BOTTOM LINE

There is no separation between church and state within the faith of Islam.  Anyone who believes otherwise is ignorant of history, Mohammad and his followers have been demanding political control for the last 1400 years. The demand may come from the barrel of a gun, economic intimidation or the ballot box, either way, Allah will rule the world!

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Core Beliefs

1.  America is the land of opportunity for every citizen or it is the land of opportunity for no one.  If we are to keep the capitalistic system, it must give all Americans a possible pathway to economic mobility.  Socialism would be a fairer governing system for the little people if the powerful continue to forget to be American.

    

2.  Every woman who kills her own baby in the womb, regardless of the circumstances, spits in the eye of God and chooses death over life.  Equally responsible is every man who spreads his human inheritance fraudulently.

3.  There is no religion that adequately represents the God of the galaxies, none of the big three, Christianity, Islam or Judaism, can claim divine exclusiveness.  Any religion that chooses human death to promote itself advertises their religion as divinely bankrupt and a fraud.  God is about giving life opportunities. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Stiffing Fox News

Congrats Mr. Trump, we who believe in your candidacy for president of this America, agree that your stiffing of the debate is smart.  These media types think they are divinely lead to embarrass your candidacy and then call it reporting.  Their questions are sometimes not about policy or what the country is desperate to find in their leader, to them it is about ratings, money and career.  Every person running for the office has vulnerabilities that can be exploited for personal gamesmanship.  Just because a candidate has the mojo to do the job and has the courage to seek the office, does not necessarily mean that he or she is perfect in every way.  It is what is ugly about American politics, a candidate should not be fair game.

  

Some candidates would have us believe that they are so close to perfection that they deserve the office.  These candidates have an agenda and it is not the agenda of the people, certainly not the agenda of we working and middle class folk.  Should they ever have to be honest, like the rest of us, they will have to show their warbles.  All of us have them, you know, those lumps or tumors beneath the skin of the back of a horse, imperfections caused by the constant motion of the saddle under pressure.  Are any equestrian types out there?

Life is about surviving under the pressures caused by our circumstances, the pressures we inflict upon others and our own poor decisions.  Mr. Trump, you have warbles like the rest of us, wear them like the badges of honor that they are.  As you do, your example is an encouragement to the rest of us.  Ignore the debates, ignore the unfair journalism, do whatever seems right, we are in your corner.  No other candidate will buck the system and bring jobs home.  No other candidate will buck the system and make illegal immigration a distant memory.

Every other candidate will give us more of the same injustice perpetrated upon we the most vulnerable in our society.  Every other candidate will fuss around the edges but avoid what matters to us.  Every other candidate, even the conservative Ted Cruz, will not be able to buck the system or get elected in the first place.  Trump, you are the last hope for the Republican Party and the last hope for American jobs.  

Should the Republican electorate or power structure turn against you, this Republican will care only about a better climate and leave America to the Recycling Bin.  We might as well go south, at least there will be lots of sun and a lower standard of living.

I will be haunted by the knowledge that we sadly left the mess for the kids.

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

Conservatism

Conservatism is great.  Political conservatism that demands limited government, adherence to the Constitution and personal freedom is the America of old.  This America hasn’t existed for at least a hundred years and when it did, the country wasn’t big enough to handle that much freedom.  One man’s freedom began to intrude upon the freedom of others and the government had to grow to mediate.  This is an oversimplification but for this discussion, the point being made is that conservatism has never been a political or societal cure all.

Conversely, today’s political landscape has reached an extreme dependence upon big government, robbing America of the God given freedoms passed to us by the founders of our nation.  Both political parties have contributed to this American demise but for different reasons, the Democrats are willing to trade freedom for societal control and the Republicans are willing to trade freedom for economic control.  Both parties have gotten what they wanted but we the people have gotten shafted because politics is no longer about us.

The political debate for 2016 is largely about labels such as conservatism.  The National Review, a conservative magazine has gathered more than 20 of their brothers to bash Donald Trump for being, according to their criteria, a phony conservative.  These are radio, TV and print personalities who trade on their conservatism and will accept nothing short of their purist understanding of the term.  The people do not matter, the fact that the working and middle class are paying for their retrenchment does not matter.  They are, after all, selling their wares.

