Obamacare will add $6.2 trillion to our debt

Obamacare will add $6.2 trillion to our nation's debt. Alabama's Senator Sessions requested a GAO report, and announced its findings today.

This emperor has no clothes!

Today Trifecta takes on the emperor who has no clothes. Best wishes to Scott Ott in his effort to become Lehigh County Executive!

U.N. caused the outbreak of cholera in Haiti

Karl Denninger reports at Market Ticker that a United Nations base of Nepalese in Haiti was the cause of the cholera outbreak that is projected to kill as many as one thousand Haitians a year until it is eradicated.

At what point should we consider evicting the United Nations from U.S. soil? At what point should we consider withdrawing our payments to the U.N.?

Read the Denninger post here: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=218052

Joe Biden gives women advice on which guns to buy

I found this video here: http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/02/26/vice-presidential-advice-buy-a-shotgun-buy-a-shotgun/

It isn't racist when leftists do it

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is married to a woman of Taiwanese descent, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. Progressives in Kentucky say that is the reason American jobs went to China. The Super PAC Progress Kentucky tweeted that Chao "has the ear" of Senator McConnell, "which could explain why your job moved to China." No racism there. Just move on. http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/02/27/more-visible-leftist-tolerance-liberal-democratic-super-pac-progress-kentucky-attacks-mitch-mcconnell-because-his-wife-is-asian/

She tried to expose liars

Debi Austin died today at age 62. She was famous for making this anti-smoking video in the 1990s. She quit smoking soon after making the video, but the cancer had already taken hold.

Do you remember when the four CEOs of the four major tobacco companies testified before Congress that they were not aware nicotine was addictive? Evil lying bastards.

Four different kinds of energy

Gretchen Rubin writes about four different kinds of energy in descending order of mental demand.

1. Contemplative energy—planning, deciding, creating, inhibiting (holding myself back from saying, doing, or thinking something), setting priorities, making transitions.

2. Engagement energy—talking to other people, reading or observing with my critical faculties

3. Audience energy—watching or listening passively

4. Habit energy—mindlessly executing a habitual behavior

One conclusion: when I feel too tired to do anything except Level 3, I should probably be in bed.

That’s the value of Level 4. If I make bedtime into a habit–”At 10:30, I start getting ready for bed, in the same way, every night”–then I don’t have to use any precious Level 1 mental energy to get myself to turn out the light.

I think she got it about right. What do you think? One of her commentors added a fifth: crisis energy, when you have to come up with unexpected energy fast. Another commenter added performance and physical energy. Those made sense to me, because I got stuck in the snow today, and had to come up with sustained physical energy.

Read more here: http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2013/02/do-you-agree-with-these-four-levels-of-mental-energy/

He doesn't like it here in America

Neil Munro at The Daily Caller wrote a story last night about a speech given by the Imam of a mosque in Arlington, Virginia calling for jihad. Do we have to wait until one of his Muslim followers carries out jihad before we arrest and deport this man back to Egypt? Read the story here: http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/26/us-imam-calls-on-muslims-in-us-to-wage-jihad

Questions to ask ourselves

Are you willing to connect with people? Do you have a gentle spirit? Do you speak slowly and clearly enunciate your words? Are you kind? Do you reach out to people and show respect for them? Do people feel safe with you?

These are good questions to ask ourselves throughout the day.

Twenty years later: Islamists making headway in the imposition of sharia

Andrew McCarthy writes at The Corner about the fact that it was twenty years ago today that Islamist jihadis bombed the World Trade Center. McCarthy was, of course, the prosecutor of those terrorists. He writes,

they were devout Muslim operatives who belonged to a jihadist cell formed in the New York area by Omar Abdel Rahman — whose notoriety as the shadowy “Blind Sheikh” obscured the basis of his profound influence over Islamists across the globe.

It was nothing other than Abdel Rahman’s indisputable mastery of Islamic doctrine, and hence his capacity to give present-day vitality to a seventh-century summons to holy war, that vaulted him to the forefront of the jihad.

Whether the jihad terrorizes by explosives, suffocates by the systematic subjugation of women and persecution of religious minorities in Islamic countries, or infiltrates by stealthily using liberty to undermine liberty in the West, the mission is always coherent and always the same: the imposition of sharia.

The rationale of jihadist terror is to diminish our resolve to resist the gradual erosion of freedom and the relentless demands of Islamists — especially, Islamists of the Brotherhood variety. After the Blind Sheikhs and the bin Ladens have softened up the target, it is the Brothers who beguile us. Impeccably well-mannered and wearing neatly tailored suits, they flack for Hamas and maintain, straight-faced, that free speech is not so much a right to condemn their totalitarian ideology as a responsibility to suppress examination of it.

We did not want to acknowledge the sharia logic of the terrorists 20 years ago. We were told then that Islam had nothing to do with attacks on the West incited by Muslim jurists citing Muslim scripture.

There is no selling that fairy tale today, not after thousands of Americans have lost their lives. So the lie has become more aggressive, like Islam itself. While poseurs such as John Brennan — President Obama’s counterterrorism czar and nominee for CIA director — distort the meaning of jihad, Islamists and their fellow travelers seek not merely to suppress by intimidation but to criminalize by law the objective examination of Islamic supremacism.

Worse, we see the wages of coerced silence in the West, where the campaign to demagogue truth-tellers as “Islamophobes” — meaning, as racists — has devolved into an Islamist effort, supported by the Obama administration, to make speech about Islam a violation of international law.

Read more here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/341607/twenty-years-after-wtc-bombing-andrew-c-mccarthy

Bush's seven minutes, Nixon's eighteen minutes, Obama's seven hours

James Soviero writes at The Independent Sentinel that there is a huge difference in the way Bush and Nixon, on the one hand, and Obama, on the other hand, have been examined on the most significant events of their presidencies. Recall the press treatment of George W. Bush when he stayed in the Florida classroom for seven minutes after he learned that a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Recall the uproar over the 18 and one-half minutes of erased tape by Richard Nixon's secretary. Recall the total lack of examination of Obama's silent night of 9-11-12.

Read the whole thing here: http://www.independentsentinel.com/2013/02/bushs-420-seconds-nixons-18-%C2%BD-minutes-obamas-7-%C2%BD-hours/

Hat tip Bob Belvedere

Which kind of leftist are you: mastermind, thug, or libertine?

Bob Belvedere writes at Camp of the Saints

When dealing with a Leftist, we need to suss-out what kind they are — Mastermind, thug, or Libertine — in order to be able to correctly choose the right weapons to defeat them.

Bob gives us a thorough explanation of each of those three here: http://thecampofthesaints.org/

Why have the hearings?

Bob Belvedere reports at Camp of the Saints that Rand Paul voted to confirm Chuck Hagel. His reasons? Obama gets to pick his cabinet. Then why have the constitutional hearings? To give people like Paul some media spotlight? Forget it. Put a fork in him. He's done. Turn off the You Tube. Read more here: http://thecampofthesaints.org/2013/02/26/senrandpaul-votes-for-hagel-randpaulfail/

How the propagandists manipulate us

Brandon Smith writes at Alt-Market about how elites like the Rand Corporation

offer perfect scapegoat scenarios for catastrophes that are engineered by the establishment.

The psychologist Carl Jung notes in his observations of collectivism in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia that most citizens of those nations did not necessarily want the formation of a tyrannical oligarchy, but, they went along with it anyway because they feared for their own comfort and livelihoods. Many a German supported the Third Reich simply because they did not want to lose a cushy job, or a steady paycheck, or they liked that the “trains ran on time”. Socialism is by far the most selfish movement in history, despite the fact that they claim to do what they do “for the greater good of the greater number”.

With almost every major economy on the globe on the verge of collapse and most now desperately inflating, taxing, or outright stealing in order to hide their situation, with multiple tinderbox environments being facilitated in the Pacific with China, North Korea, and Japan, and in the Middle East and Africa with Egypt, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Mali, etc., there is no doubt that we are living in a linchpin-rich era. It is inevitable that one or more of these explosive tension points will erupt and cause a chain reaction around the planet. The linchpin and the chain reaction will become the focus of our epoch, rather than the men who made them possible in the first place.

