Sunday, March 30, 2008

Unselfish Superstar Athletes


For a long time I have been saying that often the best writing in newspapers can be found on the sports pages. Today is no exception. Benjamin Hochman writes here in the Denver Post an article entitled "True colors show in red, white, blue." He writes about two superstar athletes, Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson, who took time off from their fight to make the NBA playoffs to coach two teams of young basketball players. These young people were not just any ballplayers. They are the sons of soldiers fighting for our country.

Allen Iverson said, "I know after this is all over, they still have to deal with the fact that their parents are gone, but hopefully we can have some impact on them right now. Honestly, it makes me feel blessed to be here."

Saturday, March 29, 2008

A Retirement Home


Here is a picture from Fox News of the 10,000 plus square foot home Rev. Wright's Chicago church is building for him at a cost of 1.6 million dollars in the suburbs of Chicago. No doubt he will be surrounded by greedy people who are all typical white people.

A Global Warming Eye-Opener


And now it’s time for another Global Warming eye opener…

House #1
A 20 room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern ’snow belt ‘ area. It’s in the South.




House #2
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every ‘green’ feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest.

A central closet in the house holds geothermal he at-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling sy stem. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville , Tennessee ; it is the abode of
the ‘environmentalist’ Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford,
Texas; it is the residence of the President of the United States
George W. Bush.

Via Infidels Are Cool, which was linked by the incomparable Geckofeeder

The America-Hating Preacher

Have you seen the new 10,000 square foot house Wright is moving into in the suburbs of Chicago in a neighborhood that is filled with greedy white Americans?


Via Absurd Thoughts About God (Thanks to Geckofeeder)

Friday, March 28, 2008

Hillary Wasn't Lying

A Scary Scenario

Al Gore is going to be featured this week on 60 Minutes. You don't suppose he will emerge fron the Democrat Convention in Denver as their candidate, with Barack Obama as his running mate?

Caption Contest



The woman with the pliers is attorney Gloria Allred. What is she thinking? Perhaps this should be the first Caption Contest on Bob's Blog.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Kevorkian Announces For Congress




Did you know that Dr. Death, Jack Kevorkian, is out of prison and plans to run for Congress this fall from the suburbs of Detroit? Daddio at My Three Sons links to a wonderful blog called The Creative Minority Report, where you can share your ideas and support for the good doctor. Here are some ideas for bumper stickers and buttons from the Creative Minority Report.

Why Not, Barack?

First Safety, Then Laughter, Then Learning

Reading a passion quilt meme over at Nancy's Garden Spot today, made me think about how providing safety opens up a child to laughter and learning. Colleen and I were talking today about how we love the challenge of taking in children from a variety of backgrounds and melding them into kids who can function in a healthy way.

Today I was playing a game of baseball with my six and seven-year-old sons. Through lots of laughter, I taught the boys how to stand up to bat and a few other basics of baseball. We had lots of fun, then were joined by their two-year-old foster sister, who had been watching from her napping room. She enthusiastically joined in the game. She added golf and lumberjacking to the game, as she used the bat like an axe. Then we were joined by Linebacker Dude, who really prefers the straightforwardness of football to the complex strategies of baseball, but he had fun, too.

I am so proud of my sons for the wonderful way they interact with the foster children and their adopted sister. They are kind and fun-loving, and always are willing to include others in their play or work.

More From Barack's Pastor

Barack Obama's pastor now is insulting Italians. Newsmax Magazine quotes him as saying that "the Italians looked down their garlic noses at the Gallileans and did an Italian style lynching of Jesus." Jeremiah Wright is to Barack what Bill is to Hillary.

Hillary Caught In Another Blatant Lie

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Is The Time Ripe?

A Denver talk show host, Gunny Bob Newman, is proposing that a new political party be established. He would like to call it the Liberty Party. I hope he continues to push the idea and gets a lot of support from his listeners. Count me as one who is not excited about our choices in 2008. You can read more of Mr. Newman's beliefs here, and also listen to his show live on line from 7 to 10 PM Mountain Time Zone Monday through Friday. He has just started to discuss party platform ideas, and is inviting input from listeners.

Please, Let's End The National Epidemic Of "Poor Me"

Cpl. Ian M. Dollard, rifleman, wears the Silver Star Medal he received on Lance Cpl. Torrey L. Gray Field at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center March 21. Dollard braved enemy bullets to rescue his platoon commander from an enemy ambush during his deployment to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 06-08.
Photo submitted 03/25/2008 Taken by Cpl. Ray Lewis


I was tagged to do this meme by one of the most passionate teachers I know, Mrs. Who.

