WELCOME TO MY WORLD!

America, Let’s Talk

Open dialogue about life in America, about families, personal integrity and the necessary, intentional abolition of all things Politically Correct. If America is going to be restored to sanity, America, we need to talk.

American Minutes

Short vlogs (video blogs) which are anywhere from 1-5 minutes in length, focused on the state of our nation, the Communist takeover of Congress, the White House, the public education system and the media.

Critical Think Tank

An open invitation for all intelligent critical thinkers to join in. Seeking the collective wisdom of other bright, concerned Americans aimed at solving our nation’s current political and economic crises.

I Love Celebrate Recovery

12 Steps done the way Bill W. and Dr. Bob did them, straight from the Bible, uncut, pure, undiluted, straight from God’s mouth to our ears. The power of the Living God totally transforms a person by the renewing of their mind.

Joined At the Heart

Don and Madison Cobb’s blog, a father and daughter, who pray and sing together, play together, and ultimately overcame Maddy’s Autism symptoms together. Totally a father and daughter, joined at the heart!

Mr. Common Sense

Unfettered commentary on today’s world. The not-so-common common sense, coupled with logic and reason make an awesome case for common everyday struggles and solution oriented blogging.

Principled Living

Husband, father, counselor, former director of a large nonprofit, Don Cobb uses short vlogs (video blogs) to teach any willing viewer the value of practicing principles and walks viewers through the process which will change your life forever.

The Message Project

Original Rock/Pop band, encouraging and Spiritual in nature, addressing the Human condition in all it’s strengths and weaknesses. Don Cobb and his band make a case for walking through this life with God.

MR. COMMON SENSE

All too uncommon, Mr. Common Sense is here to help restore America to sanity! One issue at a time, I’ll be addressing that which ails America. Those areas, if you will, in which America has become collectively tangled up in her jockstrap, so to speak. Life isn’t rocket science. In fact, it’s not even complicated until men and/or women take steps to complicate it. An endless effort, it seems, to control that which is clearly beyond our control, and in this effort effectively abandoning that which we can control, American families and individuals sit mired in the frustration of futility. Bombarded by propaganda and intentionally misled by media misinformation, it’s no wonder America is so collectively confused.

Political correctness has neutered this once-great nation as our opinions and imaginations dictate Reality, which is, in and of itself, absolutely insane. Driven by many forms of Self-centeredness and Selfishness, we’ve woven a social fabric almost devoid of intelligence, twisted and warped beyond recognition. Racism and insanity drive America’s bus right now as fear and dysfunction seek to destroy the American family and the peace in our nation.

Let’s talk.

Oh yeah…let’s talk.

MORE: mistercommonsense.wordpress.com

AMERICA DIVIDED

Never having encountered a single person who supported Communism while I was in school, I’m baffled by where these otherwise intelligent Americans have come from. Surely, history proves that Communism is a failed idealism. In theory, Communism is an interesting idea which will accomodate Codependents and the lazy alike. Codependents worry about the lazy, ignoring that the primary reason for their life’s failure is the choice to be lazy rather than productive. If only the government would take care of all the lazy people, the Leftist Codependent could then turn their attention to other things. Until then, however, the common Codependent worries and frets for those who refuse to do for themselves.

Americans have always provided for the needy. America still provides for the needy. It’s called “charity” and we, the people are the most charitable nation in the history of Mankind. The Left’s hatred for Christ and for Christians, however, supercedes even their dysfunctional drive to take care of those who refuse to take care of themselves, and so what starts out as motivation to help the lazy has turned into a publicly displayed hatred toward the Spiritual community called “Christians”.

THE PROBLEM: A lack of Spiritual development always leaves an individual with no real hope; nothing to cling to but Self. The infinite wisdom found in God’s Word, upon which this nation was originally established, warns us of the dangers of leaning on our own understanding. Clearly the most reliable source of undisputed Wisdom, the Bible plays no favorites whatsoever. God’s wisdom warns us of many things, including what happens when we choose Self over Him. Drug addicts in recovery can all testify to this truth. When leaning on their own understanding, bad things tend to happen. When prayerfully seeking God and God’s will, amazing things start to happen. It’s not a matter of opinion. It’s a matter of fact.

Arrogance and ego lead to Self-destruction. That is a fact, as well. Choosing to worship Self rather than seeking a relationship with our Creator always has the same kinds of results. We become unattractive and annoying as we present our opinions as all-important. We offend virtually everyone around us who doesn’t agree with a given opinion, and we make it impossible to engage in intelligent dialogue with anyone. It becomes impossible  to participate in real intelligent discussion for this reason: Opinions have no weight. As interesting as we might find them, they are useless as guides because they are based upon nothing real or tangible, not facts.

One can build one’s house on facts because facts are both real and tangible. They withstand scrutiny and argument, unlike opinions. Without the benefit of Spiritual development, sober or drunk, we become opinionated nimrods with nothing of real value to offer anyone. We speculate, invent, draw unfounded conclusions, fantasize – all very interesting stuff to whomever is spewing it, but opinions don’t solve personal problems nor societal problems. Opinions, like feelings, just are. They substantiate nothing, so they are useless when applied to problems of any kind.

More on Spiritual development soon…

WE ARE NOT ENEMIES AFTER ALL

After decades of division between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, white folks and black folks, gays and straights, young and old, rich and poor – the list is almost endless, isn’t it? - it’s time to stop fighting amongst ourselves. Why do I say that which likely seems impossible to achieve? Truly, we’ve never really been enemies, any of us, but simply differ on ideological issues. We disagree and have differences of opinions on some things. Oh, we’ve certainly bought into the mainstream media propaganda that paints us all as enemies, but as the internet continues to facilitate more factual communication among us, amazingly we are discovering that we are not enemies at all. In fact, while we’re busy doing battle with one another our real and mutual enemy – you know who I’m talking about, the one who controls the mainstream propaganda media which pits us all one against the other? – continues to steal, kill and destroy America right in front of our eyes.

