Tandem Vincitur

Several readers have been wondering what I have been up to this month as there are not many posts. If you have been looking for my take on the investor buyout - I will make this quick. If you invest money and you lose - bail yourself out. Don’t expect me or my kids to do that. Here we have wealthy investors who have squandered opportunity - and they hold “the economy” over our head. The bailout is going to cost us more than the cold turkey will.

Some of these investors are our friends from China - you know, the country that refused to stand by shoddy workmanship, so our nation took the loss. Now they want us to stand by our “shoddy” investments so they don’t have to take the loss. It only works one way for China.   (more…)

Spokane attorney and former city councilman Steve Eugster is no friend of mine. Neither is his attorney, Shawn Neuman. The only thing the three of us hold in common is our desire for government accountability. How that is accomplished and where we stand on life and moral issues, is where we part company. Despite our disagreement, I have never viewed either one as dishonest or unethical and I would be willing to vouch for either one of these fine men.

Steve Eugster is before the Supreme Court facing charges that could lead to his disbarment. According to the Spokane Review the charge is that he betrayed “a client when he asked a court to have a woman who’d just fired him declared incapable of running her own affairs.” His client was the late Marion Stead, an 87-year-old Colville widow. She hired Eugster because she was “suspicious of how her only child, Roger Samuels, was handling her financial affairs.”
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[this just in . . . via email from a Christian friend]

It is critical that Christians pray for the coming presidential election.  There is amazing power in united prayer.  Please print out this prayer guide and pray daily until the election.  Pray with others whenever possible.  The power of prayer can overcome any obstacle or ungodly influence and, indeed, do great things!  Please forward this to every Christian you know.

08/01–08/07 Psalm 32:6-11 - Pray that Christians will be motivated to pray faithfully for this election and that the Lord would deliver us from the wrong leaders.

08/08–08/14 Psalm 16:7-8 - Pray that the Lord would give wise counsel and guidance to His choice for president in this campaign.

08/15–08/21 Proverbs 16:12-16 - Pray that our nation will listen to the truth and not be led astray.

08/22–08/28 Psalm 18:32-36 - Pray that the Lord would arm the man of His choice with strength; that He would guide him in battle (this election), and that He would sustain him and give him victory.

08/29–09/04 Hebrews 11:32-34 – Pray that God’s man could, through faith, persevere and maintain his courage throughout this election.

09/05–09/11 Psalm 125 - Pray that those who trust in the Lord will not be shaken.

09/12-09/18 Psalm 86:14-17 - Pray that the Lord would defeat those who have no regard for Him in this election.

09/19-09/25 2Cor 12:9 – Pray that the Lord would empower and enable his man in any area of weakness.

09/26-10/02 II Kings 13:16 - Pray that the Lord would put His hands on the man of His choice for president (and his team) and guide them in this election.

10/03-10/09 Proverbs 1:5-7 - Pray that God’s man will listen with discernment, add to his knowledge, and receive wise counsel in this campaign.

10/10-10/16 John 16:33 - Pray that the man of God’s choice would be given wisdom and ability from the Lord to overcome any obstacle or difficulty during this campaign.

10/17-10/23 Acts 17:30 - Pray for repentance for yourself and for our nation.

10/24-10/30 Luke 12:54-57 – Pray that God’s man and our nation will be discerning and do what is right.

10/31-11/06 Phil. 4:13 - Pray that the Lord’s choice for President will have special strength and unusual ability from God.

11/07-11/11 Habakkuk 1:5 and 3:2 - Pray that the Lord would do something that would utterly amaze us and give His servant victory.

During the days of Nov. 7 - 11, be encouraged to set aside a time of fasting during these days to commit this election to the Lord in whom we put our trust.  Acts 14:23

Remember 2Chronicle 7:14: ‘If My people who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.’    And, The USA sure needs the Lord’s healing!!

[this is an excerpt from Idaho Values Alliance newsletter - 15 Sep 2008]

Although this will not come as a surprise to citizens who have a working familiarity with the leftwing bias of Old Media, ABC’s Charlie Gibson completely misrepresented Gov. Sarah Palin’s remarks about prayer and the war effort in his much publicized interview with her, then tried to use his misquote against her.