A PASSION QUILT


THE RULES:
Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.

Give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”

Link back to this blog entry.

Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

The Poor Me Epidemic
I think one of the most important things we can teach our children is how not to see themselves as victims. Self pity surely is one of the scourges of our modern life. It is so prevalent that one major political party has built itself in recent years around pandering to and segmenting people into one or more victim groups.

The opposite of self pity is personal responsibility. If we can raise a generation of people who take personal responsibility for their actions, the world will surely be a better place in which to live.

So, how do we accomplish this important task? I think we start by being parents who model personal responsibility in the way we conduct our own lives. That means we do not complain. We are grateful to God for each new day, and for each challenge He helps us to meet.

It means that we do not let things slide, when we observe self pity raising its head in our children or in ourselves. It means that we never accept excuses for ourselves or any of our loved ones manipulatively playing the victim card. It means that we do not shy away from giving appropriate consequences when our children take the self pity shortcut. It means that we earn respect from our children, and expect them to respect others. It means we pay close attention, both to what we are modeling, and to correcting those who falsely claim to be victims. We teach our children to be all that they can be. We teach them that not trying is far worse than choosing not to give their best. It means that we communicate with our children, letting them know what we think is important, and showing patience, encouragement, and perseverance.

Let's end the scourge of "poor me, I'm a victim, therefore I am entitled to..."

Okay, now, whom shall I tag?
Terri Wagner is a blogger who shares her insights in a most thoughtful way every day on this blog.

Gecko always has something to inspire us on the Geckofeeder blog.

If I go to the Cook Shack blog, I know that Cookie will have something that makes me smile, and something that makes me think.

Dee is a homeschooling mom who also stays alert to what is happening politically.

At The Lemon Stand, sour lemons are turned into sweet lemonade daily.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Understanding

Two-year-old Mau Mau is quite talkative, but we often do not have a clue as to what she is saying. On the way home from church she shouted out really loudly, "Ma ob da gab ju pi ko ew ob da woo pi mo ha lan." Sara said, "Mom, She's lying!" Sara obvously has special abilities to understand her roommate.

Good For Your Soul

This is what we hope to be seeing David doing some day.

Conflicting Stories

"Hi guys. Whatcha doing?" "We're digging a hole to see if we can find Hell." "No, Jon, that's not what we're doing. We are going to plant a Christmas tree."

You see, Dad, this is our crane. We put the dirt in the bucket, then we push down the crane, and up comes the bucket full of dirt.


Yes, Sara is still in church clothes. It is the digging task that is important, not how you're dressed.

Outsmarting Your Playmates

What do you suppose Coby is barking at?

Oh yes, Barn Kitty has outsmarted him once again.

It's What's For Dinner

The cows were there to greet us as we returned from church. Colleen has been reading up on cows. Don't be surprised if one shows up on our side of the fence one day.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Shocking to See Someone Stoop So Low

Were you as shocked as I to hear Barack Obama verbally throw his grandmother, who raised him, under the bus? His grandmother revealed to him that she gets scared when walking at night, if there are black men walking nearby. Many black people feel the exact same way!

Rush Limbaugh brilliantly pointed out that we are not the sum total of the people who have been in our lives. Why? Because we all make choices to be who we want to be.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Democrats Likely To Self-Destruct?

Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman were talking on their radio show today about the likelihood that there will be violence at the Democrat National Convention in Denver in August. It seems that the group which calls itself Recreate '68 is angry because they did not draw the piece of real estate they wanted in which to conduct their demonstrations. So, the whiney, loser punks may decide that they will be justified in escalating their violence.

On top of that, there is the possibility that the Super Delegates will choose Hillary Rodham Clinton over Barack Obama, because of Obama's recent attempts to deflect criticisms of his associations with his America-hating pastor/counselor by injecting race into the campaign. That, of course, would make a whole lot of other people angry. The required security will be enormous. The hoped for benefit to local businesses is likely to be outweighed by the costs of providing security.

Nick: A Man Worth Listening To

The amazing blogger Gecko has done it again; introducing us to an incredible human being who has conquered anger, fear and loss with determination, faith in God, courage, and just a wonderful overall attitude.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

One Who Appreciates Liberty

Earlier today I posted "We're not going to forget them." Gecko wrote a comment about our Vietnam tragedy, whereby we won the battles, but the press and universities influenced so many people to think that the war was being lost, so we withdrew, and over two million South Vietnamese were slaughtered by the North Vietnamese communists.