But, are the trigger points around us really just a product of complex coincidence? Not a chance, says Smith.

Each major global hot-spot today can easily be linked back to the designs of international corporate and banking interests and the puppet governments they use as messengers.

Their solution will be predictable. They will state that in order to avoid such future destruction, the global framework must be “simplified”, and what better way to simplify the world than to end national sovereignty, dissolve all borders, and centralize nation states under a single economic and political ideal?

Read more here: http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1308-the-linchpin-lie-how-global-collapse-will-be-sold-to-the-masses

The electorate, media bias, and the range of techniques available for destroying Republicans and conservatives

J. Paul Masko, writing at The American Thinker, gives three reasons why conservatives and Republicans are losing the battle for America. One is the electorate.

it seems clear that many, many voters - we will never be sure of their numbers - neither hear, nor are interested in hearing, the stance of conservatives or Republicans.

The second reason is media bias.

there's hot, warm, cool and cold information, and that the mainstream press and the left are the arbiters of what will be hot, cold, etc. If the press decides that a particular story does not fit their world-view or plan, the story becomes "cold", is ignored and, to the acolytes, doesn't exist. Examples would be The New York Times ignoring the Benghazi story or "Fast and Furious" for extended periods; when they finally reported on these, they had lots of ways, as always, to effect their spin: story placement and flow, leaving out facts that might be inconsistent with their world-view, interviewing those with known sympathy to their stance and then editing the interviews for greatest New-York-Times-style impact.

The third reason Masko gives is the range of techniques available for destroying Republicans and conservatives.

The most effective and destructive technique is so-called "political correctness", a method of silencing those who disagree with a group or party controlling the political agenda: it's a technique that depends on a constant reinforcing dialogue between the media and compliant citizens. Political correctness is a capital political concept because: the participants silently acquiesce to its dictates; it's a self-modulating system where groups of people self-monitor and groom each other into conformity; through unspoken or overt threats of censure, it propagates itself; and, among the willing, it inevitably leads to the control of thought. If we freely restrict our speech to only "allowed" topics, in short order we restrict our thinking as well. In the end there is no more powerful political tool than thought control, which is why mastery and management of information is a central issue in all totalitarian regimes.

What has required the overt elimination or forced domination of media outlets in most autocratic regimes has been yielded up easily by our group-think media, who now march along in near lockstep while trumpeting their independence. Political correctness must be a beautiful thing to behold if you're a politician inclined toward domination.

Another technique is the investigation and censure of politicians and groups who don't fit the media or left wing paradigm, while ignoring or manipulating scandalous information on political allies. When potentially damaging information about left wing allies is ignored by the mainstream media, it simply "doesn't exist" to growing numbers of otherwise well-informed acolytes. This is why Sarah Palin is regarded as perhaps the most heinous and hated American politician today to a large portion of the population, while Bill Clinton is lionized and his wife may be the brightest woman in the western world. With enough investigation and diligence, anyone can be destroyed and almost anyone can be elevated. Again, who is destroyed and who idealized is totally within the control of the mainstream media and the left wing: conservatives and Republicans cannot substantially affect these processes because of the nullification of their brand advanced through the press, the entertainment media and educational institutions.

Read more of this depressing, but true, article here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/three_reasons_conservatives_are_losing_the_battle_for_america.html

Background checks

found at American Digest's Sideline

Whistle while you walk

Oddity Central has two videos about the Whistler of Portland, Robert Smith. Robert got in trouble recently for standing in front of a business whistling. He made an agreement with a judge that he would only whistle when walking. It is his goal to get other Portlanders whistling along with him.

Hat tip Gerard Vanderleun

The Blame Game

The blogger at House of Eratosthenes writes

any movement is in trouble if it defines itself according to what it hates rather than according to what it loves. Barry’s a revolutionary. He just got done making sure the enemy can’t decide anything, so the next step is to blame them for the aftermath. See, there’s an ugly truth we’re learning here: A revolutionary who has been winning consistently up until now, is a revolutionary befuddled. Like a spoiled child, he knows not where his boundaries are because he hasn’t run into them. He is obliged to continue to push the envelope, and assigning blame is just another way of pushing the envelope.

Who makes this odd rule?

Gerard Vanderleun links to a post by Ace of Spades in which Ace questions why it is not okay to call Marxists Marxists.

if you note that Marxists are indeed Marxists it's supposedly a sort of Hate Crime up with which we must not put. Who made this odd rule? Would I be correct in guessing that Marxists themselves created it and Marxists themselves (and their fellow travelers) are the major proponents of it? The only objection can come from the Marxists themselves, who prefer to work in secret, and the Democrats, who prefer their alliance with the Marxists not be noted, lest it embarrass them politically. But Marxists, and the left, and the Democrats, and university professors, and the leftists that control the media, all line up to a man to insist it's Foul Play and Creeping Fascism if you say something True. So: Who are the fascists again?

read more here: http://minx.cc/?post=337844

You've got to stand for somethin' or you'll fall for anything

Hat tip to Gerard Vanderleun

America, where "rocket's red glare" remains a mere figure of speech

Annalise Koltun is a 27-year-old American who is half-Jewish. She thought she would try living in Israel. However, when she got a job offer to return to America, she left behind the bus-bombs and rockets after two years, and returned to America.

There are two ways to know Iron Dome is working: by listening for the boom of a successful intercept, and by not dying.

After two years in Israel, I realized that I’m a half-Jewish American, emphasis on the American. Despite our shared genes, despite our classification by the Third Reich, despite our dark hair and mild lactose intolerance, I have less in common with my Israeli neighbors than with your average Wal-Mart shopper. Maybe 27 is too late to start over in a new country, maybe my Jewish father didn’t teach me enough (OK, any) Sabbath songs, maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough for God in the cracks of the Western Wall. Or maybe I just missed marshmallows, Christmas, Sponge Bob, the Verizon Guy, Starbucks, customer service, and country music. Whatever it was, when push came to shove and buses became potential bombs, I felt no great need to seal my fate to that of the nation of Israel, whether victim, aggressor, or something in between. I decided it was time for me to start planning my slow descent as well. I found my passport and bought a plane ticket back to the homeland, where the rocket’s red glare remains a mere figure of speech.

Read more here: http://www.themorningnews.org/article/begin-the-descend

Hat tip Gerard Vanderleun

When do we have enough?

When do you have enough? In contemplating this weekend's move from the country back to suburbia, I realize that I have much less stuff than ever before in my life. Except for the emotional part, this will be an easy move.

Richard White writes in the Boston Review that Americans used to believe that having enough frequently trumped the ambition for endless accumulation. He asserts that the American dream has changed over the years.

What price should we put on free speech? Liberty? Humor? Thought? Good character? Kindness? Generosity? Beauty? Brilliance? Humility?

Read more here: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/richard_white_gilded_age_wealth_inequality.php

Update: Also in the Boston Review, there is a response to the White article. Gavin Jones examines literature to explore the questions raised by White. He cites a character in The House of Mirth who "seeks only a sufficiency free from the extremes of luxury and poverty."

Read the Jones article here: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/gavin_jones_gilded_age_literature_wealth_ethics.php

hat tip Gerard Vanderleun

Keeping or giving up control of your life

Do you like to solve problems? Or would you rather depend on technology to solve everything for you? Isn't it really better to be able, though trial and error, mistakes and successes, to make your own decisions about life? Gerard Vanderleun refers us to this Wall Street Journal article by Evgeny Morozov asking just how much control are you willing to give up to smart gadgets: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324503204578318462215991802.html?mod=igoogle_wsj_gadgv1

Quantitative Easing explained

Pull up a chair; I'll tell you a tale! Quantitative Easing explained. http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/5minute_arguments/quantitative_easing_simpl.php

Never know what we'll find next!

Hubble zooms into Crab Nebula. Gerard Vanderleun has some history of Crab Nebula here: http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/grace_notes/1054_ad.php

A set up!

As my regular readers know, I am a big fan of Ann Voskamp. I read her A Holy Experience blog every day. She talks about God's love, His grace, and the importance of our being grateful and giving gifts to others.