I confess that if you read my blogs from prior years, it’s evident that I bought into the “Us vs. Them” fantasy scenario, with “Us” being principled individuals who believe in God, personal responsibility, accountability, liberty and occasional personal sacrifice in order to facilitate honor and integrity for all. “Them”, of course, were the ungodly liberals who (in my propagandized opinion) were responsible for all of America’s problems! Seeing how I am only weeks into my newfound POV, it may seem premature for me to be writing about how absurd my former viewpoint was. However, the great thing about getting new glasses (seeing things in a new way) is that once you’ve got your new glasses on it’s impossible to go back and see them from your old POV. For me, anyway, this is true.

BIG BUSINESS, LOBBYISTS ARE KILLING AMERICA - Big business is pushing for a global economy. The lust for more – greed is what we call it – has driven the ‘haves’ to take American business overseas where they can get child labor to work for pennies an hour and where materials are dirt-cheap.  Big business has been responsible for keeping our borders open, as well, so that cheap labor can continue to pour into our nation, desperate people who don’t the rules or the law or their rights here in America.  Big Business is in the business of taking advantage of ignorant, desperate, largely uneducated and uninformed people across the globe.

The illusion has become that those behind the Federal Reserve Bank are solely responsible for trying to create a one world communist government, but the truth is that the Fed is  just a part of that mission. Banks, the auto industry, manufacturing, technology – all have to a great degree left the USA in favor of cheaper labor, ignorant and easy to manipulate foreign populations, and the ability to utilize unethical and immoral means of advertising such as subliminal messages and dishonest promises.

While we bicker about whether or not to legalize marijuana (it would be a bad move, btw) or gay marriage (CA already has Domestic Partnership laws which give homosexuals all the same rights as married folks – Google ‘CA Family Code 297.5’ and see for yourself, so why are gays fighting for rights they already have here in California?) or racism, politics or religion, Big Business has already bought and paid for your Senators and mine, your Congressmen/women and mine and are responsible for destroying our economy today.

PROPAGANDA PRODUCES SUCKERS – We’ve been duped into believing that we are each other’s enemies because if we’re busy fighting amongst ourselves we don’t notice what’s going on in Washington D.C. or anywhere else on the planet. Propaganda has created these imaginary fights among us, and only through a return to principled living and the embracing of American liberty and freedom will we regain control of our nation. Oh, we need to protest alright, but not against one another. We need to get organized, I admit, but not into labor unions owned by Big Business. We need to gather together, put our personal differences aside, start wielding the power that we, the people have left and stop doing business with those who have caused our economy’s collapse.

I’m referring to the American auto makers who are still producing crap compared to the Japanese, Korean, German and British auto industries who have taken our tax dollars to prop up their sinking ships and yet have done virtually nothing to change the way they do business. Their way of doing business caused them to go bankrupt, yet they’ve taken billions of our tax dollars and continue to do business the same way they always have. Bank of America is another business we need to abandon, to let them fail, to show our unhappiness with their taking billions of our tax dollars in order to continue to do business like they always have. You can add Citibank and every other major bank who took ‘Stimulus’ money, which is our money, to prop up their still sinking ships.

While we’re busy fighting for the right to get stoned and for rights we already have, Big Business is killing America. Wake up, America, and do some real research. Turn off ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC propaganda and take a look at what Fox News is reporting today. The mainstream media is run by the government. They singlehandedly propagandized and deceived Americans into electing a man we still don’t even know. If you’re still watching the news on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC then you are intentionally allowing yourself to be subjected to propaganda. The truth is that most of us are smarter than that. It’s time we started to act like it.

United we stand. Divided we fall. That’s a fact. I pray today that we find a way to become a united America once more. We can do this.

© Don Cobb

AMERICAN POLITICIANS IN THE TANK

America’s Congress has 535 representatives sitting in the House and Senate in Washington D.C. Add to that number one president and 9 Supreme Court justices and we have 545 people in our nation’s capital who are supposed to be serving us. We are all very aware of the corruption and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars that has bankrupted the United States of America. We are all aware, as well, that it is the job of these 536 elected representatives and 9 court appointees to protect our tax dollars from being abused or misused. They represent us. At least, they are supposed to be representing we, the people. Their primary job is to protect our interests in social and economic matters, to manage America’s budget, to make decisions which will secure America’s safety from enemies who might wish to harm us and to secure and protect the rights and liberties of all citizens “for ourselves and our posterity”. Our “posterity” means for future generations, as well as our own. So far, they are failing miserably to do their jobs. I’m not the only person who is pointing this out. So is Charlie Reese (click here).

GOOD: 0 – EVIL: 545

Aside from the lifetime politicians who American lemmings re-elect solely because they’re familiar with their last name, we have to be excited that our political system insures that new members of Congress will be elected regularly, and so we, the people have fresh eyes walking into Washington D.C. every election. One would imagine that these fresh eyes would see exactly what is going on in our nation’s capital and that those newly elected would act as accountability, exposing whatever corruption or misuse of taxpayer dollars is going on by the greedy, lazy and selfish representatives we’ve chosen to represent us.