This week I got my semi-annual haircut. The woman at Walmart who cut my hair was one of the Vietnamese refugees who escaped the communists. At the age of 19, she fit herself into a small boat, which was crammed with lots of other people escaping the communists. She had no room to move for several days, and no food. The little boat was spotted by an oil tanker, who let the refugees come aboard, and took them to Malaysia. A church in Canada sponsored her, and brought her to a camp there, where she met her husband. She has been in Colorado for eight years on a green card, and wants to become a U.S. citizen, but still has not been granted citizenship. She sponsored her mother and six siblings, who have all come to the land of the free and the home of the brave. One sibling remains in Vietnam. He has tried several times to escape, but has been caught every time. She described him as "very unlucky."

What Would You Do?

If you were an American soldier fighting in Iraq, and the enemy threw a grenade that landed right near you and your buddies, what would you do? Using the split-second time available to him, the Navy Seal pictured below, threw his body on the grenade, which caused his death, but saved the lives of his fellow soldiers. Michael A. Monsoor's family will accept the Medal Of Honor on his behalf in a White House ceremony on April 8.

Freedom To Follow The Evidence, Wherever It Leads

I found this over at The Cook Shack, where you can always find gems.

"We're Not Going To Forget Them. They Are Our Heroes."

I found this at The Poor Farm.

How Much Will You Pay?

I read the following at one of my favorite blogs, Geckofeeder, and thought it was so important, that I just lifted it over here for my readers.

Proposed changes in taxes after 2008 General election:

CAPITAL GAINS TAX

MCCAIN
15% (no change)

OBAMA
28%

CLINTON
24%
How does this affect you? If you sell your home and make a profit, you will pay 28% of your gain on taxes. If you are heading toward retirement and would like to down-size your home or move into a retirement community, 28% of the money you make from your home will go to taxes. This proposal will adversely affect the elderly who are counting on the income from their homes as part of their retirement income.

DIVIDEND TAX

MCCAIN
15% (no change)


OBAMA
39.6%

CLINTON
39.6%

How will this affect you? If you have any money invested in stock market, IRA, mutual funds, college funds, life insurance, retirement accounts, or anything that pays or reinvests dividends, you will now be paying nearly 40% of the money earned on taxes if Obama or Clinton becomepresident. The experts predict that "Higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains would crash the stock market yet do absolutely nothing to cut the deficit."


INCOME TAX

MCCAIN
(no changes)
Single making 30K - tax $4,500
Single making 50K - tax $12,500
Single making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 60K- tax $9,000
Married making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 125K - tax $31,250

OBAMA
(reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)
Single making 30K - tax $8,400
Single making 5 0K - tax $14,000
Single making 75K - tax $23,250
Married making 60K - tax $16,800
Married making 75K - tax $21,000
Married making 125K - tax $38,750

CLINTON
(reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)
Single making 30K - tax $8,400
Single making 50K - tax $14,000
Single making 75K - tax $23,250
Married making 60K - tax $16,800
Married making 75K - tax $21,000
Married making 125K tax $38,750

How does this affect you? No explanation needed. This is pretty straight forward.

INHERITANCETAX

MCCAIN
0%
(No change, Bush repealed this tax)

OBAMA
keep the inheritance tax

CLINTON
keep the inheritance tax

How does this affect you? Many families have lost businesses, farms and ranches, and homes that have been in their families for generations because they could not afford the inheritance tax. Those willing their assets to loved ones will not only lose them to these taxes.
NEW TAXES BEING PROPOSED BY BOTH CLINTON AND OBAMA

* New government taxes proposed on homes that are more than 2400 square feet
* New gasoline taxes (as if gas weren't high enough already)
* New taxes on natural resources consumption (heating gas, water, electricity)
* New taxes on retirement accounts
and last but not least....

* New taxes to pay for socialized medicine so we can receive the same level of medical care as other third-world countries.