I drive a little Chevy Metro that has over 200,000 miles on it. I have driven it for fourteen years. For much of that time I drove it daily from Golden, Colorado up into the mountains where I was Director of Human Services in a mountain community. On snowy days, I would often see SUVs in the ditch, because their drivers were overconfident and impatient. Slow and steady was my humble motto that kept me from hitting deer and kept me on the road.

I am no longer a big shot Director. Now, in my "retirement" years, I am just a humble cashier in a big box store. The other night, when we had a big snowstorm, my schedule had me working until ten p.m. As I was leaving work I overheard a man asking what time the auto shop opened in the morning. 7 a.m. was the answer he was given. Then I heard him ask if there was a bench he could sit on. Yes, right over there. I realized this man was stranded because of the snow storm and his having car troubles, and that he was planning to sit on that bench all night until the auto shop opened!

As I left, I walked past him sitting on the bench. I got out the door, but God turned me around. I went back inside and offered to give the man a ride home. He called his wife on the cell phone to let her know to expect him. As he followed me outside and saw my humble little car, he said, "The roads are not plowed where I live. Do you think your car will be able to make it?" I answered, "We'll see."

As I dropped him off at his house, he reached into his pocket for his wallet. He said he had called all the taxi companies, but no one would respond in the blizzardy weather. I said, "No, thank you. This ride was in the name of Jesus Christ, whose love is given to us freely as a gift. All you have to do is receive the gift, and then pass it on to others." As I drove slowly away up a hill, gaining traction on the third try, I laughed out loud and told God that was fun! I thanked God for the opportunity to serve Him, and accused God of setting the whole thing up!

You haven't discovered fire until you've discovered grace. When grace touches you, it combusts you and you become one unstoppable flame.

On her family's recent trip to Haiti, Ann Voskamp noticed that you don't see girls in the streets. She writes about it at her A Holy Experience blog.

Here where garbage is thrown into the light, but girls are used up in the dark until they shatter in the shadows like glass, here where we pick all these shards in the streets that cut with its invisible trafficked girls.

Our daughters have water. And light and hope and choices and our girls sleep on mattresses with clean sheets and clean dreams, no one buying up pieces of them to deface, to crush with the hot weight of their gratification, and we have a pantry and spaghetti and meatballs and homemade bread on our plates and Anne of Green Gables on our shelves and we don’t step over sewage in the streets or drink our carried water out of filthy pails.

A recent statement from Gloria Steinham: “Fire in the belly doesn’t come from gratitude. It comes from getting mad about what happens to you.”

Ann Voskamp sees it differently:

When you are radically grateful for what you have, you will go to radical lengths to share it.

When you are radically grateful, you live out of a place of radical abundance — there’s always more space for more to share the grace.

When you’re overwhelmed with the goodness of God to you — you overflow with the goodness of God to others.

You haven’t discovered fire until you’ve discovered grace. When grace touches you, it combusts you and you become one unstoppable flame.

Real gratitude doesn’t make you apathetic — it makes you a real activist. Real gratitude isn’t an anesthetic — real gratitude makes you catalytic.

A little girl suddenly appears.

And she grabs my hand and the Farmer’s daughter reaches for the little girl’s other hand and there’s a grace that unchains us and links us and our shadows light like fire in my bones.

Read more here: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/02/how-women-can-get-really-radical-for-their-sisters/

Changing locations

Looking out the window; nothing but white, both on the ground and in the air above the ground. We are expecting 14 inches out of this storm today. I guess I better leave for work one-half hour early.

Moving again next Saturday. Landlord losing house to foreclosure. Moving is such an emotional experience. Left brain overactive trying to analyze all the alternatives. I long for some right brain peace of mind.

This move will be to a suburban enclave in Parker, Colorado 19 miles southeast of Denver. Yes, the home I will be renting looks just like the photo below. It will be a big change for a guy who has lived in the country for the last six years.

I work in Parker, though, so I will no longer have the 45 minute commute. I'll drive by this pretty place in the photo below every day on my way to work.

A typical day at the Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon (1968)

Col. Curt Dale, who did three tours of Viet Nam, sends this video via email.

A man for our times

Do you know who I wish had his own nationally syndicated talk show? Ted Nugent! I just heard him interviewed on the Rusty Humphrey show. I wish Rush would have him on as a guest host. Nugent has a reverence for our country, its people, and its Constitution. He would be the right man for our times to rally people who love our country. He is getting ready for a new national rock and roll tour, even though both of his knees are badly damaged from jumping off the stage at the end of his concerts. The new tour is going to be called Black Power, in honor of black American musicians who wrote the music that started the rock 'n roll revolution.

Ban this song!

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/22/need-a-laugh-watch-the-conservative-parody-ban-this-song-that-has-a-surprise-story/

Ann Coulter seems to love confrontations

"For alleged individualists you are very mob-like," says Ann Coulter to an audience of libertarians and John Stossel. She accuses them of sucking up to liberals (legalizing pot). Ann also wants it to be much more difficult to get a divorce, and the libertarians believe government should stay out of marriages and divorces. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/22/ann-coulter-battles-room-full-of-libertarians-this-is-why-people-think-youre-puies/

Swish!

How about this front-flip half-court shot by William Carey College cheerleader Ashlee Arnau!

Found here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/22/see-the-amazing-half-court-tumbling-trick-shot-orchestrated-by-a-college-cheerleader/

Government by freakout

Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal that Obama is practicing government by freakout.

Mr. Obama has finally hit on his own version of national unity: Everyone get scared together.

What effect do all the successive fiscal cliffs, ceilings and sequesters, have on public confidence? On the public's spirit? They only add to the sense that Washington is dysfunctional and cannot possibly help us out of the mire.

It shows the world we lurch from crisis to crisis by habit now. This makes us look incapable and beset.

Beyond that, the president damages himself with his cleverness. At the end of the day he looks incapable of creating a sense of stability. The thing he misses as he shrewdly surveys the field is what he is: the president. He is the man people expect to lead, to be wiser. He is the one they expect to come up with a plan that is a little more than Let's Threaten Catastrophe.

Read more here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324503204578318540475371284.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The Universe is in us!

We are connected, relevant, participating in events going on around us in the universe, sharing atoms with the stars! The universe is in us! http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/grace_notes/something_eternally_wonde.php

A twelve-step program for all Americans

Gerard Vanderleun writes at American Digest that if we are truly to convince Americans of the need for world government, we would need to institute a twelve-step program. I will just excerpt step eleven here:

11. Sought through Universal Health Care and reducing the military to improve our nation until it resembled Great Britain in real power and influence, and confiscated all guns and ammunition we could lay our hands on to keep pesky disagreements with the National Guard on a name-calling basis, praying only for a disarmed, dispirited, depressed and Universally Medicated citizenry and for the power to rule over them.

Go here to read the other eleven steps: http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/5minute_arguments/12_steps_to_world_governm.php

Location, location, location!

Curt Dale passed on to me this humorous explanation of how you define a gun owner.

"Location, Location, Location"

In the news this week, a Southern California man was put under 72-hour psychiatric observation when it was found he owned 100 guns and had by rough estimate) 1 million rounds of ammunition stored in his home. The house also has a secret escape tunnel.

The television reporter said: "Wow! He has about a million machine gun bullets!" and the headline referred to it as a "massive weapons cache".

By California standards someone owning even 100,000 rounds would be called "mentally unstable".

If he lived elsewhere, such as Arizona , he'd be called "an avid gun collector."

In Oklahoma, he'd be called "a novice gun collector".

In Utah, he'd be called "moderately well prepared", but they'd probably reserve judgment until they made sure that he had a corresponding quantity of stored food.

In Montana, he'd be called "the neighborhood 'Go-To' guy".

In Idaho, he'd be called "a likely gubernatorial candidate".

In Wyoming, he'd be called "an eligible bachelor".

and...

In Texas , he'd be called "a Hunting Buddy ".

Does America need families?