Here’s the transcript:
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[Flame Ministries - September 2008 Newsletter]

You will probably be hearing about an event called “Loving God and Neighbor in Word and Deed: Implications for Christians and Muslims” so . . . read on . . .

In October 2007, 138 Muslim religious authorities and organizational leaders, representing 41 nations, issued a letter addressed to Christian scholars and clerics of every denominational stripe.  It is called A Common Word Between Us and You.  In response, a document was produced by the Yale Divinity School entitled, “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to a Common Word between Us and You,” published on Nov. 13, 2007.  (more…)

This week, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington is listening to the case of the constitutionality of a fifteen year old citizen initiative. What is the constitutional issue? Does the law violate rights? Does the law oppress a minority? Well, it depends on where you sit.

According to Lisa Brown, the Democratic Senator from Spokane and Senate Majority Leader, I-601 is unconstitutional in that it violates the rights of the lawyers, or the legislature, to strip the people of their assets through higher taxes. That is not exactly how she put it. She says it violates the rights of the legislature. According to The Olympian, she claims if the Supreme Court does not strike the supermajority provisions of the law the peoples’ initiatives could be used to create supermajority votes affecting civil rights and property rights.
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This is a classic reprise reprinted from Tandem Vincitur, July 1997 (copyright by Dean Isaacson). It has been reprinted by others almost every election cycle and stolen by some (by that I mean they stole several paragraphs without credit and put their copyright over my work). My policy is anyone may reprint any of my work, in whole or in part, as long as they credit the source (url, book, etc) and do not place their copyright over it.

Since we are firmly within another election cycle, I thought it timely to reprint it. It is also available in our section “Cominus Papers” (see menu). Here is the ancient article:

Our elected officials and bureaucrats are dealing away our rights and freedoms like they are in some kind of a global crap game. In 1994, we said we were going to turn things around with the “Republican Revolution” but the game goes on as before. The players change and the leadership–if that’s what you call it–take on new faces. Where have the Republicans even begun to roll back unbridled bureaucracies? overweening government? and the rise of globalism? They have not. Instead they have sent new mandates to the States restricting our first and second amendments, expanding the role of government in education and now giving us ID cards.

Senator Orrin Hatch chairs the powerful judiciary committee of the Senate. It is this committee’s responsibility to evaluate the judicial nominations of the President. On one occasion when Mr. Hatch was speaking before the Heritage Foundation, he warned the audience of the activist judges that Clinton had appointed–that is, he told the conservative audience what they wanted to hear. When one of the listeners pointed out that Mr. Hatch voted for the last eighty-three out of eighty-five appointees, he left in disgust.

He is not alone. Many of our most sacred of candidates will speak the conservative line while voting for legislation that expands the size of civil government, increases spending and brings us into the New World Order. Linda Smith voted for the Careers Bill, the Terrorist Bill and the like. Now she is telling general audiences that she is working to make government better. What happened to smaller?
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The mission was to meet a truck in Spokane, take some photos of the truck and the mining equipment it was hauling. The company wanted to get the photos on the website. Accustomed as I am to accepting time-consuming projects that promise adventure but lack any remuneration, I readily accepted the task. Besides, this was my kind of mission: big trucks and big equipment.

My son agreed to go with me on the premise I was buying breakfast when the mission was over. And, he also is a sucker for big equipment. I awoke early, drove to his house and we went from there together. We arrived in an industrial area where the truck was parked behind a commercial tire store, just as the sun was waking up the valley. You could hear the whistles and hammers in the steel yards and the sound of equipment, trucks and people. The freeway roared behind us and the smell of diesel was in the air.

The noise and the smells brought back memories of my childhood. Every summer, I would spend a week or two with my maternal grandparents. They owned an upholstery shop in the port of Tacoma and I would go to work with them. They made the seats for Bellboy and Sabre Craft boats in the sixties and seventies. Most the time, I would play in a room that was full of scrap wood and carts; riding on the carts and making things out of the wood. Some of the time, I would stand in the entry and watch the scrap-iron crane with its magnetic boom. There were barges and tugs and ships to watch, as well. The whistles, the equipment, the people, the noise, the smells - I cherished it all.
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