In case you want more information on Obama's tax and spend agenda:

If Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) Could Enact All Of His Campaign Proposals, Taxpayers Would Be Faced With Financing $874.35 Billion In New Spending Over One White House Term:
Updated : February 14, 2008: Obama's National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank Will Cost $60 Billion Over Ten Years; Equal To $6 Billion A Year And $24 Billion Over Four Years. Obama: "I'm proposing a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years." (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks On Economic Policy, Janesville, WI, 2/13/08)
Obama's Health Care Plan Will Cost Up To $65 Billion A Year; Equal To $260 Billion Over Four Years. "[Obama] campaign officials estimated that the net cost of the plan to the federal government would be $50 billion to $65 billion a year, when fully phased in, and said the revenues from rolling back the tax cuts were enough to cover it." (Robin Toner and Patrick Healy, "Obama Calls For Wider And Less Costly Health Care Coverage," The New York Times, 5/30/07)
Obama's Energy Plan Will Cost $150 Billion Over 10 Years, Equal To $15 Billion Annually And $60 Billion Over Four Years. "Obama will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial-scale renewable energy, invest in low-emissions coal plants, and begin the transition to a new digital electricity grid." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change," www.barackobama.com , Accessed 1/14/08, p. 25)
Obama's Tax Plan Will Cost Approximately $85 Billion A Year; Equal To $340 Billion Over Four Years. "[Obama's] proposed tax cuts and credits, aimed at workers earning $50,000 or less per year, would cost the Treasury an estimated $85 billion annually." (Margaret Talev, "Obama Proposes Tax Code Overhaul To Help The Poor," McClatchy Newspapers, 9/19/07)

Obama's Pla Would Raise Taxes On Capital Gains And Dividends, And On Carried Interest. Obama's tax plan includes: "[i]ncreasing the highest bracket for capital gains and dividends and closing the carried interest loophole." (Obama For America, "Barack Obama: Tax Fairness For The Middle Class," Fact Sheet, www.barackobama.com , Accessed 1/8/08)
Obama's Economic Stimulus Package Will Cost $75 Billion. "Barack Obama's economic plan will inject $75 billion of stimulus into the economy by getting money in the form of tax cuts and direct spending directly to the people who need it most." (Obama For America, "Barack Obama's Plan To Stimulate The Economy," Fact Sheet,www.barackobama.com , 1/13/08)
Obama's Early Education And K-12 Package Will Cost $18 Billion A Year; Equal To $72 Billion Over Four Years. "Barack Obama's early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year." (Obama For America, "Barack Obama's Plan For Lifetime Success Through Education," Fact Sheet, www.barackobama.com , 11/20/07, p.15)
Obama's National Service Plan Will Cost $3.5 Billion A Year; Equal To $14 Billion Over Four Years. "Barack Obama's national service plan will cost about $3.5 billion per year when it is fully implemented." (Obama For America, "Helping All Americans Serve Their Country: Barack Obama's Plan For Universal Voluntary Citizen Service," Fact Sheet,www.barackobama.com 12/5/07)
Obama Will Increase Our Foreign Assistance Funding By $25 Billion. "Obama will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and he will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change," www.barackobama.com , Accessed 1/14/08, p. 53)
Obama Will Provide $2 Billion To Aid Iraqi Refugees. "He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find a safe-haven." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change,"www.barackobama.com , Accessed 1/14/08, p. 51)
Obama Will Provide $1.5 Billion To Help States Adopt Paid-Leave Systems. "As president, Obama will initiate a strategy to encourage all 50 states to adopt paid-leave systems. Obama will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs and to help states offset the costs for employees and employers." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change," www.barackobama.com , Accessed 1/14/08, p. 15)
Obama Will Provide $1 Billion Over 5 Years For Transitional Jobs And Career Pathway Programs, Equal To $200 Million A Year And $800 Million Over Four Years. "Obama will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that implement proven methods of helping low-income Americans succeed in the workforce." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change,"www.barackobama.com , Accessed 1/14/08, p. 42)
Obama Will Provide $50 Million To Jump-Start The Creation Of An IAEA-Controlled Nuclear Fuel Bank. Obama: "We must also stop the spread of nuclear weapons technology and ensure that countries cannot build -- or come to the brink of building -- a weapons program under the auspices of developing peaceful nuclear power. That is why my administration will immediately provide $50 million to jump-start the creation of an International Atomic Energy Agency-controlled nuclear fuel bank and work to update the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty." (Sen. Barack Obama, "Renewing American Leadership,"Foreign Affairs, 7-8/07)

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Can You Tell One Socialist From Another?

While enjoying the posts at The Poor Farm, I took this quiz. Do you know which socialist said these things about war, personal life, democracy, capitalism, health care, and life as a political struggle?