Daniel Greenfield laments that

The basic practical functions of the family have been replaced by the nanny state. It is the nanny that takes over the care and teaching of the child as soon as possible. And when their parents grow old, it is that same nanny that oversees their care and death.

The state gave its citizens the impression that it could fulfill all the functions of a family far better than the real thing. Its appeal was the power of bigness, the stability of a system too big to fail and rooms full of experts working night and day to improve on the fallible family. With its vast industrial social services bureaucracy, the state would be able to provide a more stable social safety net, save everyone money on health care, educate their children, care for their elders, perpetuate their values, protect their income, safeguard their way of life and usher in a bright new future.

What about immigration? Won't that help to save us?

Importing large numbers of immigrants into a vital and booming society is a shot in the arm, but doing the same in a troubled society in decline is a shot in the head. The difference between integration and conquest is a matter of demographics. If the numbers are not on your side, then you aren't expanding your own country, you're giving it away.

Read more here: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/02/who-needs-family.html

The war mission in Afghanistan

Do you sometimes have trouble understanding what Obama is advocating? Let Daniel Greenfield of the Sultan Knish blog help you out:

According to Obama, in one of his interminable speeches which all run together and sound the same, there really isn't a war, just a mission, and the old mission is now becoming a new sort of mission, and the missions, all of them, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, have been successful which is why we are wrapping them up, except that we aren't really.

No war has been lost. Only a mission is ending. And missions, unlike wars, can be defined in so many creative ways that it's hard to know what to make of them. It's easy to tell when a war has been lost, but a mission can never be lost, only renamed. And renaming is what Obama did to the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan.

And when we have finally left and Karzai's cobbled together government collapses, its ministers absconding to Paris and Pakistan with suitcases full of stolen aid dollars, what comes after the war?

Al Qaeda is not a country or an ethnic group. It is a religious vanguard that was always meant to serve as the core of an international Islamist terrorist movement. That function had been fulfilled long before an old man watching porn in a covert compound with no authority over anyone except his many wives was finally put down the hard way.

With Kabul in the rear-view mirror, all Obama has left is Bush's policy of targeted drone strikes on Al Qaeda terrorist leaders.

Both Bush and Obama largely missed the point of September 11, which is that it matters less how many training camps Al Qaeda has in some desert where there are more drugs and RPGs than people, but how many operatives they have in the United States. The terrorist attacks carried out by Al Qaeda in America all required that their operatives either be in the United States or have permission to enter it. The truly dangerous training camps aren't in Mali or in Afghanistan; they are in Jersey City and Minneapolis. The easiest way to stop the next Al Qaeda terrorist attack is to end immigration from the Muslim world.

Read more here: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/02/after-afghanistan.html

There's no getting off the hook

Wednesday night we had snow, almost a foot of it here on the high plains. When I got home from work, the house was dark. No power. The landlord has been very ill, in and out of the hospital since October. She forgot to pay the electric company. They shut off the power.

After a cold night, and a morning of snow shoveling and book reading by a bright window, I decided to go to the library, since the house was freezing cold. Still dressed in the clothes I wore Wednesday, unshaven and unbathed, I was right at home at the computer in the library, next to other unshaven, unbathed people using the library's free computers.

Sure enough, as soon as I sat down, one woman approached me and asked for cash or a "gift card." I knew this woman. I knew from listening to her ex-boyfriend that she had just gotten out of jail for a driving violation. I asked her if she had been to Social Services. She told me she had an appointment next Tuesday. I asked her if she had used the food bank. She said she had used it ten times, and that is the yearly maximum allowed. She was in the library applying for jobs on-line.

I started surfing the net. The first place I go every day is A Holy Experience, Ann Voskamp's blog. Ann had just returned from a mission trip to Haiti. As I read her February 21 post, I immediately became convicted. Ann wrote,

Once we have seen the poor, we are responsible — we will make a response. As long as your heart is beating, there’s no such thing as unresponsive. We all look into the face of the poor and it’s either Yes, I will help. Or no, I won’t.

There’s no getting off the hook.

Faith cannot have a non-response.

We’re either responding with indifference or with intercession, either with apathy or aid.

You can’t look into the face of the poor and just plead the fifth amendment. Your life is always your answer.

Why would we rather turn a blind eye to the needy than turn to the needy and be like Christ? Do we like our own wants and comfort more than we want to be like Christ?

Ann's son commented as they were leaving Haiti on the way back to their farm in Canada,

“Sure am glad I wasn’t born in a place like this – glad I was born in the land of the strong and free.”

And I hissed shhhhhh.

But for days that’s what kept echoing – no, shouting — in my head: “It’s by and large where you are born.” What would your life look like if you were born onto the heaving streets of Port Au Prince instead of all that clean air somewhere west of Central Park?

If you were born onto dirt and mud in the tarped cities of Haiti instead of the windows and water and wealth of the Western world?

You can turn a blind eye to the poor all you want but it could have turned out that you were the poor.

You don’t forget who your brother is — when you know Who your Father is.

If the grace of my life is mostly where I am born, and I am born again into the family of Christ, than how can my life birth anything other than a grace that gives?

And hath made of one blood all nations of men …

Acts 17:26

Before I finished reading Ann's post I saw that it was time to go to work. I placed some folded bills on the woman's computer, and walked out to my car.

Mountain Dew Mouth

Megan Charles writes at Inquisitr that children in Appalachia are addicted to Mountain Dew, and it is ruining their teeth.

According to area dentists, one of the main culprits contributing to toothlessness in Central Appalachia is Mountain Dew soda (a PepsiCo product). Oral care practitioners are familiar with the term “Mountain Dew Mouth,” as the particular brand has far more acid and sugar in comparison to other sodas. Sugars and acid literally erode enamel and teeth over time, promoting cavities and tooth loss.

Area children are addicted to it, bathing their teeth in the highly-caffeinated sugary beverage every 20 minutes. It’s commonplace to see children gulping down a soda before bedtime, or parents supplying it to infants in baby bottles.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/534295/mountain-dew-mouth-cause-of-toothlessness-in-central-appalachia-according-to-local-dentists/#sJBelwGb40pjubFg.99

Give them the silent treatment, and save your precious cognitive resources!

Do you ever have to deal with jerks? What is the best way? Is giving them the silent treatment rude? Or does it enable you to utilize your cognitive skills on something more worthwhile? Well, once again the mental health researchers did a study and concluded what is obvious: Give them the silent treatment! Attempting to interact rationally with someone who is rude, impatient, and arrogant, is a waste of our cognitive resources! Now the mental health researchers have confirmed it: http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/story.html?id=7983724

Invincible?

Do we realize what precious and fragile gifts are our bodies and minds? Do we realize our bodies are our temporary homes? That we are just visiting here? Or, do we think we are invincible? Do you know what the tenth and final studio album of Michael Jackson was titled? Invincible! Wrong, Michael, wrong!

Update: Brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor writes in her fabulous book about invincibility. The book, entitled My Stroke of Insight, is about a stroke she suffered, and what she learned about her brain from the experience of losing, then regaining the function of her left hemisphere of her brain.

For the first time in my life I learned that I was not invincible. Unlike a computer that could be turned off and then rebooted, the richness of my life was completely dependent on not only the health of my cellular structure, but on the integrity of my brain's ability to electrically transmit and communicate its directives.

The clash of civilization

Daniel Greenfield writes at Sultan Knish

Individualism, freedom and tolerance are not acceptable values in the Muslim world. And totalitarianism, theocracy and repression are not acceptable values in ours.

Can we save the Muslim world from itself?

We are not so wise and so perfect that we can claim to know how to save 1 billion people from themselves. Right now we are having a good deal of trouble saving us from ourselves and we cannot be expected to shoulder the burden of reforming the Muslim world as well. Whatever spiritual or cultural redemption waits for them, can only come from themselves and through themselves. It will not come through a change of government or lavish praise. Only through a growing moral awareness. There is no telling when or if such an awareness will come.

Then what must we do?

The problems of the Clash of Civilization cannot be postponed much longer. They are our problem. We cannot save 1 billion people from themselves, but we can save ourselves from them.