Our country must change course and retreat toward the conservative principles that gave our nation such a great beginning but it won’t happen tomorrow.  First the bleeding must be stopped, first aid says apply a tourniquet, the people say apply Donald Trump.  There is no other logical choice.  A purist conservative candidate will never win the 2016 general election with our divided national electorate.  The people ask, how long must we put up with a conservative movement that is content to be only the loyal opposition, content to be losers?

The working and the middle classes of American are angry, our wellbeing has been ignored by our politicians who they lie and deceive to keep us under foot.  The Pied Piper has spoken the two words that matter most to us, jobs and borders.  No longer will Wall Street and the too big to fail banks be allowed to destroy the American wage earner in order to open exports to feed the big corporations and the stock market.  That is a heavy price to pay for 1% of the GDP and who picks up that check?  No longer are we content to allow an open borders policy made possible by our politicians of both parties who are being paid to bring in cheaper labor.  America has become wretchedly immoral.

Pie in the sky conservatism will not help our take home pay next week.  Why do they and all the other politicians avoid the magic words?  That’s right, they too are on the payroll of those lobbyists in Washington D.C.  Mr. Trump is the only person on the ballot who is free of these lobbyists and is willing to say the magic words.    

Will a Trump presidency stop the bleeding?  Who knows, at least the people will get the opportunity to stick it to those blood sucking politicians.  This is the only option left for the people and it feels so very good, even better than sex.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Loud Actions

I am sorry.  I must apologize to all those brave Americans who fought so valiantly in Iraq, men and women who suffered trauma and saw their brothers die believing that they were giving the Iraqi people an opportunity to be free.  The mission was misguided but you were not, I am not sorry that we have such noble character among us.

Watching the news is so painful, I cannot imagine the hurt that must at times overwhelm the brave hearts of our warriors, hearts only motivated past and present by love of country.  You surely are asking; how can a president of the United States turn on his own people to a degree not seen since the likes of Benedict Arnold?  How is it that an American president can so overwhelmingly cater to the paranoia of the murderous Mullahs in Iran and thereby compromise the safety of Americans?

The answer can only originate from the heart and not the lips of our president.  His lips are not to be trusted.  I know that I shall not live long enough to her the truth, Mr. President.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

  

Who are the new American dictators?

We the simple people, when we want to understand a word we reach for the dictionary.  Capitalism is the word for our day.  The most important issue before the voter in 2016 is to what extent our economy will continue to be defined by this word.  The current world chaos is the deserved hot button issue, however, our economic plans, which are theoretically totally within our control, will have the longest consequence upon the children of the American voter.

   

Webster’s Dictionary says that capitalism is “the economic system in which all or most of the means of production and distribution, as land, factories, railroads, etc., are privately owned and operated for profit, originally under fully competitive conditions: it has been generally characterized by a tendency toward concentration of wealth, and in its later phase, by the growth of the great corporations, increasing governmental controls, etc.”  America has arrived at the later phase of capitalism with the rise of large corporations and repressive governmental controls.

Capitalism in its purist form mandates a citizen owned economy as opposed to a government owned economy which is called by some Socialism.  Until our time, America has not swung far from the capitalistic ideals that brought us the greatest economy in the world.  Over the last century our politicians have dabbled in government owned business and price supports which amount to almost the same thing; i.e. the Post Office, the railroads, Veterans Healthcare and farmland, grain and milk price supports.  Our changing economy can be documented in any high school American history book because we choose our economy by whom we choose to lead us on election day.  This is where we are in 2016, the choice, probably the last choice, is upon us.

As our country grew due to capitalistic competition, the wealthy few considered labor as just another cost of production.  The demand for cheap labor is built into our capitalistic system and it was not until the rise of the union movement that American labor gained the respect that built the middle class.  The last fifty years our country has increasingly embraced the large corporations with a corresponding withering away of these labor unions.  Anti-Trust action by the government to break up large entities are no more.  Gone is any concern for the interests of the working poor and the middle class.  Our wages have stagnated over the last forty years while the cost of living and the multi-layered tax system continues to expand.  Today, these moneyed interests own our politicians.

What do the large corporations, Wall Street and the big banks with their too “big to fail” status require of their politicians?  That’s right, they require cheap labor and cheap money.  Cheap labor means a no tariffs on imports, a free trade policy.  It means that borders are pointless.  It means that our children will either be bottle washers or college graduates without a future or worse yet, on public assistance.  It means that our politicians are hired to quiet the anger of the folk and ignore their true interests.  It means that needed conservative economic principals will not address the inequity.  It means that smaller government will not bring to us more good paying jobs.  It means that tax cuts for capital gains will only feed the dictatorship.