So how often do the newly-elected expose financial mismanagement in Washington D.C.? How many times have we seen a new Senator or Congressman sent to Washington start issuing press releases about what a lack of accountability there is in their new position, or how their expense accounts border on insane in that not only are they all overpaid but that they get free automobiles and free gasoline, huge travel expense accounts that are easily and oftentimes abused and used fraudulently, office credit card accounts that enable them to buy new laptops, pay for their new office and office equipment and staff, and eat every meal at expensive restaurants for free while they are in office? And this is the tip of the iceberg. How about their extravagant health insurance, which covers them for the rest of their lives, and their retirement which gives them full pay for the rest of their lives? Do new Senators ever report back about the insane and excessive spending that each Senator is afforded and allowed to engage in?

How often have we seen those whom we elect to represent us act as a “Sarah Palin”, truly looking out for we, the people, rather than taking advantage of the indulgent, unrestrained spending that  they discover each Congressperson is allowed, because they all voted to set themselves up with undeserved, unnecessary and extravagant expense accounts? I can give you that number, because I’ve been watching and paying attention for all of my adult life. According to my life-long observation, that number is ZERO. I personally have never seen or even heard of a freshman Senator or Representative land in Washington and then report back about all of the unnecessary benefits afforded them while they’re in Washington D.C.. Nor have I witnessed a freshman Congressperson submit a bill designed to expose and stop the exorbitant, unreasonable personal spending of taxpayer dollars which takes place every day by our elected officials.

We have no choice in this matter any longer. Hoping our elected representatives will have integrity has proven to be a fool’s approach. No sooner does a newly elected Congressperson land in Washington and set up their new office complete with staff who do most, if not all, of their work for them, but greed apparently sets in and they appear to forget completely that America is bankrupt, that Congress is solely responsible for our bankruptcy, and that they, the newly elected, are the only real hope that we, the people, have. The newly elected, regardless of their good or noble intentions when running for office, appear to morph like chameleons into greedy, self-serving abusers of the system as soon as they land in Washington.

If this were not so, all of us in America would be able to point to the exceptions to the rule, to list by name those Senators and Congresspersons who did expose the excessive personal spending allowed by our government. We would all be aware of the bills designed to change that abuse of taxpayer dollars, but alas, there is no one noble enough to stand up in Congress or in front of the press and say “This is ridiculous! We are abusing our privilege and taxpayer dollars for our own self-indulgent pleasure and entitlement!”

THE ANSWER

So the answer is clear. We stop electing lifers. We start electing real people, not attorneys or even business owners, but real people who have had a lifetime of working for a living, who have had to learn how to live within their means, who have been forced to live within a budget – honest, hardworking people with the courage to speak up when they see evil and abuse taking place. We need to stop electing familiar names and instead get off our fat, lazy American butts and start investigating who the candidates actually are so we don’t elect another Communist president or Senator or Congressperson who does not represent we, the people, at all.

By the way, I’m willing to go to Washington and help clean House (and Senate). Are you willing to get involved? Start showing up at city council meetings, county Supervisor meetings, and local political party meetings of your choice. Show up, stand up and speak up, and make yourself available. We need real people to go to Washington and clean up at least 40 years of extreme abuse of power and reckless abuse of taxpayer dollars by both the Democrats and the Republicans.

We can do this. © Don Cobb

MAINSTREAM MEDIA BACKPEDALING LIKE CRAZY

MAINSTREAM MEDIA BACKPEDALING LIKE CRAZY – Apparently, after realizing that 40 years of televised liberal propaganda hadn’t ‘taken’ as completely as they thought it had, the Propaganda Network (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC) is backpedaling like crazy away from their beloved ‘savior’, whom they refer to openly as “The One”. Only weeks ago planted firmly on their knees in front of Barack Hussein Obama as they worshipped everything he said and did for the past 18 months, Obama’s handlers have obviously given the mainstream news media the nod to start pretending to be journalists again.

As the NY Times and CNN both begin publishing opinions which are mildly critical of The Obama Show, the rest of Obama’s propaganda machine falls in line as well. The entire Propaganda Network (PN) is in reverse in America today. The White House now feigning anger with some of their most faithful and beloved partners (NYT and CNN), it appears that the $660 million dollar marketing campaign which convinced an America disillusioned by faux-Republican George Bush to vote for a secret candidate (no school records, no birth certificate, no passport records) was only effective while the propaganda was actually on the air promoting our Mystery President. Since the year-long onslaught of media-driven promotion of The Obama Show, ratings have dropped considerably as guest star after guest star (Obama administration appointed ‘Czars’) have turned out to be virtually all Communists, criminals and more Communists.

While the national unemployment rate has continued to rise above 10%, The Obama Show claims to have created more than 600,000 jobs! Apparently realizing that this is only a show like any other show, America seems to have become collectively aware that we’ve been duped, that the Mystery President which followers still call “The One” hasn’t got any “change” to offer except for Communism (technically one could make the case that this is ‘old change’) and in less than a year has virtually destroyed all “hope” that this “change” is right for America. As the media pretends to be journalists once more, an educated and experienced America looks on in amazement, that The Obama Show would even have the audacity to take us for such suckers…again.

OIL SPILL IN SF BAY: LIBERALS FREAKING OUT ABOUT BIRDS – While California liberals put their sad faces on display in local newscasts for 35 birds covered with oil from a recent tanker spill, more than 4,000 babies were killed in America by abortion doctors again today. The description of American Liberals of “upside down” appears to be accurate as the ultra-left cries tears for 35 oil-covered birds who need cleaning and yet applaud, congratulate and support the mothers who chose to hire doctors and our nation’s largest abortion provider Planned Parenthood (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) to kill more than 4,000 of their babies every single day, celebrating their ‘freedom’ to kill their own children before birth. “At the rescue center, the birds are checked for injuries, photographed, fed and kept warm. Within 48 hours most are healthy enough to have the oil cleaned from their bodies and feathers.”