Read more here: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/02/saving-1-billion-people-from-themselves.html

A vocal minority

Be sure to click on the image to enlarge to see where your state stands. Gallup and professor Gary Gates have called up over 200,000 people and asked them, "Do you, personally, identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender?" Here are the results.

Found here: http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/02/whats-gayest-state-in-union.html

Wanna play?

click on image to enlarge

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/photo-of-the-day/?c=y&date=02%2F12%2F2013

Going back for more

Click on the image to enlarge

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/photo-of-the-day/?c=y&date=02/19/2013

Editor needed

Sippican Cottage on the value of the internet:

My son plays music all the time now. He can find anything he wants, immediately and without charge. He can get a really high-quality instructional video, too, never mind just the source material. YouTube is an enormously useful thing. The Intertunnel is an enormously useful thing.

Or not.

I have opinions. I'm a big, hairy man with big, hairy opinions. Most of what is on the Intertunnel is just opinion; ill-considered, ill-reasoned, ill-mannered opinion, and inelegantly stated. It's useless. Services that exist simply to aggregate and direct me to various strains of this twaddle are so much less than useless, I may have to coin a term for it. Distilled twaddle. Twiddle?

The Intertunnel is the most useful thing I've ever seen. Because it has an editor. That editor is me. Without the editor, the Intertunnel is the most useless thing I've ever seen.

Good luck out there.

Read more here: http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-to-avoid-norwegian-wood-splinters.html

The Pope's new job

The Sippican Cottage blogger gives us our laugh for today:

We were eating dinner together. My wife says, "Hey, the Pope quit." My older son says, "Being the Pope must make it hard to get a job doing anything else after you quit. I mean, what exactly does a Pope know how to do?" And then the little feller said, "Maybe he could get a job as a window washer."

There was a pause. Maybe five or ten seconds by the clock. Then he held up his little hand, and waved it gently back and forth.

We'll get the food off the walls in there eventually.

http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2013/02/happy-ballantines-day.html

China military conducts cyber attacks on U.S. entities

Laura Ingraham's staff posted on her blog today a Washington Post story that a U.S. security firm has announced that the Chinese military has conducted over 140 cyber attacks on mostly U.S. targets over the last seven years. We even know the twelve story building in which the hackers operate.

Read the Post story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-ties-100-plus-cyber-attacks-on-us-computers-to-chinese-military/2013/02/19/2700228e-7a6a-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_story_1.html

Another reason to be armed

As Donald Sensing writes, "It's not just muggers or home invaders some of us are concerned about in self defense."

Read more here: http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2013/02/confirmation-of-why-i-am-armed.html

More flying "people"

Once again found here: http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2013/02/oh-i-wish-i-wish-i-wish.html

Wingsuit flying

I know two boys who would love to do this!

Found here: http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-i-was-born-few-years-too-late.html

Ridiculing Colorado

Right-leaning blogs are jumping all over the actions of the Colorado legislature's enactment of gun control legislation this week. Democrat Joe Salazar is being portrayed as a misogynist for his arguments against concealed carry on college campuses. Coupling newly enacted legislation with voter-approved laws concerning marijuana have produced posters like the one above.

I watched the video of Salazar's speech, and did not think his remarks were that crazy. While I do not agree with his conclusions, I thought he was making a reasonable argument, and I think the reaction on the right is unfair to him. Donald Sensing, however, recommended that Salazar consider a better idea: declare the university a rape-free zone.

One blogger opined that “a doped up, unarmed citizenry is easier to control and manipulate.”

Read more here: http://ordnancecorner.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/i-hate-epiphanies-like-this/

and here: http://blog.robballen.com/Post/11042/colorado-why-you-so-crazy

and here: http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2013/02/university-of-colorado-to-women-lie.html

Billions of Earth-sized planets!

From scitechdaily:

The search for exoplanets—planets beyond our own solar system—has taken off over the last decade, and is now a growing component of UChicago’s research agenda in astronomy. One estimate published in January calculated that our Milky Way galaxy alone contains at least 17 billion Earth-sized planets, with a vast potential for life-sustaining worlds.

How common is the Earth? Is Heaven a planet?

Read more here: http://scitechdaily.com/the-search-for-exoplanets-intensifies/

Delighting in the euphoria of our irrationality

Jill Bolte Taylor writes in My Stroke of Insight about, on the one hand, "delighting in the euphoria of her irrationality," and on the other hand, "realizing a sense of urgency to orchestrate her rescue," as she was suffering a stroke. She had lost the function of the left hemisphere of her brain, and was now completely right-brain dominant.

Irrationality does produce a kind of euphoria sometimes, as evidenced by the arguments of those in favor of gun free zones that somehow will make us safer. Of course, the facts are quite to the contrary, as any person with a functioning left brain can tell you.

Which ship are you boarding?

In his book The Kingdom Way, Cliff Stewart asks what kind of ship we are boarding. Is it a ship like the Carnival that was in the news last week? Or a ship full of warriors in which you are "playing a part in a significant battle for the lives and freedoms of others?" One ship turns out to be a nightmare you did not expect. The other presents the promise of engaging an enemy for which you have prepared to do battle.

Shh!

Did President Obama make a mistake in keeping the press away while golfing yesterday with Tiger Woods? Tiger does not enjoy the pristine reputation he once had. Michelle is half a continent away in Aspen. Rush Limbaugh thinks one day Obama will be unmasked similarly to the way Tiger has been unmasked. I think that might be wishful thinking on Rush's part. Rush warns, though, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, if the media can make you, they can also break you.

Read more here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100202609/why-president-obama-keeps-the-press-away-playing-golf-with-tiger-woods-doesnt-look-good-with-12-million-americans-out-of-work-and-a-16-trillion-debt/

Goodperson Fever

Do you know about Goodperson Fever? You can find out at The House of Eratosthenes:

Goodperson Fever (n.) is an obsessive-compulsive disorder involving the demonstration of certain positive attributes to strangers, for purposes of self-validation. In government and in other positions of authority, Goodperson Fever is the cause of nearly every bad law in human history. Someone, somewhere, wanted to demonstrate to strangers what a good person he or she was.

Although this post was written in 2009, it seems even more relevant to today's news now.

Read more here: http://www.peekinthewell.net/blog/i-made-a-new-word-xxviii/

He's not Nostradamus, but...

Severian writes at Rotten Chestnuts about the debate on gun control:

In the wake of the recent school shooting, every Democrat, Goodperson, Virtue Junkie, and assorted supposedly-apolitical-but-really-doctrinaire-liberal dipshit with a Facebook page all across this fair land have been agitating for “gun control.” Hmmm…. truculent zealots, private property, warrantless searches, and oh yeah, everybody involved is armed to the fuckin’ teeth. No way that ends poorly.

My condolences in advance to the families.

Read more here: http://www.rottenchestnuts.com/im-not-nostradamus/

The Beginning, or the End?

Cartoon by Nate Beeler in the Columbus Dispatch

A foot in the door

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

Bruce McQuain writes at Questions and Observations that

Science and facts don't stand a chance against myth and ideology:

We’ve pointed out any number of times that deaths by rifle, any sort of rifle, are less than 500 a year. Less that blunt objects – clubs, baseball bats, etc.

But that’s not going to stop these people. Facts are inconvenient truths, to borrow from the biggest myth maker of all – Al Gore.

There’s a reason for the desire for this ban. It’s a foot in the door. And, once they declare it’s not enough, the precedent is already set. As I mentioned on the podcast, the left is into incrementalism. They will incrementally sneak up on every freedom we have left. And, if they have their way, take them away. In the name of “safety” and “security”.

Read more here: http://www.qando.net/?p=14885

Living in a government-created mirage

Jeff Goldstein writes that the American people are

living in a government-created mirage that enriched the ruling class while creating a permanent dependent underclass, a sprawling unelected shadow legislature inside the administrative state, and created the systemic and institutionalized conditions for molesting the private sector and shrinking wealth creation by and attacking the middle class they’ve pretended to champion.

Because let’s face it: we can elect conservative leaders and hope they remains strong; but as the recent orchestrated attacks on Cruz and Paul and Rubio have shown, the activist media will work to bring them down, and the GOP establishment, through unnamed Republican Senators, will work to marginalize them in order to keep the status quo gravy train of cronyism, power, and influence running, with themselves always comfortably nestled in the luxury sleeping cars.

Read more here: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=47418

"Gun-free zones are the single most common factor in mass shootings"

Jeff Goldstein reports that urban elite Democrats in Colorado have just voted to molest the Constitution.

And yet these Democrat legislators drape themselves in the language of the Declaration and Constitution to pretend that they are acting on behalf of the “common defense” — as if it is law-abiding citizens with high capacity assault rifles who are committing crimes. The numbers show something entirely other. History shows us that gun-free-zones are the single most common factor in mass shootings — and yet part of what the Democrats will pass is a law to prevent trained, experienced, licensed college students, staff, and faculty, from preventing the next Virginia Tech.

But worst of all, the Democrat-led legislature is prepared to take away citizens’ legal rights to own STANDARD CAPACITY MAGAZINES on certain very popular magazine-fed rifles. [live feed] They are also taking away the STANDARD CAPACITY MAGAZINES on certain popular semi-automatic pistols chambered in 9mm or .40 or .380.

This is an abuse of legislative power and a backdoor ban on many non-bolt action rifle platforms. Or, to put it another way, it promotes SNIPER-STYLE rifles while creating an effective ban, going forward, on rifles that contain modern-convenience features, like an adjustable stock or a pistol grip.

They will also push through a Universal Background Check that will be unenforceable — requiring further modifications down the road, mainly, a “common sense” call for a gun registry in order to allow the UBC to save the children.

And finally, they will pass the costs of those checks onto gun purchasers, essentially gentrifying gun buying and potentially preventing those in the poorest areas where crime is highest from purchasing a firearm for self defense.

It’s a kind of poll tax. And if Republicans passed such a measure with respect to the vote, the Democrats would likely (and rightly) scream racism.

Well, this is no different. It is a racist measure; it is a sop to the wealthy; and it will do nothing to prevent crime. In fact, it will create more victims.

I’m embarrassed for my state. And I’m most embarrassed at the “reasoning” on offer from Democrats that rationalizes a power grab under the guise of public safety.

Read more here: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=47428

A coalition of Democrats and Republicans to infringe on our rights

What kind of government do we have? Jeff Goldstein characterizes it as

Legislation by polling. Following propaganda efforts and emotional populism. Majoritarianism. This is precisely why the founders had the wisdom to recognize unalienable rights and form a republic, where the rights of the minority could not be taken away by temporary coalitions that form a majority.

The one thing that could make a TEA Party-like Party into a national Party is some sort of outrageous coalition between Democrats and Republicans to infringe on our rights. For my money, I say bring it on. Federalism is about to take center stage, and local pockets of resistance to tyranny will rise up politically to challenge the fatted establishment fixtures.

It couldn’t happen soon enough, if you ask me.

Read more here: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=47439

A Constitutional Coup

Jeff Goldstein writes today at Protein Wisdom that

the filibuster-proof Democrat Congress, quickly defeated by the TEA Party movement in 201o, transferred legislative authority over to both the Executive and to bureaucratic commissions, and then built in constraints that either disallow (or make impracticable) the ability of future Congresses to repeal that transfer of authority, effectively removing voters from the legislative equation by moving power out of the legislature and granting it to permanent, untouchable, and self-funding bureaus and committees.

What’s worse, laws like ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank specifically constrain citizens from any legal recourse to challenge the authority and dictates of the controlling committees and bureaus.

This is, of course, unconstitutional on its face: the legislature is not permitted to cede its law-making function to other branches of the government, and more specifically, to an administrative state that is unanswerable to voters and so falls conspicuously outside of the “consent of the governed.”

Read more here: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=47454

Whackos

Have you noticed that

Conspiracy theories are a staple in some “progressive” circles, which view political dissent, independent thought, free markets, and certain technological advances with suspicion. For example, the agronomist Norman Borlaug, who pioneered the Green Revolution, saved perhaps a billion lives in the Third World by developing high-yield, disease-resistant crops. For this, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, he was smeared in the progressive magazine The Nation, which has an irrational phobia of new agricultural techniques, as being “the biggest killer of all.”

The latest conspiracy theories are that the Tea Party has its origins with the ultra-right John Birch Society of the 1950s and pro-smokers rights. Another theory that is more personal is that

the Tea Parties are the product of “harshly coercive toilet training” and “anal eroticism.”

Go here to read up on the latest theories of the progressives, some of which are funded with taxpayer money: http://www.openmarket.org/2013/02/18/nih-funded-conspiracy-theory-smearing-tea-party-gets-even-wackier/

Hat tip to Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom

The best news in town!

Do you know what the word "gospel" means? Liz Curtis Higgs helps us out today at A Holy Experience.

Gospel comes from Old English: gōd means “good,” and spell means “to find out by study; to come to understand,” as in “Spell it out for me.”

The gospel, then, is how we understand goodness.

God made a way for sinners to be reconciled with Him. Because His sinless Son died in our place, our sin debt is paid in full. Because His Son rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, we can be sure that we will too.

Not only is this the best news in town, it’s also a gift from God. Freely given, freely received. God has thrown open the windows of heaven for us and unfurled his banner of love.

Over the years the word righteous has gotten a bad rap, maybe because we’ve confused it with being self-righteous. Full of ourselves, rather than full of God.

Righteousness is what happens when “God makes us right in his sight” (NLT). It’s entirely his effort, not ours, so all the credit goes to him.

Faith is the essence of life, a sustaining force—like air, like food, like water, like love.

Our calling is to live out the gospel—goodness understood—with humility and gratitude, pointing to the One who makes every good thing possible.

One of Ann Voskamp's kids sprained an ankle this week while serving at Mission of Hope Haiti; thus the guest post today by Ms. Higgs.

Read more here: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/02/the-big-reveal-what-faith-is-from-first-to-last/

Chris Dorner lives!

Paul Mirengoff writes at Powerline about yesterday's protests in L.A. in support of Chris Dorner.

It’s often said that a common sense of right and wrong is one of the prerequisites for a nation. The pro-Dorner movement offers a hint that the U.S. one day will no longer satisfy what I had always assumed was a “gimme” criterion.

Read about the protests here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/protesters-show-support-for-christopher-dorner.html

Read Mirengoff here: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/02/chris-dorner-rotten-but-not-forgotten.php

The Kingdom Way

My friend Cliff Stewart, originator of the Kingdom Triangle Network News blog, has written a book entitled The Kingdom Way. It will be available soon at Amazon, if it isn't already. It is written in a way that you can use it as a daily devotional, as you seek God. I have just begun to read it, and I will no doubt be citing it again in future posts. On the book cover Cliff uses the formal name C. Wayne Stewart. I guess anyone who puts forth the effort to write such a comprehensive book is entitled to a little formality!

North American comfort-induced numbness

Ann Voskamp and her family of nine, which includes her mom, embarked over the weekend on a mission trip to Haiti. In her blog A Holy Experience she shares some of her thoughts and observations.

When thanksgiving hits a tipping point, it becomes thanksliving and catapults us straight into the will of Christ.

What if the American Dream is a false religion that preaches God alone isn’t good enough?

When did North American comfort-induced numbness ever lament like this?

Blessed are those at the end of their rope because they can be tied to God.

Blessed are those who find themselves wholly empty, because they have space to be holy filled with God.

When was the last time I didn’t have any language at all to shield me from God?

“Only he who cries… is permitted to sing…” is what Bonhoeffer said.

Only he who cries… is permitted to sing….

Only those authentic enough to lament, are authentic enough to love.

And these people know how to sing.

When everything is stripped away and you have nothing left and in all your bare vulnerability, there is communion with God.

Read and see more here: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/02/why-its-okay-to-cry/

All they did was raise a family!

Living well into old age is not something that is appreciated by many Americans. Old people cause people behind them to have to slow down, whether in the grocery lane or in the highway lane. Many Americans do not want to slow down!

Nevertheless, some old men have found a way to hold their heads high. They wear on their heads a cap that tells what branch of the military they served in. I see more and more of these caps, and they are not worn just for special occasions; they are worn every time the old man goes anywhere.

Most old women, though, have not figured out a way to be similarly honored. After all, all they did was raise a family!

Please don't be one of those Americans who huff and puff when they get behind an old man or woman. Do something that shows you honor them! Believe it or not, slowing down is good for you!

Hard times ahead for Ahmadinejad?

When I want to know what is happening in Iran, I go to Michael Ledeen. His latest summary of recent happenings there indicate that there might be hard times ahead for Ahmadinejad.

Read his post here: http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/author/michaelledeen/

The Obama doctrine: support dictators if they are anti-American

Michael Ledeen writes that there is, in fact, an Obama doctrine. It favors anti-American dictators.

There is an Obama Doctrine, but hardly anyone wants to acknowledge it. He favors anti-American dictators, and he couldn’t care less what they do to their people. That’s the doctrine that checks out: he favored the Muslim Brotherhood over the pro-American Mubarak; the Libyan insurrectionaries over Gaddafi, who had come to terms with the United States; the Iranian tyrants who crushed a pro-democracy uprising; and Assad (who, whatever Kerry and Hegel have said, is an enemy) against a revolution that at least contained pro-American elements, now suffering from Obama’s betrayal.

Ledeen also points out that the Obama doctrine is out of sync with the recommendations of three top female advisers, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Powers.

Read his post here: http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2013/02/14/funeral-pyre-of-the-three-valkyries/?singlepage=true

Chris Dorner: What the Occupy people aspired to be, but didn't have the guts to carry it out

9 out of 10 commenters at Huffington Post (the preeminent website of the left) were in support of Dorner. You don't think we are in a fight?

We wouldn't want to be "divided"

Hey folks, I think we might be winning! Planned Parenthood is backing off the use of the term "pro-choice." Check out this video!

Found here: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/01/28/extreme-makeover-planned-parenthood-edition/

What if terrorists are Obama supporters? Will he use drones on them?

Will President Obama use drones to kill enemy combatants with whom he shares an ideological agenda? Paula Bolyard explores this important question at PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/02/11/president-obama-would-you-send-a-drone-to-cuba-to-kill-the-weathermen/?singlepage=true How about Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn?

"The modern mouth basically exists in a permanent disease state."

You don't think your eating habits are important? An international team of scientists have been studying how our evolution over the last 7500 years has impacted the bacteria we carry with us, and the important health consequences," says study leader Professor Alan Cooper, Director of University of Adelaide's Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD).

"Oral bacteria in modern man are markedly less diverse than historic populations and this is thought to contribute to chronic oral and other disease in post-industrial lifestyles."

Professor Cooper says: "The composition of oral bacteria changed markedly with the introduction of farming, and again around 150 years ago. With the introduction of processed sugar and flour in the Industrial Revolution, we can see a dramatically decreased diversity in our oral bacteria, allowing domination by caries-causing strains. The modern mouth basically exists in a permanent disease state."

Read more here: http://phys.org/news/2013-02-ancient-teeth-bacteria-disease-evolution.html

Become the gift

Ann Voskamp and her family are off on a mission trip. She bids us adieu and asks for our prayers, reminding us to

Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth. Give Thanks. Love well.

Become the gift.

Read and see more here: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/02/family-mission-trip-1-friday-on-the-farm/

Gun manufacturers refusing to sell to New York government agencies

Guns and ammo manufacturers are refusing to sell to government agencies in New York. Here is what one announced:

Olympic Arms is a staunch believer in and defender of the Constitution of the United States, and with special attention paid to the Bill of Rights that succinctly enumerates the security of our Divinely given Rights. One of those Rights is that to Keep and Bear Arms.

Legislation recently passed in the State of New York outlaws the AR15 and many other firearms, and will make it illegal for the good and free citizens of New York to own a large selection of legal and safe firearms and magazines. We feel as though the passage of this legislation exceeds the authority granted to the government of New York by its citizens, and violates the Constitution of the United States, ignoring such SCOTUS rulings as District of Columbia v. Heller – 554, U.S. 570 of 2008, McDonald v. Chicago – 561 U.S. 3025 of 2010, and specifically the case of United States v. Miller – 307 U.S. 174 of 1939.

Due (to) the passing of this legislation, Olympic Arms would like to announce that the State of New York, any Law Enforcement Departments, Law Enforcement Officers, First Responders within the State of New York, or any New York State government entity or employee of such an entity – will no longer be served as customers.

From EFI:

“We refuse to recognize law enforcement exemptions on gun control. If a product that we manufacture is not legal for a private citizen to own in a jurisdiction, we will not sell that product to a law-enforcement agency in that jurisdiction.”

Read the statements of five other companies here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/15/group-of-second-amendment-supporting-gun-makers-now-refusing-to-sell-arms-to-law-enforcement-in-new-york-and-other-gun-restricting-states/

Hat tip to Pat Dollard

Moving to Marxism

Lt. General Jerry Boykin, who has served our country as United States Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, calmly explains what countries do that are moving toward a Marxist model. He explains how all of these things are being done today in America.

Nationalizing major sections of the economy

Redistributing wealth

Discrediting their opposition (that projection thing we talked about in our last post)

Censoring

Controlling gun ownership

Developing a constabulary force to control the population (It's in Obamacare!)

God bless him, and thanks to Pat Dollard for bringing this video to our attention here: http://patdollard.com/2013/02/special-forces-chief-everything-done-in-every-marxist-insurgency-are-being-done-in-america-today/

Projection

Bill Whittle, Steve Green, and Scott Ott tell it like it is. I also heard Andrea Tanteros talk about this yesterday on the radio. Or, was it Glenn Beck? Anyway, the point is, notice that Obama projects onto others characteristics of his own weaknesses. Let's look for this and talk more about it in future posts.

Racism in a Colorado elementary school exposed by courageous jourmalist

Kudos to this black reporter for CBS4 News in Denver. He reported on an after-school tutoring program that had been initiated by a black principal in an elementary school in Aurora. It was for "students of color" only. Go here to watch the video: http://patdollard.com/2013/02/colorado-school-bars-white-students-from-receiving-after-school-tutoring/

How can this happen in 2013 America? Read Injustice by J. Christian Adams. You will learn how racist policies are being promulgated by Eric Holder's Justice Department, in the Obama administration.

The Capacity to Enjoy

Dr. Bob Godwin at One Cosmos points out that Barack

Obama was plucked from obscurity by people who wish to destroy America, such as Bill Ayers and Frank Marshall. Mission Accomplished.

Bob wrote a blog post Thursday about the pursuit of happiness, and how that gets formed by those on the left side of politics.

Now, this question of happiness is a crucial one, because the vast majority of unconstitutional policies promoted by the left find safe harbor under the rubric of "the pursuit of happiness." Someone's supposed "unhappiness" pretty much justifies anything the left wishes to do to us, just as desire instantaneously converts to constitutionality for the left, i.e., "if I want it, it's a right" (say, if I want to murder my baby or force someone else to pay for my birth control).

Bob shows how the number of Americans in poverty was dropping when Lyndon Johnson pushed the War on Poverty through Congress, but the figures now are almost identical to 1965 when the programs were enacted. Moreover,

In their wildest dreams the KKK couldn't have accomplished what the left has done -- and Obama is doing -- to blacks. But that's what leftists do: to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, they replace what works with what sounds good.)

So, do you have to be above the poverty line to enjoy life? No! Bob quotes from The Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government by Charles Murray:

"Money buys access to things and possibilities but not to the capacity to enjoy them"

So, how do we get that capacity to enjoy? And, what, or whom, are we enjoying?

Read more here: http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-liberal-war-on-happiness.html

Cozy, warm, and dry

This photo by Sasa Djordjevic is of a Serbian man who lives in a grave. He has done so for the last fifteen years. He says it is dry and warm and cozy. According to the story at Oddity Central there is a woman in Argentina who moved into her husband's mausoleum last year, and over ten thousand people in Manilla live in graves! there is a video of the Serbian man here: http://www.odditycentral.com/news/homeless-man-has-been-living-in-a-grave-for-the-last-15-years.html#more-32957

Lap Dogs

found here: http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2013/02/no-shamecnn-reports-53-approved-obamas.html

Blocking frustrations

What do you do when you experience frustrations? It is interesting to observe how people handle experiences that have the potential to cause frustration. A few people seem to think nothing difficult should ever come their way! They just waddle in their alleged victimhood!