Wake up America, if you don’t like the system, say so and vote.  Are we going to demand a fair trade policy and closed borders?  Are we going to be given that choice?  You judge, above all else, above social, political or religious niceties, who in 2016 has any chance of bucking the system?

   

G. Goslaw, 

Landers, CA

Mom 2

St. John 4:26    Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he”.

Mom loved her God and her Bible.  She held the family record for reading the Bible cover to cover, certainly much more than this her second son.  She was a lonesome reader, listening on a very personal level, intent on making another connection with our ultimate reality and of that fact the family had no doubt.  The Bible was her life, her love and her solace.

Mom owned and read almost every version of the Bible but she resorted to larger and larger giant print editions in her later years.  I believe she quit living when she could no longer live within the pages of this book, as she had done for a lifetime.  A tape recording of the words of the Bible were not the same as the book.  The doctors will have a different tale but they only deal in reports and numbers.

While sorting out her stuff, I came across one of her Bibles, a regular book bound study Bible with a paper jacket. The back paper jacket flap opened this Bible to page 1261, the Gospel of St. John, Chapter four. This was the last point of reference for Mom in this Bible or it was the most significant passage that she reread time and time again.  Either way, it is these words of Jesus that were underlined in red and yellow, “I who speak to you am he.”

In comedic terms, this was the punchline of a conversation between a woman drawing water from a Samaritan well and Jesus.  The entire conversation is fascinating but this punch line and the outrageous claim that it contains will change the world.   Jesus for the first and only time, clearly identifies himself as the Messiah, the long hoped for person, king or prophet who would rescue the people of Israel from centuries of interference and occupation by peoples beyond their borders.  This was the Messianic hope of the Jewish people that would hopefully soon or at least someday, usher in a reconstituted Israel.

But wait, the question needs to be asked, why is Saint John the only biblical writer to record this conversation between Jesus and the woman at the Samaritan well?  Why does Jesus avoid making this claim in Jerusalem or in his hometown of Nazareth?  Why does Jesus, according to John, reveal his Messianic identity to the Samaritan woman at the well and not his most faithful disciples?  The only possible answer to these questions is that the popularly understood Jewish definition of the Messiah at the time of Jesus was short sighted or just plain wrong.  The prophets foretold of a Messiah that would bring spiritual freedom and political freedom but they are silent about when each would happen.  Mom would not have lived within in the pages of this book if the book was solely about a political Messiah.  The politics would arrive for the Jewish people two thousand years after Jesus.

                                                        

Every God idea before the time of Jesus was founded upon the differences between peoples.  This does not mean that God recognized these differences, it means only that it is easy for we humans to assume that our God is one of our own.  Jesus asks the Samaritan women for a drink of water that she draws from the well.  In verse 9 of chapter 4, the woman asks, “How is it that you, being a Jew, asks a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?  For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”  Though the Samaritan and the Jew had a shared religious history, at the time of Jesus, the Jew considered the religion of the Samaritan inferior, almost a gutter religion and according to the Jew every Samaritan deserved shunning.

When the disciples returned to the well they were surprised to see Jesus and the woman in conversation.  Considering how the Greek word meaning surprise or marvel is used by St. John elsewhere in his gospel, surprise may not adequately convey their reaction.  Astonishment or shock that leaves one speechless may more accurately describe their feelings.  The disciples could not understand why Jesus would bother to give her, or any Samaritan, the time of day.  We can only imagine their anxiety when the town comes out to meet Jesus and the travelers are welcomed into the Samaritan town and Jesus stays two whole days.  Can you imagine, knowing the racial prejudice that the disciples carried, sitting around and listening to Jesus share with the Samaritans for two days.  Surely, Jesus was expanding upon his conversation with the woman at the well.  One might ask, were the disciples listening to the words Jesus?  What did the disciples do during those two days?

We are not told for the disciples will remain followers of Jesus but stuck in their Jewish religious mindset with their limited and comfortable understanding of the Messiahship of Jesus.  A stuck mind is the normal human condition for all of us, it is exceedingly difficult for a stuck mind to break free and really listen.  The understandings that we have learned from childhood, taught to us by succeeding generations, have such great power over us. Religion is one of those understandings.  A stuck mind will not listen and every religion trades in stuck minds.

What will it take for the disciples to break free .... a cross?  

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA