Sunday School Lessons

Jon: "Dad, today in church I learned about the pathways to Heaven and to Hell."
Me: "What are they, son?"
Jon: "The pathway to Hell is wide, like I-25 going into Denver. The pathway to Heaven is narrow, filled with rocks and dirt, just like the county road that leads to our house! Lots of people choose the wide path, but few choose the narrow one."

Greg: "I learned about Hannah having sex! She and some guy had sex, she gave birth to a baby, and they took the baby to church."

Sara: "I was the only one who knew about the purple candle, so I raised my hand, and the teacher called on me. I told the teacher it was about Jesus, who died for us. The teacher said I was right, so I just kept talking on and on and on."

Me: "I believe you, Sara, and I am glad you knew the answer to the teacher's question."

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a lot to be thankful about this year. The only thing wrong with the meal was that we only bought two bottles of Martinelli Apple Cider! Should have bought a case! The funnest thing we did was play a card game called "Bullshit." The teenagers taught it to the rest of us, and the whole family played. Starting with ace as a one, the first player puts down all her aces. The next player puts down all his twos. If someone thinks that player does not have any twos, they can yell out "Bullshit!" If the person who yelled bullshit was right, then the bluffer had to take all the cards in the pile. If wrong, the caller-outer had to take the whole pile. The kids loved being able to yell out bullshit in front of their pious parents. It was non-stop hilarity. The next player puts down all her threes, and so on through kings and back again to aces. It's a great way to be on your guard against bullshit, something we all need in today's political climate.

Greg keeps a close eye on those free range turkeys, who think they were included in Obama's pardon, but what they don't know is that Christmas is coming!

It was a long 365 day wait since the fifth birthday, but number six finally arrived this month for Sara.
The alpacas could not figure out how this lone turkey remained free on Thanksgiving day!
Sara's mean parents would not let her start decorating the indoor Christmas tree (a potted pine we will plant outside), so she decorated the cottonwood tree down by the barn, as Rosie looked on.

The year in a photo collage

Daughter Kim likes to create photo collages. These are some of the photos she and I took in 2009. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Pretentious Elitism

While we are comparing the National Enquirer with supposedly more professional "news" magazines like Time, I want to make one more point. Who was it that alerted us to the fact that John Edwards, the pretentious elitist who ran as V.P. candidate with perhaps the most pretentious elitist ever to appear on the American political scene, John Kerry, was screwing around on his wife while she was supporting him, despite the fact that she was suffering with cancer? That's right, it was the National Enquirer.

Okay, maybe Al Gore equals Kerry in pretentious elitism. Mike Rosen has more on that subject in today's Denver Post.

Which publication is trash?

In the supermarket the other day I noticed Time Magazine has published a special edition about the year 1989. Of course there was Tiennamen Square, with the famous photo of the lone man standing in front of the line of tanks. Then, there were photos of Germans tearing down the Berlin wall. Of course, there was a photo of our beloved President Ronald Reagan demanding that Mr. Gorbachav "tear down this wall!

Then I started to read the accompanying story. The bastards that wrote the story pointed out that Reagan gave his speech several months before the wall was actually torn down, and that there was "no evidence" that Reagan's words and actions had anything to do with the tearing down of the wall! I put that piece of crap magazine down and picked up the National Enquirer! At least I remember that the Enquirer got it right about O.J. Simpson. Remember when Simpson said he would never wear those "ugly ass" Bruno Magli shoes that the killer of his ex-wife wore? The Enquirer dug down into their archives and found a photo of Simpson prowling the sidelines as a sideline football reporter for NBC, wearing Bruno Magli shoes, the same size as the killer's footprints!

Wake up, America!

How the hell can this happen at Fort Hood? Diversity and multi-culturalism have even infected our military. You just cannot tell me that nobody ever heard this insane psychiatrist spout off his insane jihadist-supporting views. He openly expressed his admiration of suicide bombers. He urged all infidels to convert to Islam. It does not surprise me that no other mental health professional who knew this man would speak up. The entire mental health profession walks lock-step in multi-cultural political correctness, conditioned by their training to ignore warning signs. Do we now get to hold them responsible to some degree?

One person interviewed on the base said, "I wish his name was Smith." What? So your illusions about the benefits of multi-culturalism could not be challenged? They say he must have had PTSD: from what, living in Maryland and Texas? Don't tell me this despicable piece of garbage was a victim of any psychiatric disease! The only mental illness I can see in all of this is what I hear coming from our media today, pretending that Islamic ideology is not a danger to us. One media pundit coined a new psychiatric diagnosis: PretraumatS Stress Disorder, because the killer had recently been told that he would soon be deployed overseas! I kid you not! As Mark Stein noted today, don't worry, those of you with Pretraumatic Stress Disorder: Obama/Pelosicare will cover it!

Why is our military unarmed? I understand that the heroine who finally shot this scum was a female civilian police officer!

Will this finally wake up our people?

Are elections relevant?

Herbert Schlossberg shows in his 1983 book Idols for Destruction how the czars and bureaucrats of the Utopian elite "cash in on our guilt" for polluting the earth, for example. They "do not merely regulate industries, disburse funds, and enforce laws;" they determine what choices we have in almost all areas of our lives. But, Schlossberg reminds us that "there is a higher law that relativizes all statutes and sovereigns. And that is a law which says above all that the state is not God."

Two states held gubernatorial elections yesterday. Voters in both states reversed the 2008 electoral trends. Or, did they? In 2008 voters threw out the bums who had been running things. Now Obama and his fellow Dems have held control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for nine months. Voters once again voted for candidates representing the party out of power.

The question remaining, though, is this: are elections increasingly irrelevant to what government actually does? Has the "new class" found a vehicle for giving its values the force of law? By becoming czars and utilizing administrative fiat "to bring their socialist vision into being" will the elites make sure that no significant changes in the direction of liberty actually take place in Virginia, New Jersey, and the rest of the country? Or, will the tea party movement continue to grow until we get a government of, by, and for the people?

The next year is going to be very interesting. For example, what will Obama now do in Copenhagen next month? Will he sign away our sovereignty on the issue of global climate control?

The illusions of compassion and rationality

I am amazed at the prescience of Herbert Schlossberg. Writing Idols for Destruction in 1983, he has captured what has happened to America in 2009! He writes about how unelected leftist intellectual elites gain power in bureaucracies. Like the Pharisees of old, they convince the people that they have wisdom no others possess. Never ask them about their track record, though, writes Schlossberg, because "it is a series of disguised disasters; just accept on faith that they have the secret to life." Their expertise is not value-free. They attach their expertise to a social movement, such as Marxism or socialism. The compassion and rationality they seem to promote are illusions; it is all about power and control. Again, Schlossberg: "The elites and the bureacracy both prosper as the private sector declines and as the state absorbs and expends a greater proportion of the national wealth. They seek to crush all opposition; their rule is incompatible with freedom."

Are bureaucrats people who are just silently obeying orders? No, writes Schlossberg, bureaucrats believe they are the law! The way to bring the socialist vision into being is through administrative fiat. Elections become increasingly irrelevant to what the government actually does. "Bureaucrats shuffle not paper, but people," writes Schlossberg. Suddenly we wake up to find that we have left ourselves defenseless against our supposed protectors!