I am so fortunate that I have a job with lots of people-contact. The customers I encounter in my job are, for the most part, friendly and well-mannered. I purposely feed off the positive interactions and thank God for the opportunity to meet and serve such fine people.

Another thing I do is sing, whistle, and hum tunes. I grew up attending a VERY SOBER Methodist church with my parents and sister. When I went to college on an athletic scholarship, it was to a Baptist university in Texas. There I attended Baptist churches. What a difference! Those people sang hymns with a terrific gusto! I loved it, and I learned lots of songs of praise.

Nowadays when I am feeling frustrated about something, I purposely dig down in my mind for memories of those joyful songs, and sing, whistle and hum them until I forget my frustrations and begin to enjoy my day.

Here is the one I was singing, whistling and humming today. Guaranteed to block any negativity that might be trying to enter your mind!

Meteorite hits Russia

Who gets the bad press coverage?

found here: http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/2013/02/bad-press-coverage.html

Happy Valentines Day!

Parents all over America gave sugary gifts to their children today. They will do it again on Easter, Halloween, Christmas, and birthdays. When those children reach adulthood, and learn that sugar is not good for their health, will they ask, "Why did Mommy and Daddy connect sugar with showing their love for me?"

Probably not. Pass the Oreos, please. Don't worry, your favorite store will provide you with an electric cart to ride while you stuff it with candy, cookies, tater chips and giant sodas to wash it all down.

A drink of water, a toke of weed: What Difference Does It Make? Right, Hillary?

Mike Miles from 90Ninety Miles from Tyranny posts this here: http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/2013/02/media-idiocy.html

Alert people: Two maids, two wildlife officers

The LA Times reports that Dorner was discovered first by two maids who came to clean a cabin he was in. He tied them up, but one eventually got free and called 911. Then, two Fish and Wildlife officers spotted Dorner, who fired on them. One of the officers fired back. Dorner continued on until losing control of the vehicle he had stolen. His charred remains have been taken from a cabin.

Read more here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/maids-surprised-suspect-in-cabin-were-tied-up-then-called-cops-.html

Update: Were they maids, or owners of the cabin? the latest report is that it was the owners of the cabin who called 911.

The Grand Deception

Available now at Amazon

Pope resigns; Lightning strikes

Within hours of Pope Benedict's resignation lightning struck St. Peter's Basilica!

Read more here: http://www.neatorama.com/2013/02/12/Lightning-Strikes-as-Pope-Benedict-Resigns/

A war against transnational terrorists

Andrew McCarthy says we need a national security court

to deal with the unique legal challenges of a war against transnational terrorists. If anything, the need is more urgent now than ever. No matter what the future of counterterrorism is, though, there needs to be congressional buy-in. President Bush could never deliver that: Democrats were too determined to smear for political purposes the strategies they abruptly embraced once they were accountable for the nation’s security. But President Obama could do it — he could deliver plenty of Democrats. Together with the strong Republican support that is guaranteed, we could very quickly have an enduring, constitutionally sound counterterrorism framework.

The problem? That would require leadership from President Obama.

Read more here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340225/problems-white-paper-andrew-c-mccarthy

Stonewaller in Chief: Handling the Aftermath of Benghazi

Rich Lowry writes at National Review Online about the masterful job Obama has done in stonewalling on Benghazi.

The imperative for the White House was, first, to try to deny that the assault was a coordinated terrorist attack lest that undermine its anti-terror credentials and, second, to push further consideration of the matter past the November election. After that, there would be, by definition, no electoral consequences from more fallout. And it all would be “old news.”

Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina vows to hold up Obama-administration nominees until he gets answers. His determination is admirable, but by now, no one really cares. The stonewall worked, alas. PR experts might want to rewrite their rules, at least for clients who can count on a compliant press. Benghazi was a fiasco. The handling of its aftermath by President Obama and his team was brilliant. I guess that’s why they call him the commander-in-chief.

Read more here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340377/obama-s-benghazi-success-rich-lowry

Did Dorner escape?

Did he escape? Tracks were found leading to the horse corral.

Read more here: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/02/12/authorities-responding-to-big-bear-home-on-report-of-hostage-situation-unknown-if-connected-to-dorner/

Update: AP is reporting that Dorner did not leave the building, and that one shot was heard as the building began burning.

Update 2: ABC News is reporting that a body was removed from the smoldering remains of the cabin where Dorner was holed up.

Will the abject hypocrisy continue for another four years?

Victor Davis Hanson writes about the startling disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality of the Obama Presidency.

The problem is not just that Obama took a model of reckless spending and doubled it in half the time — Washington is full of wild spenders, both Democratic and Republican — but that Obama was zealous in his castigation of Bush’s much lower spending (“unpatriotic”) and strident in his vows to stop the borrowing, going so far as to vote against the debt ceiling while in the Senate and to promise as president to halve the deficit by the end of his first term.

Will the abject hypocrisy continue for another four years? There is no reason to believe that Obama has become more circumspect and now understands that he cannot meet the very expectations he demanded of others, or that the media will try to salvage their tattered reputation by applying the same scrutiny to Obama that they did to others. But who knows — in 2016 we may see a young charismatic senator like the Barack Obama of 2007 who creates a messianic persona through hypnotizing the media, insisting that the incumbent is an utter failure, and promising “hope and change.”

Read more here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340376/obama-s-hypocritic-oath-victor-davis-hanson?pg=2

Dorner's cabin is on fire

Dorner's cabin is on fire. So now the authorities will have to call in planes to put out a forest fire?

"Once"

Senator Lindsey Graham questions Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dempsey about how many times they talked to Obama on September 11, 2012, when the attack on Benghazi was underway. The answer by both men was "once"(together). No follow up by the President, who left the next day for a campaign event in Las Vegas.

via http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/07/panetta-cant-explain-why-obama-never-called-back-during-benghazi-attack-video/

Dorner kills one more cop, injures another.

Two more deputies have been shot by Dorner, one fatally.

Read details here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/manhunt-deputy-dies-after-shootout.html

Disgraceful downplaying of terrorist attack in defense of Islam

Have you seen this video produced by victims of camouflaged Ft. Hood murderer Nidal Hasan? They have been disrespected by our government, denied benefits that would have been provided to them if they were considered victims of terrorism, instead of being victims of workplace violence. Hasan, yelling "Allahu Akbar," as he was killing unarmed American soldiers who were preparing to deploy to Iraq, had exchanged emails with notorious al Qaeda terrorist Al-Awlaki before killing fourteen Americans.

Update: Tonight on ABC Diane Sawyer interviews the heroine who shot Hasan.

Three years after the White House arranged a hero's welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of.

"Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline."

"Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected."

Police have Dorner barricaded near Big Bear

Police have Dorner barricaded in a mountain cabin near Big Bear, California. Gunfire is being exchanged.

Read more here: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LAPD_REVENGE_KILLINGS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-12-17-05-09

The bolts are missing!

At about the 1:14 point in this video, please notice that the bolts are missing in every single rifle these Marines are carrying at President Obama's recent inauguration. Why?

via http://blurbrain.com/marines-marching-in-inauguration-parade-had-disabled-rifles/

Have you seen stars like these?

Have you ever been to Big Bend National Park in Texas? This might be a good time to go.

Skies over the Big Bend National Park are now the darkest in the contiguous US region. On a clear night, it’s estimated that around 2,000 stars can be seen without binoculars or telescopes, and the Milky Way leaves a glittering white trail across the sky that’s almost unrecognizable to those accustomed to city nights. Occasionally, air pollution drifts into the park from nearby cities, but the effect is reduced during the winter months – making it the ideal time to visit the park.

http://www.techgraffiti.com/dark-sky-parks-reclaiming-the-stars-from-the-clutches-of-light-pollution