore could have avoided rather than something that was unavoidable therefore someone else should fix for us. My personal opinion would be that even if we couldnt avoid it others are not responsible to fix our problems.

3. Giving: S0 many of these conservatives are willing to help others often with no credit. Often times they dig deep into their pocket books or more importantly spend alot of time helping others.

4. Love for Country: American pride is still commonplace. Very supportive of troops and many join the military. I will seldom see any negativity expressed toward our troops.

5. Tolerance: I find that contrary to popular belief Small Town America seems to have little intolerance to others

6. Jobs: There are plenty of jobs in small town America. No unions though its on you to secure higher wages with hard work.

7. Friday Night Football: Much of the town will get together to watch the local team play or raid another town during the 11-17 weeks of football for your towns team. We wait for it all year and it makes for a 3 day football weekent for about 1/5 of the year. Awesome thing to enjoy.

I'm sure there are many things I've missed but these are a few of my thoughts about the greatness of small town America.