Let’s think: Crying for oil-covered birds – celebrating dead babies. Priorities, morals and ethics clearly completely upside down, American liberals care more about their imaginary crises such as the global warming hoax and the more recent Healthcare crisis d’jour which is really just our government strong-arming and taking over the healthcare industry than they care for real, Human babies. Perhaps the liberal left is better able to sit in trees and march along gleefully in profane public sex parades in San Francisco than they are able to discern right and wrong or up from down in America today. For my money, I’ll take leaders who tread the middle ground, thank you very much.

IMPEACH OBAMA MOVEMENT GROWING – A national movement is taking place right now after the US government under the direction and authority of The Obama Show has veered hard left into Communism, taking over the auto industry, the banking industry and is pounding on the door of the Health Insurance industry with plans to take over both health insurance and health care in the United States. Websites such as www.impeachobamacampaign.com (more than 70,000 signatures at this one site alone, as of yesterday) are reporting that thousands and thousands of Americans are signing petitions to impeach “The One”. This, coming less than 10 months into his reign, I believe is unprecedented in US history.

A recent Google search using the words “impeach Obama” produced 970,000 links which seems to confirm that America has awoken from her propaganda-induced delusion and is aware that our nation has been taken over by extremists. The Obama Show worked really well on paper, and even during promotion it sold very nicely to Americans who had been effectively uneducated by the US government school system and subject to 40 years of media-driven propaganda in schools, on television and in movies. Clearly The Obama Show and its creators and handlers did their homework before launching this new venture, as more than $660,000,000 worth of advertising certainly did glean them many fans initially. As the dream turned into a nightmare, however, and the effects of more than 660 million dollars of propaganda (primetime television and magazine ads) began to wear off, Americans woke up to the fact that the good old USA was being quickly converted to Communism (Socialism, Marxism, Communism – effectively all the same thing) as our government pulled the same routine that many Communists have pulled throughout history.

Rahm Emanuel said it succinctly when he said ‘You never want a serious crisis to go to waste’ and the ultra-leftists (Communists) who control the Democrat Party proceeded to take advantage of our financial crisis, which some believe was initiated intentionally by the Federal Reserve Board who controls our money and who has been accused of associating with the global One World Government conspirators. Adolph Hitler did the same thing: trashed the economy so people were afraid and felt needy, then stepped in, flooded the nation with propaganda and pretended to be their savior…and it worked, just like it worked here in America last year. The difference, of course, is that Hitler duped folks in ultra-liberal Europe. The Obama Show has pulled off the same mass manipulation in the Land of the Free, filled with God-fearing, God-loving, conservative Americans. The Communists really need to get credit for a job well done, because America was truly the biggest and hardest nut to crack, and they definitely cracked her wide open last November.

But today is another day altogether. Americans have awakened and are sounding the alarm for the others to wake up. There is a rooster in the hen house and before The Obama Show gives America over to the rest of the Communists involved in trying to create a One World government next month in Copenhagen, Americans are now beating on the White House door, demanding that this ultra-liberal leftist Communist president and his friends get the Hell out of Washington D.C.

NANCY PELOSI NEWEST CIRCUS STAR – Nancy Pelosi, Democrat from California (strike two) has recently submitted a new bill designed to replace the old bill, both of which will allow the US government to take over the health insurance industry and healthcare in the entire USA. Ms. Pelosi’s bill, however, is nearly 2,000 pages long, replacing The Obama Show’s original 1,000 page Communist healthcare takeover attempt. With so much pork in this bill, it’s designed not only to take over health insurance and healthcare industries in America, but to insure that attorneys and special interests get special rights and treatment. From biggovernment.com: “For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill): Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today!”

So Pelosi’s new offering must be considered a joke and that would make her Washington D.C.’s newest circus star! But wait…no one’s laughing. Quite the contrary, in fact, a lot of people are mad as Hell. Rightly so, in my humble opinion. It’s high time we chased this circus out of town for good. While I agree that America should be able to support a national healthcare system, to provide healthcare for every American citizen, there is currently such a lack of accountability in spending in Washington D.C. that only a complete house-cleaning – which means eliminating all incumbents and electing men and women of character and integrity to both the House and the Senate – will right this financially lilting ship.

WHY CURRENT GOVT. LEADERS CAN’T BE TRUSTED WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS – The Department of Energy, as just one example, created under Democrat Jimmy Carter’s regime, is currently requesting a $26.4 BILLION DOLLAR budget drain on the US taxpayers for 2010. Does anyone remember why this department was originally created? Get this: to overcome America’s dependence on foreign oil! Has it succeeded in it’s mission? No! It has been a complete and utter failure! Yet the DOE has over 150,000 people on it’s payroll today, a complete failure of Carter’s presidency, yet still in existence today!

Is pouring 26.4 BILLION DOLLARS every year into a FAILED EFFORT really wise stewardship of American taxpayer money? Of course not. Why hasn’t someone done something about this, and other wasteful spending by both Democrats and the GOP?!? Because there is no accountability in Washington D.C today! That’s why.

Now you know. Elect principled leaders, not familiar names.

© Don Cobb

 

WE REALLY DID IT THIS TIME…

Granted, after the 8 year lashing Bush gave America it’s no wonder people ran away from Republicans in the last presidential election. Let’s be honest about this, however – more people voted against McCain than voted for the unknown Marxist Obama. America still doesn’t know if Obama is even qualified to be president. The man has spent more than $1,000,000 keeping his birth certificate a secret, and it’s common knowledge that the fraudulent piece of crap he offered us as a “Certification of Live Birth” was a form anyone could get in Hawaii, no matter where they were born.

No, we really did it this time. We let the very media who promoted this man Obama feed us more than $660,000,000 worth of Obama campaign funds to convince us that someone we don’t even know, whose best friend is an unrepentant terrorist who Obama initially denied knowing but it turns out he lied – we let this propaganda media convince us that it was a good idea to elect an unknown Marxist who spent 18 years taking his daughters to a white-hating racist church.

So now what? Now we’re all watching Obama and the other Communists take America apart piece by piece, dismantling and taking over the banking industry, the auto industry, the healthcare industry, and taking away our rights to worship freely, our freedom of speech, propagandizing our children in government schools and (according to recent news reports) is trying to create a police state where this government thinks they’re going to force us all to let them inject us with something that is supposed to protect us from the flu epidemic that doesn’t exist. Less than a year in office, and America sounds more like Communist China or Cuba already.

I no longer hesitate to say that Americans really did it this time. Not me, but you, if you voted for this Marxist/Communist who is hiding his past and his birth certificate and has promised to bring America some radical “change”. That’s the only thing Obama was honest about: change. He’s changing the land of the free into just another Marxist/Communist country like any other.

And we thought the Communists were going to attack us all these years. They didn’t have to. They simply came to America, joined the Democrat Party, spent more than $660,000,000 on marketing and Americans voluntarily voted Communists into the White House.

I just shake my head. Could be that Senator Joe McCarthy was right, after all. Blackballed by the same liberal media who just promoted and helped elect this new Marxist/Communist president Obama, it appears that Joe McCarthy may have been exactly right about what was going on in Washington.

The saddest part, however, is not that America has already been taken over by a man who isn’t even eligible to hold office here. Nor is it that the Communists have intentionally destroyed our economy like they always do when they take over a nation, or that they now own the White House, the auto industry, the banking industry and are about to take over the healthcare industry in America. The saddest part isn’t that they’ve done all of this without any of us even lifting a thumb to stop them.

The really sad thing about all of this is that the majority of Americans who are responsible for putting these Communists in the White House don’t even have the humility to apologize or even admit that they were wrong, or that what’s going on is wrong. Arrogant and ignorant, the folks who helped turn America over to the Communists are still so deluded they pretend to believe that everything is going to be alright. Americans, many of them at least, are in complete denial about how they helped to kill America as we’ve always known it.

© Don Cobb

JUST ANOTHER CONSPIRACY THEORY

JUST ANOTHER CONSPIRACY THEORY

Left wing ideology is not, in and of itself, necessarily evil or even bad. It is born from a noble place, and then, when we are left to our own devices it becomes something else altogether.

The same can be said of Right wing ideology. It is not necessarily evil or even bad. It is born from a noble place, and then, when we are left to our own devices it becomes something else altogether.

Both sides of the spectrum, to a great degree, want to help people. The notion is a noble one, and its pursuit is commendable, on both sides of the fence. The problem is not that one side or the other is right or wrong. The problem is that on both sides of the fence we find extremists, literalists and control freaks. They tend to muddy the water and erect the wall that divides us so deeply we cannot see the other’s point of view.

While there are people of faith on both the Left and the Right, those people are not necessarily the shot callers in charge of walking this thing out. True people of faith tend to be humble and quieter than their extreme and more self-reliant peers.

THE GRAND ILLUSION

Conspiracy Theorists (CTs) have long ago been painted quite effectively with the “Lunatic” brush. The reason for that is two-fold. One reason is because when things aren’t adding up in a given arena, people tend to get excited, rather than patient. They start doing the math themselves rather than taking the time to do the research in order to discover the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Because CTs become excited, they oftentimes take what little they know and couple it with what they believe might also be true and present their ideas to the rest of us, fully expecting us to get it. But because what they’ve presented is only partially true, the rest of us tend to dismiss all of it, for fear of appearing as they (the CTs) do: wacky, unstable, and/or crazy.

The other reason CTs get painted with the “Lunatic” brush has nothing to do with the CTs themselves. It has everything to do with what is actually going on and just might be that the people who are involved in real conspiracies also own the media which regularly dismisses CTs as “lunatics”.

That’s right: I said the other reason the mainstream media dismisses conspiracy theories is because the mainstream media is owned by those who are involved in those conspiracies. Call me a CT, I don’t care. The truth is the truth and for those who would prefer to remain blind, you’ve probably already stopped reading.

That anyone would imagine that the most powerful nation on the planet, the greatest wealthiest nation in the history of Mankind wouldn’t be the target for bad, greedy and selfish people, to you I salute you and support your choice to remain ignorant. To those who wish to rule the world, America is the plum on this planet. This is America, after all, and if you think the richest, greediest people in the world aren’t fighting over who will control and run this richest and most powerful nation in the world, then I invite you to put your head back in the sand and go back to sleep.

For the rest of us, who have admittedly been asleep ourselves or at least dozing at the TV for the past 40 years, it’s clear that when the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR dissolved, the Communists did not go back to what they were doing. They came here. That’s correct, the Communists came to America through our open borders and easy undocumented entry like illegal aliens still come across our borders today.

A BIG PART OF THE GRAND ILLUSION

The Communist Party has always had the freedom to exist here in America. It wasn’t always common knowledge, as Senator McCarthy discovered, but they’ve always been here, working away, patiently coming alongside Democrats as they tried to sell their brand of ‘helping people’. Americans, naïve and arrogant, apathetic and idealistic, have pretended not to see them, preferring not to know in order to avoid having to confront or deal with them. Or perhaps we’ve simply been too self-obsessed to notice.

In 1988, however, the Communist Party in America instructed their members from “1988 to present: Voters urged to support the Democratic Party”. (See top chart here for “Communist Party USA”). I doubt that many Americans know this, because Americans are not big on paying attention to what is really important. Hairstyles, slogans, TV shows and pop music? Americans are hip to it all. Who they are really casting their votes for on Election Day? Not that important, apparently.

So what do you know? It’s not just a conspiracy theory at all. It’s true: Communists have been active in the Democrat Party for decades, like Obama’s short-lived, recently ousted, self-declared Communist ‘Green Jobs Czar’ Van Jones. But Jones isn’t the only admitted Communist President Obama has appointed to serve in his administration. There are others, as well as racists and wackos who serve in Obama’s administration, including John Holdren, a certifiable nut case who advocates compulsory abortion for women (that means forced abortions) and forced global population control (that means killing people randomly just because he believes there are too many people).

While I agree that it certainly appeared that we needed some “change” after George Bush raped and pillaged the USA and gave his buddies the first $700 billion bailout, it also appears, in hindsight, that George Bush might merely have been a set-up to launch this radical ultra-leftist Obama onto America without telling any of us what he was really about, because as it turns out Obama is just like Bush only worse! Change? Yes. It certainly appeared that it was needed. But appointing Communists to serve in his administration? I think it says volumes about who this unknown Jr. Senator from Illinois really is. To my knowledge, Obama is the only president to appoint Communists to his administration. I may be wrong, but I don’t think so.

http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/government/elections/president/timeline.htm

John Holdren: FrontPage Magazine

© Don Cobb

THE MIRACLE: Baby Boomers stuck in the 7th grade?

Emotional immaturity isn’t hard to find. The emotional obsessiveness of youth is obvious, and understandably so. Young people haven’t had much experience in managing their emotions. In fact, many, if not most young people, don’t even know that emotions can be managed. The reason so many children don’t know is because they’ve been raised by a generation who vowed early on never to grow up, and many of that generation have been faithful to that commitment. That’s right, I’m talking about the Baby Boomers, mentally and emotionally stuck in the 7^th grade, addicted to the idealism of their youth which comes with, btw, naivete’, ignorance and misconceptions caused by inexperience and immaturity. Gen BB pledged to never grow up, to never get old and funky like our parents. Throw in pot and other drugs, and the opportunity to stay stuck in the 7^th grade is almost guaranteed because the recipe for addiction is firmly in place.

Having been involved in helping drug addicts and alcoholics recover from the stranglehold of addiction has been both rewarding and surprising. Over the years I’ve learned much about the Human condition, and have discovered the basic root causes of addictions of all kinds. Emotional immaturity is always present, as is extreme self-centeredness. Many drug and alcohol treatment centers, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous, NA, MA, FA and other 12 Step recovery program members treat the symptoms and tend to ignore the causes. Of course, when practiced and followed faithfully, the 12 Steps not only relieve a person of the active grip addiction has on them, but also facilitates, as the 12th Step states clearly, a “Spiritual awakening”. What that means is that following that program to the best of one’s ability facilitates a relationship with God, to one degree or another, and definitely a far deeper relationship than one may have had prior to working the Steps. We are, after all, spiritual beings having a Human experience, and our Creator can, thank goodness, help us overcome and heal any and all of our scars and wounds.

One of the reasons that emotional immaturity is always present in an addict has everything to do with self-centeredness. Some of my observations over the past two decades are these: When a child’s needs aren’t met or when they don’t feel safe (raised in an environment which cultivated fear of Mom and Dad, for example), they, and their attention, almost always retreat to the safest place they know: inside themselves. When children are talked down to, scolded on a regular basis, beaten, intimidated, treated as if they are a pain in the ass rather than the blessing that they all are, they disconnect from the family unit emotionally. Because of their inability to change their environment and/or location (legally they cannot leave the family), children tend to retreat into Self, becoming self-reliant in their thinking, in their focus, and doing the best they can to build up walls, emotionally speaking, in order to keep those people out who seem not to have their best interests at heart (parents, siblings). Emotional growth comes to a grinding halt, and any semblance of growth during the adolescent and teen years is commonly minimal, for without healthy mentors (i.e. parents, older siblings) to encourage, support and model love and healthy communication, it literally becomes impossible for a child to grow. One cannot help but sequester one’s self deep inside where it is safe when his/her living environment is one which produces anxiety, fear, dominance and the suppression – even the destruction – of a child’s spirit by using fear in order to try to force them to comply with the parents’ wishes and demands.

People aren’t born as addicts, as some recovering folks believe. I can understand why some folks believe that, as they’ve never not experienced fear and anger and anxiety in their lives. No, people commonly experience family dysfunction long before they’re out of the womb, feeling what Mom feels, and hearing what Mom and Dad are saying, their tones, their emotions, while she’s carrying her child. For some children, they are born afraid. For others who might not experience family anger, fear or dysfunction pre-birth, the clumsy social skills and terrorizing of a child takes place after they are born as parents do their best to ‘control their child’, most commonly using fear and intimidation to get children to behave.

Not exactly the stuff dreams are made of, is it? (Rhetorical question.) But it is the stuff that the vast majority of Americans experience during childhood. And it is the reason so many people have retreated into self-centeredness as a way of life. In their minds, it is safer inside than it is outside. No one is yelling at them or staring them down or talking down to them or criticizing or punishing or intimidating them into doing their homework or cleaning their room or just to be still.

Self is a safe place for a child. The problem is that no one grows up in there. How many times have you said or thought to yourself, regarding your own parenting style “I didn’t turn out so bad” as you utilized your parents parenting tools (fear, discipline, bullying) on your own children? The truth is that for most of us, it’s true: We didn’t turn out so bad, considering what we endured as children growing up. Very few of us in America had the benefit of having parents who understood that Love must be the basis of any healthy personal relationship. Having been yelled at, beaten, abused and neglected themselves, the next generation of adults have never been armed with healthy parenting skills, and so they use “what worked for me”: fear, intimidation, bullying.

Collectively speaking, today’s children are experiencing the same kind of parenting Hell that their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents experienced. It’s called the generational curse of the father and it is a rare individual who overcomes it without God’s help. The molested boy oftentimes becomes the molester as an adult. The molested girl has been violated and scarred with scars which will often last a lifetime and likely will affect every male relationship she ever has in a negative way. When grandparents are alcoholic, one can know that it’s not likely that Mom and Dad learned any healthy parenting skills, and in fact probably unconsciously used the same methods their drunken parents used on them: fear, yelling, hitting, intimidation and bullying. Some children seem to weather such upbringings just fine, relatively speaking. Others, who are more sensitive emotionally, are devastated and sometimes destroyed by such parenting, becoming angry adults, criminals, drug addicts, alcoholics and/or become obsessive/compulsive and controlling.

This is why politics in America seems to be played out on the same level politics in the 7^th grade played out. Slogans and posters win elections, no matter how big a jackass a person might really be. In the 7^th grade, a typical 13 year-old thinks they know everything, and so oftentimes becomes unteachable. You can’t teach someone who thinks they already know everything. Throw in the all-too-common family dysfunction which manifests as self-centeredness and you have someone who trusts no one (or practically no one), whose fears are both unreasonable and debilitating (socially speaking), who, when they discover alcohol or pot find a peace and relief from the fear and anxiety they’re living at home and at school among friends who are just as emotionally broken and tortured by the fear and anxiety which is too often an ongoing thread that runs throughout the first 18 years of our lives and beyond. Moderately or excessively, they medicate themselves.

That is, by the time a child reaches 13, without the benefit of loving, kind and nurturing, self-sacrificing parents, they are commonly convinced that adults are stupid and that child officially becomes unteachable. Emotional growth, if any, comes largely through pretending to be mature in the midst of peers, yet even some of that pretend behavior begins to stick. That, or by a profound change in their personality, often brought on by tragedy, complete failure or the loss of relationship(s) that are most important to them, some life-changing event such as incarceration or homelessness. It seems that only then do children of dysfunctional childhoods become teachable again. As religious folks and 12 Steppers alike aim to practice, loving their neighbor as themselves becomes the pathway to healing, and for many, an entirely new life.

For those who’ve yet to crash and burn who have been raised in the American tradition of fear, intimidation and bullying, they are busy and hard at work, as self-centered as ever, if not more so than ever, leaning on their own understanding, keeping up walls to keep other people out, pretending to be who they want us all to believe they are, emotionally stuck in the 7^th grade and still focused on I, Me and My, while acting as if they are serving the rest of us in whatever career choice they’ve stumbled onto or chosen. In order to feel worthy, they’ve done their best, the most broken of them, to position themselves in places of leadership, that we might think great things about them. Even a casual glance at their personal lives or professional relationships, however, reveals the wreckage of their dysfunctional childhoods. Lying, stealing, selfishness and secrets are discovered every day about those in leadership who are still emotional shipwrecks. They still gossip and envy and let foolish pride drive wedges between others every day of their lives. They still pretend to be who they want us to think they are because they’ve never come to term with whom they really are: the products of dysfunctional homes, broken, emotionally immature and selfish beyond anyone’s imagination. They’ve been active, but without the kind of healing that only comes from God, they are still stuck in the 7^th grade.

(“The Miracle” is an ongoing series of articles by Don Cobb regarding the process through which an individual and/or a group of individuals or even a nation get and stay right-side up. Addiction, sexual, life, social or relationship issues, regardless how deep or serious, are all resolved through this miraculous transformation.) © Don Cobb

The Miracle

Life changing, mind altering, and completely free

By Don Cobb

Alcohol. Control issues. Drugs. Prescription medication. Pornography. Gambling. Lying. Stealing. Pretending. Acting. Bullying. Codepending. Gossiping. Cheating. Divorcing. Abuse. Does that describe all Americans? Of course not. But does it describe a disturbing number of us? Yes, it does. Those issues occur in every family in America, some more so than others.

The American citizen today is a far cry from the American citizen of yesterday. Granted, the generation before ours (I’m a Baby Boomer) is responsible for leading us where we are today, but our generation, like every generation before us, took it to a whole, ‘nother level. We are all victims of the sickness of our parents’ generation, on steroids. That is, the generation that ruled with an iron fist, in families where children were second class citizens and parents saw no reason to practice rigorous honesty when it came to their kids, where the result of making mistakes, speaking inappropriately, not keeping our rooms clean, not doing our chores, etc. was to be yelled at and hit by those who we were supposed to trust, who, we were told, loved us more than anyone else ever would. It’s clear that life for our parents’ generation was even more harsh for them. They inherited, however, the notion that “family” is a dictatorship, and if children don’t act right they get smacked. Not a whole lotta’ lovin’ goin’ on in families such as these. Hence, the drug addicted, alcoholic, rebellious and self-centered generation called The Baby Boomers.

Oddly, many of us are stuck in the seventh grade. National politics? Seventh grade. How we handle our relationships? Seventh grade. Emotional maturity? Seventh grade. We appear to be a generation stuck in the seventh grade, collectively incapable of being honest with ourselves or anyone else much of the time. Lying, it seems, is acceptable to our generation as long as we don’t get caught. That, friends, creates a huge part of a much larger problem. Incapable of managing our emotions in a healthy fashion, so incredibly self-centered that we take offense when none is intended, reading so much into what people say to us — particularly those closest to us — that we rarely really hear what’s even being said, we have become the mind-reader generation. So full of ourselves that we even believe we know what people “really mean” when they speak to us, thinking harsh thoughts to ourselves rather than letting anyone know what we’re really thinking, making mountains out of molehills as a way of life, incapable of just telling the truth on an ongoing basis, and we wonder why the world is so screwed up.

Naturally, none of this even matters until our life catches on fire in some noticeable way. Divorce isn’t usually enough to wake us up. Alcoholism isn’t even motivation enough, until it’s literally or practically destroyed everything we love. Only then, it might get our attention. Losing a job almost never gives us any kind of wake-up call, as it’s too easy to continue to believe that “they are all jerks” and “it’s their loss” or “they don’t even know what they had” when we’re fired or when someone divorces us.

No, our generation is so horribly stuck, addicted to so many things it’s impossible to count, including our opinions and the almighty Self, that nothing short of a complete and thorough disemboweling of our lives will get us to wake up, give up, grow up or man up. Ours is the generation that legalized killing our children, provided we kill them before they see daylight; the generation that decided that God is unnecessary, conveniently forgetting that He created everything and that without Him we wouldn’t even be having a Life experience.

We tend to worship ourselves, women, drugs, homosexuality, recklessness, rebelliousness, dirt, Political Correctness, sex, money, cars, homes and most of all, it seems, our own opinions.

In this writer’s observation, we are collectively, and worldwide, the sickest generation that ever walked the Earth, the biggest gluttons, whores and abusers this planet has ever seen. Baby Boomers are collectively the most selfish generation our nation has ever seen. Left to our own devices, we will all become what I’ve described above, and that is what we’ve chosen, many of us, for the last 40 years: to be left to our own devices. Self-reliant, self-obsessed, self-centered, self-will run riot — it all adds up to self-destructive, and no one is willing to say anything to anyone else about it. Incapable, left to our own devices, of completely honest and loving conversation — at least when someone’s feelings might be hurt or when confrontation is required. We don’t want to have a feeling and we aren’t willing to cause anyone else to have one either, lest we end up having one, too. We are the generation that is rebellious enough to just say it — whatever “it” is in a given moment — and yet are so codependent that we dare not say it.

It all boils down to emotional immaturity, which I believe is the result of not getting our own needs met growing up, and/or neglect, and/or abuse of one kind or another, including sexual abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse or physical abuse growing up. America is largely emotionally incapable of being honest with herself. That is why we continue to elect dishonest politicians to lead our towns, cities, counties, states and our nation. We are out of touch with Reality, easily fooled and/or manipulated, and because we stand for nothing in the way of ethics or morality, we fall for any thing, hook, line and sinker. Say it to us often enough and loudly enough, and we’ll believe it, eventually.

Oh, I’m sure I’m not talking about you. Oh no, not you. But look around you. Look in your own household and in your biological family. I’m talking about them. The people you work with? Them, too. The people at DMV, at the grocery store, at the gas station? Yep. I mean many of them, too.

I know this might sound negative to you, and perhaps you don’t agree with me about the state of our nation. It’s true that I see the dead fruit of Liberalism walking around at my place of employment, men whose lives have been literally destroyed by the freedom which Liberalism encourages: Self-reliance, rejection of God/Jesus/religion, where worshipping almighty Self is revered and encouraged, and leaning on one’s own understanding is a way of life. It’s true that I see some of the worst cases of lives virtually destroyed, in my line of work.

But that’s not what I use as my yardstick. I also see these men’s lives transformed, from upside down to right-side up, relationships restored, hearts and minds changed in such profound ways that can only be described as miraculous. I’m also involved with the City Council in my city, many of the congregations, businesses, pastors, and city leaders, the public school system, law enforcement, judges, Parole and Probation officers, thousands of volunteers, friends, family, business associates, musicians — an entire community that I have lived in for my entire life. This move to selfishness and self worship, this faith and devotion to our own oftentimes unfounded opinions, and this abandonment of God in favor of Self is sadly evident in most arenas I’m involved in today. Not just political candidates, but everyday folks have bitten into the apple and now are busy trying to cover themselves up because they are naked. Some, as luck would have it, are not even doing that much (attend a parade in San Francisco, for example).

The Good News is that there is a solution with a very long history of success. I call it The Miracle, but while it appears to be a miracle, it’s really not. It is an amazing way of life that brings the truth into view, enables us to rightly prioritize our lives, escape the trap of selfishness, and get ourselves and our communities — our very nation, even — right-side up again, healthy, vibrant and hopeful, dignified and experiencing the self-esteem that only comes with living a life of integrity. It certainly appears to be a miracle, and it’s available for all who are interested in getting right with themselves, right with each other, and establish and develop a relationship with God that will amaze even the most stubborn atheist. I’ll talk more about The Miracle next…

© Don Cobb

Don Cobb serves as a director of the Redwood Gospel Mission in Sonoma County CA, overseeing a 40-bed residential drug/alcohol addiction recovery program, the Sonoma County Jail ministries, and ministers to the local homeless population in Santa Rosa, CA.

Don helps men experience the real freedom that comes from living principled lives. Don also serves on the Sonoma County Advisory Board for Alcohol and Drug Services, and has been helping people get their lives back on track for almost 20 years.

You can contact Don with your thoughts and feedback at don@doncobb.com.