On Responsibility, Elevation of Victimhood, Ecumenical Niceness, and Puffed Up Vanity

Dr. Robert Godwin has an amazing post today at his blog, One Cosmos. He notices that elites of the left emphasize rights, but do not equally emphasize responsibilities.
But why are there no "civic responsibilities activists," and why do we call the champions of irresponsibility, impulsivity, narcissism and sloth "civil rights activists"? Pomographic liberalism is obsessed only with rights, entitlements, and the unearned specialness of the oppressed victocrat.

He notes of the elites of the left:
"In their puffed up vanity and pseudosophistication, they have lost even the capacity to despise themselves, so they have no reason to aspire spiritually and surpass themselves.

He quotes author Thomas Hibbs.
Hibbs notes that the Last Men in our midst are not the courageous rebels of their narcissistic imaginations, but "timid, enervated, self-enclosed, and self-satisfied," conforming with "the dictates of common opinion.''

Then, Godwin provides this brilliant analysis and summary.
Fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution, and what has it wrought: spiritually withered New York Times Man, so insular and hermetically creedbound in his views, and yet, like a pinched little sulzberger, so confident of his childish superiority!

These Last Men hate to be reminded that there is something higher or deeper, something transcending their own rootless and self-generated meaninglessness. They are all sheep and no shepherd. And they don't believe in wolves at all. Brawndead leftists with no mametary glands hate the notion that the work -- the manly work, not just the endless party on mom's government teat -- of history is incomplete, that there are real enemies and real heroes -- superior men like General Petraeus who will name and kill the enemy so that the Last Men may sleep soundly in their beds. They believe that there is nothing to be afraid of but the hero!

In a way they are right, for the hero is a painful reminder of their own existential shrinkage. The society of the Last Man "is adept at satisfying nearly all desires for pleasure, but it cannot satiate, indeed it positively frustrates, the will to excel, to prove oneself superior to others" (Hibbs). They are afflicted with spiritual envy, the Satanic Eucharist of secular fundamentalism. Kill the hero is their motto. The victim is the new God, Master of our domain is their creed.

These are some of the things I was trying to say in my comments on my pastor's blog, (comments that were deleted by my pastor, but which for some reason I copied and pasted in a blog post here on March 10).

Where Obama Got His Ideas On Campaigning



Via The American Digest Check out the imagined conversation between Obama and Hillary in the Senate dining room prior to the beginning of the campaign.
Via One Cosmos

Saturday, March 15, 2008

More of Jack Frost's Work

A New Day

This is the only Jack Frost picture Blogger will let me upload this morning. As you can see, the sky is a deep Colorado blue, so the sun will soon melt Jack's overnight work.

Gigi is being a good mother to Billy The Kid.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

The Stories Are Getting Juicier

The Denver Post is finally catching on. Besides the obvious big story about the Democrat Governor of New York who got a bargain basement price from a compassionate hooker, (tomorrow the big story will be about Jeremiah Wright, Obama's sweetheart of a pastor), the Post has the following three stories today.

"Woman throws 2 sons, herself off freeway overpass." (During rush hour in Dallas) (Texans know how to drive: all three survived).

"Woman on toilet two years."
The toilet was in her Kansas boyfriend's house. He brought her food and water every day, and every day asked her when she was going to get off the toilet. Each time she answered "maybe tomorrow." The sheriff's deputies pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar, and the seat accompanied the woman to the hospital.

Last, but not least, there was this story: "800 small dogs seized from home." This story came to us from Tucson, Arizona. Oh, and there were also 82 caged parrots living there in the triple-wide mobile home.

Maybe the Post will survive after all.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

370 Children A Day Die in Uganda From Malaria

Did you know that 370 beautiful children die every day in Uganda from malaria? In the 1930s, 40s, and fifties in the United States we sprayed the heck out of our country with DDT. All of the malaria-carrying mosquitoes were killed.

Then, Rachel Carson wrote a book called The Silent Spring. The forward to the book was written by Al Gore. She claimed that pesticides were causing cancer. DDT was banned worldwide, before the malaria-carrying mosquitoes could be killed in places like Africa.

Does Al Gore now repudiate Rachel Carson? No. Does Al Gore participate in open forums where people can refute his crackpot ideas about global warming and DDT? No.

Two America-loving Irish citizens have produced two documentaries about the effects of non-apologizing, power-wielding politicians like Gore. The names of the documentaries are "Not Evil, Just Wrong," and "Mine Your Own Business." I heard them interviewed today on the Dennis Miller radio show, which was hosted today by the wonderful Andrew Breitbart of Breitbart.com.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Where Can We Find God?


A person whom I love, my pastor, posted this video of Bono receiving an award from the NAACP. I posted my reaction in the comments section of my pastor's blog. Then, since I have been so infrequent in my blog posts here, I decided to copy my comments and post them here. They follow.

I wish he or someone would have had the courage to say that George W. Bush has done more to fund the fight against AIDS in Africa than all other American presidents combined, including the farcical "first black president," Bill Clinton. That would have been the truth, which no one had the courage to speak to the NAACP members, who would have booed the person off the stage, if anyone would have the courage to speak the truth.

I also wish that someone would have had the courage to point out that the environmental whackos of the left stopped the use of DDT, which is the cause for the emergence of malaria that is killing so many African children.

One more thing: Julian Bond is not cool. He is a hater, in the same vein as Harry Belafonte and Louis Farrakhan. One more thing: You want to help the poor? Tell them the truth: they must take personal responsibility for their choices in life. They must be the ones who decide to make good choices, just like people who are not poor. It is stupid to glorify the poor, and say that is where God hangs out. God hangs out with people who believe and follow Jesus Christ. His followers are everywhere on this planet; people who seek His Kingdom wherever it is they live and work; people who would not hesitate to get on their knees and wash the feet of the Lord Jesus and any of His followers; people who would not hesitate to take care of the children who are the true victims of drug-abusing parents who are glorified as "victim groups" the left is going to save by voting for the socialist populists. That's my humble opinion.

UPDATE: My pastor has deleted my comments from his blog.

Posted by: Bob Agard | March 10, 2008 at 07:15 PM

Sunday, March 09, 2008

More Pictures of the New Kid in the barn

This kid is getting some help standing up from some other kids!

Okay now, where is my dinner?

Found it!

A Baby In The House, and a Baby in the Barn!

Here are some pictures of a beautiful new baby's birth. He is a Boar billy goat. Our whole family was there to assist.



The godmother watches the birthing from her balcony seat.

Okay now, where do I go to find something to eat?

More pictures coming soon. That's a promise!

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

You Can Leave Now

The Navy on Tuesday released this photo of an FA-18 fighter jet escorting a Russian Tupolev bomber after the Russian plane flew over the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz at an altitude of about 2,000 feet.



Via MSNBC.msn.com

Remember Jimmy Carter?

The latest from Michelle Obama in the March 5, 2008 New Yorker:
We’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!”

That is how President Jimmy Carter used to talk about America. That is why so many of us found Ronald Reagan so refreshing, when he described America as "A shining city on a hill." He helped us to believe in ourselves again.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Irony

I find it interesting that the number one best-selling book in America today is Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg. Among many other important points, Goldberg shows how the socialist fascists Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin mesmerized crowds.

Today the most popular political figure in America is Barack Obama, who spouts empty phrases like "Yes, We Can." Yes, we can what? Abort babies? Surrender to terrorists? We are just learning about Obama's life influences. His communist and socialist mentors, his ties with William Ayres, a leader of the violent Weathermen group which bombed the Pentagon and police stations, and Obama's ties to Chicago political fixers and slumlords. We hear his angry wife Michelle say that now that Obama is doing so well in his presidential run, it is the first time she has ever been proud of America.

This is not to imply that Obama is a fascist. It is just to comment on the irony of the popularity of socialist populism today in America, while at the same time noting that the number one best-selling book is Liberal Fascism.

"Like, C'mon Guys!"

Yesterday Obama actually held a press conference. He got questions about Chicago fixer Tony Rezko, and NAFTA. It was all just too much for him, and he walked away, saying "Come on guys, I just answered like eight questions."

If he is elected president, he might sometimes have to answer, like, nine or even, like, ten questions.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Hugo Chavez Again

CNN is reporting that "evidence found in computers seized in a raid over the weekend suggests Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently gave the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia $300 million," Colombia's national police chief said Monday. Both Equador and Venezuela are sending troops to the areas along their borders with Columbia, but Columbia is not sending troops to its borders.

Via The Munchkin Wrangler

100 Miles on 4 Ounces of Water



Via Charming, Just Charming

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Freedom

A few days ago I posted about a Christian photgrapher who was hauled up before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission because she refused to photograph a lesbian wedding. The Washington Times has a few more details here.

Honesty

Honesty.

Perhaps the rarest of all human virtues, treasured mostly in its absence, brought into focus most sharply in its antithesis.

If you ponder the subject for a moment, you may well find it surprising that we are anything but honest — that we do less than express exactly what we think, the we are anything but open and honest about our actions and motives. There are, after all, no dishonest dogs, no lying cats (though some might differ), no roguish raccoons or shady shellfish or mendacious mammals — save man.

So why, then, do we twist and torture the truth, crafting clever stories or deft deceits to cover our shortcomings and faults, smiling warmly while telling the most audacious prevarications concerning things both weighty and trivial? Why is this so often our default behavior?

What, exactly, are we trying to hide?

The answer lies in that dark angel of shame, that inner incubus engendered from a life spent divesting endless energy in the pursuit of the empty self. For dishonesty arises from evil, from the desire to hide that which must not be seen, from the need to present ourselves to others as something other than we are. Our ruptured relationship with God produces a perverse and unnatural self-sufficiency, driven by the desperate desire to fill the vast inner chasm thus resulting with a host of destructive desires, behaviors, and obsessions.

These fevered yet futile attempts to kill the existential emptiness and primal agony of life lived unnaturally, isolated from the life-source of God, prove highly toxic, causing yet greater distraction by their inevitable consequences. Designed to give, we strive endlessly to acquire; created to love, we engender hatred, exploiting others to fill our unquenchable needs, and detesting them when they prove unable to meet them. Our relationships become, not fertile beds of true intimacy, but vast webs of manipulation, abuse, resentment, and fear, as we suck the life out of others, seeking to satiate the insatiable void in our still-empty soul.

When we use the finite and futile to fill our edacity for the infinite, the invariable outcome of this manic miasma is a deepening conviction of our own guilt and growing awareness of our intrinsic unworthiness. Yet there remains a gossamer thread still tying us to the divine, an ancient truth near forgotten, a genesis of the God-life deep within, which says this can not, this must not, be true. And thus we craft another narrative of necessity, convincing ourselves and all around us that we are something which in fact we are not.

This pervasive dishonesty is the antithesis of transparency, and if we are to approach the ideal of being truly integrated — our inner self and outer appearances drawing toward unity — then we must come face to face with our own deceitfulness. This pilgrimage toward honesty must begin with the one with whom we are most deceitful: ourselves.

In our sophistry and sophistication this self-delusion is called by many names: rationalization; minimalization; justification; denial; projection. Though we often place such concepts solidly in the realm of science and psychology, they are in fact the attributes of a soul unwilling to face its inner abyss. They are, distilled down to their sordid essence, our unwillingness, our inability, to be rigorously, ruthlessly honest with ourselves.

Such a journey to the center of the soul cannot, indeed should not, be undertaken alone. The very strongholds we wish to conquer are such that they unite in their own defense: you will reason that you do not rationalize; you will deny your denial; project your fury at yourself onto others; minimalize your own responsibility for much which ails you. The mind is a dangerous neighborhood, best visited with another.

There is much to be learned from those who have undertaken this road to rigorous honesty through the crushing collapse of all of life’s props, brought about by the slavery of addiction and alcoholism. Driven to utter depredation and despondency by the scourge of a compulsion unbeatable and hopeless, they stagger into smoke-filled halls and church basements to seek what help they may from others of their kind. There they find kindred spirits — coarse in speech and common in appearance — yet victorious over the selfsame demons which shriek within their own dissipated minds.

They hear, for the first time, a startling truth:

Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.

There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.

Honesty: how peculiar, how unexpected, how self-evidently foolish as the solution to a deadly losing battle against booze. Yet those who triumph are those who become most willing to expose their darkest secrets, to face their shame, to lay it open before God, and share these hidden horrors which have enslaved them with another trusted friend.

Of course, you protest, you are not at all like those people, drunks and druggies, whose lack of moral character, hedonism, and enfeebled will must depend on such extreme and ridiculous measures to overcome their moral turpitude. You, on the other hand, a faithful Christian, have seen the light, and are walking the straight and narrow, secure in your own righteousness — err, the righteousness of Christ. The truth has set you free, after all — you know Christ.

Uh-huh.

And Christ knows you, and spoke about you often: something about “whitewashed tombs” comes to mind.

The path to honesty starts — startlingly — by getting honest, first and foremost, about ourselves. The dark heart of man knows no bounds — and the Christian is no exception, no matter how righteously we present ourselves to the outside world. Our hearts are filled with greed, lust, hatred, fear, pride, and extreme selfishness. Our one great advantage is this: when we are honest about our true nature, and act on that honesty, there is grace unlimited to overcome these inner demons.

