Ben Stein - CBS Sunday Morning Commentary

Only hope we find GOD again before it is too late! 

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish.  And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees.  I don't feel threatened..  I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me.  I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto.  In fact, I kind of like it.  It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu ..  If people want a crèche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.  I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.  I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country.  I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?  I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.  But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different:  This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina).  Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.  She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.  And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out.  How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc..  I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.  Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school.  The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide).  We said an expert should know what he's talking about..  And we said okay.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out.  I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.  Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

My Best Regards, Honestly and respectfully,
Ben Stein 

A Lifeboat on Wheels

I recently read an artical by Jere Downs in the Florida Today. It shows a growing trend in America; people losing their homes and turning to RVing as a way of life, more our of necessity in a lifestyle choice.  I hope you enjoy Jere's article.

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. - Amazon.com has what many migrant workers want for the holidays: a job.
Hard-up retirees and unemployed workers with children have converged on this rural town in RVs and campers to spend a few months earning $10 an hour filling orders at an Amazon warehouse.

Amazon offers a free place to park and plug in. When work ends Christmas Eve, the campers pull out.
Many have lost their homes and live on the road, home schooling their children along the way. Others are retirees who had planned to see the country but now work along the way to supplement depleted investments. Those not old enough for Medicare typically lack insurance.
"We are among the economic refugees. We are lucky to earn enough to get our laundry done and eat macaroni and cheese," said April McFail, 52. "I think it says America needs something different. This is supposed to be freedom and a good life. Now it is a sad note."

McFail's husband, Terry, lost his job last year at Dow Chemical earning $18 hourly in southern Michigan. They lost their home to foreclosure in May. Pooling $8,000 in savings, they purchased a 1987 Winnebago and hit the road. They worked as campground hosts in South Dakota for the summer, arriving in September to begin work at Amazon.
A short time later, April McFail's diabetes forced her to quit the Amazon job. She could not manage 10-hour shifts four days a week lifting packages up to 30 pounds each. Health care benefits left over from her husband's job at Dow expire Tuesday.

'Amazon Gypsies'

 Lunchboxes in hand, "Amazon Gypsies" walk down the hill to work from the company camp built on a gravel parking lot next to an auto junkyard. A nearby state park extended its hours through Christmas at Amazon's request.
Amazon pays campsite rental, water, sewer and electric. Some campers choose to save their propane and rely on electric blankets and heaters to stay warm at night.

Blankets cover the windows of the Wicklane family's 1997 Fleetwood camper. An electric space heater whirrs on the worn linoleum floor. After losing an electrician's job and a house in Florida last year, Kurt Wicklane found work unloading Amazon trucks in Kentucky to feed two daughters, ages 3 and 9, and a son, 5.

"My grandmother keeps calling me and asking me when are going to come back home" to Tampa, Heather Wicklane, 27, said while her children played outside their trailer at Green River Lake State Park. "I tell her we are home."
Around the clock, an estimated 500 "work campers" from Florida, Texas, Michigan and elsewhere supplement 3,000 temporary Amazon staff covering three shifts sorting, wrapping, stacking and packing holiday orders. Year-round, Amazon employs 1,200 full time in Campbellsville, a 90-minute drive south of Louisville.

The world's largest online retailer has long struggled to fill thousands of seasonal jobs in this town of just 11,000, said Ron McMahan, executive director of the Campbellsville Taylor County Economic Development Authority.
The state park would typically close Oct. 30. But it was upgraded with frost-proof utilities to accommodate the Amazonians, as the company calls its workers, with $48,000 in state funds, McMahan said. Amazon pays the state park $18 per night for each site occupied by workers, said Gil Lawson, spokesman for the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, which oversees state parks.
With the help of local landowners willing to open more new campgrounds, Amazon may expand its work camper ranks to 1,600 slots next year, McMahan added.

"We will need more people who are willing to do whatever it takes to pay the bills," McMahan said of the work camper phenomenon. "This is economic development for us."

Idea isn't new

Nationwide, up to 500,000 people work while living in their RVs, said Steve Anderson, editor of Workamper News, a journal based in Heber Springs, Ark. The recession has added to their ranks, he said.

Meanwhile, baby boomers are retiring and taking to the road.

"Amazon realized this was something they need to pursue," Anderson said. The company places ads in his journal for work camper jobs at warehouses in rural Nevada and Kansas, in addition to Kentucky.

Work campers have long worked as campground hosts - greeting guests and cleaning up for a free campsite and utilities - in state and national parks. As the recession has deepened, these migrant campers have becoming increasingly crucial.

In Idaho last summer, work campers kept the state's 30 park campgrounds operational after budget cuts resulted in the layoff of 27 full-time state park employees, said Kathryn Hampton, volunteer services coordinator for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.
Work campers said they also rely on amusement parks, Christmas tree lots and pumpkin patches for seasonal work. Near the Las Vegas strip, the Clark County Shooting Park is seeking 30 work campers who can park free in exchange for guiding police and tourists at the gun range.
"Less than half of all work campers consider themselves retired, with the median age being 53," Anderson estimates.

Lifeboat on wheels

The RV that Joshua Lindsey, 35, his wife and three children call home is "their lifeboat," said the former stockbroker and real estate investor. Before losing everything in St. Petersburg, Fla., in the market crash of 2008, Lindsey said he earned more than six figures annually.
Now, working the graveyard shift at Amazon for three months "will provide my kids Christmas this year and food for the table and a means to get through to the spring, when there are a lot more jobs available."

More common among work campers are people like Bill and Dorothy Judge, longtime retirees and RVers working now because their investment incomes have declined.

They live in a $275,000 Winnebago Vectra, a gleaming, top-of-the-line, spacious RV that logs 7 miles to the gallon. Still, Bill Judge, 72, said he took a graveyard shift at Amazon in hopes of earning up to $9,000 in four months. That will buy new tires for the RV at $600 apiece and finance upcoming trips.

The Seattle-based couple has lived the RV lifestyle since 1994, living on pensions acquired from union jobs at Boeing and service in the U.S. Air Force. To cope with less investment income, the couple said they often stay for free overnight in Wal-Mart parking lots.
"I did not imagine I would be working in a warehouse job in my retirement. I have not worked since 1994," Judge said.
Come Christmas Eve, demand online will wither for books, DVDs, kitchenware, toys, apparel, sporting goods, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items. That is the last day work campers say they expect to have jobs at Amazon.

The Wicklanes, camped beside Green River Lake, don't know where the next job will be. They plan to hunker down for Christmas.

"It would take a day to drive anywhere," Kurt Wicklane said of family far away in Florida. 

"We may as well sit tight."