So how then should we proceed?

We should, first of all, be systematic. Recovery programs use an approach which lists resentments, fears, and harms done to others — thereby covering a vast expanse of problems in human relationships which poison the soul — relationships so often devastated by the extraordinary self-centeredness so central to addiction. Other structured formats exist, based on lists of character defects, the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, the seven deadly sins, or other moral or spiritual principles. In a subsequent post I hope to expand on the recovery model, as well as provide a list of questions as a starting point to discovering core moral failings. The key here is not to achieve some legalistic righteousness, nor to engender guilt and self-pity, but rather to bring about conviction — that painful but healing knowledge of where we have failed, which is the commencement of a journey toward breaking the control of self-centered evil over our lives.

The second point is this: we do this to share with another. We should not strive to paint a rosy picture to impress, nor fill our story with a host of justifications, or endless whining about how life and its inhabitants have done us dirty. Surely they have in many instances — but we are responsible for our own attitudes and actions, regardless of the culpability of others. If we are rigorous and honest with ourselves, we will generally find we have brought much of life’s pain upon ourselves.

And lastly, we must pray. Unaided, our souls will drift and dodge, and find a million excuses for putting off this necessary work or justifying our ill motives and evil actions. Prayer empowers us to know, and in knowing, enables us to change. “I am the Truth and the Light” — both the ideal and the means to grasp and achieve it.

Everything inside you will rebel at this task, complete with procrastination, timidity, and our insane busyness whereby we avoid facing life’s painful truths and necessary reflections.

And of course, this self-examination isn’t really necessary, after all.

Unless, of course, you want to experience grace.

By Dr. Bob at The Doctor Is In

Do We Recognize When It Is Time To Move On?



Via The Doctor Is In

Living Under Socialism



Families in Haiti are resorting to eating dirt. Read the story here.

Via Reflections of a Jazz Theologian

Please See Story Below

 
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Saturday, March 01, 2008

Sweet



Via Chas' Compilation

Cake and Ice Cream

Tonight it was Happy Birthday to our fourteen-year-old.

The gift? An Ipod, of course!

Ouch!



Via Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred

What He Would Do: Barack Gets Specific

ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ

By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, and talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned. And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

Via Next Stop Lauderdale

Have We Learned Anything From History?

By Raymond S. Kraft

SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II. MOST OF YOU DON’T REMEMBER THE RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2008.

Sixty-four years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America taking food and war materials.

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing; we had few allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers, Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia.

Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe.

America’s only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel.

The US was certainly not prepared for war. The U.S. had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WWI because of the depression, so that at the outbreak of WWII, Army units were training with broomsticks because they didn’t have guns, and cars with “tank” painted on the doors because they didn’t have real tanks. A huge chunk of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor. Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually the property of Belgium) given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).

Actually, Belgium surrendered after one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later. Hitler first turned his attention to Russia in the late summer of 1940, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse.

Ironically, Russia saved American’s butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad alone . . . 99% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than 1,000,000 soldiers.

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. If that had happened, the Nazis could have won the war.

All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in kaffiyehs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. All who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra and their goal. There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win, - the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies.

The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the educated, more rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We can’t do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing . . . in Iraq, not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we have done two important things:

First we deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam was a terrorist! Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction, responsible for the deaths of probably more than 1,000,000 Iraqis and
2,000,000 Iranians.

Second we created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

WWII, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began with a “whimper” in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for 14 years before the U.S. joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17-year war - and was followed by another decade of U.S. occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again . . . a
27-year war.

WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year’s GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably greater - a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivalent to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States) in the 9/11 terrorist attack.

This is not a 60 Minutes TV show, or a two-hour movie in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the U.S. can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an ally, like England, in the Middle East, a platform from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the world.

The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons . . . unless somebody prevents them from getting them.

We have four options:

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran’s progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilizations should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-peace militants kill them.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America’s schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989; 42 years!

Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany!

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten- year occupation, and the U.S. still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than
100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The U.S. has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq. The U.S. took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.

In WWII the U.S. averaged 2,000 KIA a week - for four years. Most of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

The stakes are at least as high. . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

It’s difficult to understand why the average American does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.

“Peace activists” always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it’s safe. Why don’t we see peace activists demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most? I’ll tell you why! They would be killed!

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity.

Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy!

Please consider passing along copies of this to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is very meaningful TODAY — history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts and truth of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special-interest agenda driven.

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California.
Via Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated