Sunday, March 31, 2013

Debauching our nation's human capital

The ever-perceptive Mark Steyn points out that

the same societal groups who assured us in the Seventies that marriage was either (a) a “meaningless piece of paper” or (b) institutionalized rape are now insisting it’s a universal human right. They’ve figured out what, say, terrorist-turned-educator Bill Ayers did — that, when it comes to destroying core civilizational institutions, trying to blow them up is less effective than hollowing them out from within.

Steyn further shows that

Americans are rapidly joining the Scandinavians in doing most of their procreating without benefit of clergy. Seventy percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, so are 53 percent of Hispanics (the “natural conservative constituency” du jour, according to every lavishly remunerated Republican consultant), and 70 percent of the offspring of poor white women. Over half the babies born to mothers under 30 are now “illegitimate” (to use a quaintly judgmental formulation). For the first three-and-a-half centuries of American settlement the bastardy rate (to be even quainter) was a flat line in the basement of the graph, stuck at 2 or 3 percent all the way to the eve of the Sixties. Today over 40 percent of American births are “non-marital,” which is significantly higher than Canada or Germany.

Most of the social liberalism comes with quite a price tag. The most reliable constituency for Big Government is single women, for whom the state is a girl’s best friend, the sugar daddy whose checks never bounce. A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society. Ruining a nation’s finances is one thing; debauching its human capital is far harder to fix.

Read more here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/344287/death-family-mark-steyn?pg=2

Who is he?

Is Obama Jesus Christ, as the press has been portraying him, or is he Satan, as some say he looks on the Discovery Channel's series on the Bible, or is he Barney Fife, as Dennis Miller claims on a segment with Officer O'Reilly. Miller also claims that Satan has issued a statement, saying, "Don't get me involved in any of this!"

Watch the video here: http://www.dennismillerradio.com/b/Video:-Miller-in-the-No-Spin-Zone/-505620564694116236.html

Incommunicado

An editorial at Investors.com informs us that two members of the House of Representatives have written to

new Secretary of State John Kerry asking him for the names and contact information for each of the individuals who survived Benghazi.

There are thirty such individuals, seven of whom are reportedly being treated at Walter Reed Hosopital in Washingotn D.C., the city where the national press corps sleeps.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/032613-649433-are-30-benghazi-survivors-being-held-to-keep-them-quiet-.htm#ixzz2P91gjDfp Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

"She can track us!"

Yesterday I witnessed a man and his teenaged son at the grocery store. They had just paid their bill, when the man got a text message from his wife, asking him to buy three additional items. The son said, "Just tell her we've already left the store" (which was packed with people buying eggs, peeps, and jelly beans). The man explained to the son that the wife can track their location. They stayed in the store, picked up the items, stood in line for another fifteen minutes, and purchased the items. Grocery shopping 2013.

An important tool for achieving justice

The District Attorney in Colorado, who is the prosecutor in the James Holmes case, writes today in the Denver Post about why the death penalty is an important tool for achieving justice.

Read it here: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_22895409/death-penalty-is-tool-justice

Precious Lord, Take My Hand

Thursday will be the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Did you know that the last words spoken by Dr. King as he leaned over the balcony, were to ask Ben Branch, Director of the Operation Bread Basket Orchestra and Choir to play this song on that night:

Read more here: http://www.centredaily.com/2013/03/30/3560050/bob-ray-sanders-honoring-a-leader.html

He is Alive!

Ann Voskamp brings us this You Tube video called "Dance Your Shoes off!" That is because each of the two thousand participants left a new pair of shoes on the field after this performance, for those in need to come and get them. What a wonderful way to celebrate the fact that our Lord is Alive!

Read more here: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/03/rise-rise-up-easter-sunday-reflection/

When we put liberals in charge...

Do violent parolees need a more adequate support system, or do they need to stay in prison (or, go back to prison)? After Colorado released Evan Ebel, who had spent most of his prison time in solitary confinement, because he was such a violent dude, he killed a pizza delivery guy, then Tom Clements, the Chief of Colorado's Correction system. What's more, he got out of prison early because of the time he spent in solitary confinement! If that isn't absurd, I don't know what is!

Also in March a man named Warren Watson got out of prison, then sexually assaulted and strangled an attorney named Claudia Miller. So what has Colorado done about the problem? The state, being run by liberal Democrats, has made it harder for parole officers to revoke parole, and therefore, the caseloads are growing, because more parolees are staying in the community, rather than going back to prison when they violate parole!

Wouldn't you know it? Tim Hand, the state's Parole Director won't be available to talk to reporters about this problem until sometime this week! I am glad to see The Denver Post making it the main story in today's paper, written by Christopher Osher. Osher points out that Ebel was released straight from solitary confinement to the outside world! Nothing risky there! Oh, and the proper term now for solitary confinement is administrative segregation, or as the bureaucrats working in corrections call it, "admin seg."

What was Ebel doing in admin seg? Smearing his feces on the wall, and banging his head against the wall! (I don't know if he was banging his head before or after spreading the feces).

Osher points out that about 65 percent of parolees who are released from prison on mandatory parole (as in Ebel's case), are back in prison within three years. Mandatory parole means that the prisoner has served his full sentence.

Have law enforcement officials complained to the Governor about the increased threat to public safety? Yes! Greeley police Chief Jerry Garner is one who wrote to Governor Hickenlooper. What did Hickenlooper do? He sent Clements to talk to Chief Garner, explaining that it was not really something to worry about!

8,181 people are currently out on parole in Colorado. Nearly a quarter of them are homeless.

In a related story by Kirk Mitchell in the Denver Post, the family of the pizza delivery man who was killed by Ebel, are furious that Ebel was let out four years early because of a clerical error! The clerical error was that he was not given four years extra confinement after assaulting a prison guard!

Saturday, March 30, 2013

He is risen!

Hurt the people

Epitaph

found here: http://www.theospark.net/2013/03/pic-dump_30.html

Hand them over, Janet

Captain Terry M. Hestilow, United States Army, Retired (Examiner)

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has posted a letter written by Captain Hestilow to Senator Cornyn of Texas, asking that the Senator demand that the Department of Homeland Security turn over to the Department of Defense the recently purchased

3,000 mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armored personnel carriers, 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition (with associated weapons), and other weapons systems.

Why?
the DHS has no war mission or war-making authority within the limits of the United States of America.

Read the entire letter here: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/03/retired-army-officer-dhs-must-surrender-their-war-weapons-to-dept-of-defense/

Privacy

Jeff Goldstein writes about privacy at Protein Wisdom:

Privacy? That’s not a right or a concern we need worry about — unless, of course, you want to have a baby scraped from your uterus, or bang a man in the ass in front of Texas law officers. Then its sacrosanct.

Too, what comes to count as mental illness — and a potentiality for violence such that “we” must “act” to “take away the threat” — will be greatly expanded, and will reach into (I predict) such things as prescription drugs, and (as we’ve already seen written about in government documents and studies) the kinds of sociopathology that can be inferred, supposedly, from, say, a distrust of federal government, a desire for limited government, activism within the TEA Party movement, and other markers of potential domestic terrorism.

Read more here: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=48335

Unexamined premises

Michael Walsh writes at PJ Media how the Democrats have achieved instant virtuousness and a clean slate on racial matters. He shows the electoral maps from 1968,72, 76, and 92, and then cites this writing by Kevin Williamson at National Review:

The Republican ascendancy in Dixie is associated with the rise of the southern middle class, the increasingly trenchant conservative critique of Communism and the welfare state, the Vietnam controversy and the rise of the counterculture, law-and-order concerns rooted in the urban chaos that ran rampant from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and the incorporation of the radical Left into the Democratic party.

Individual events, especially the freak show that was the 1968 Democratic convention, helped solidify conservatives’ affiliation with the Republican party. Democrats might argue that some of these concerns — especially welfare and crime — are “dog whistles” or “code” for race and racism, but this criticism is shallow in light of the evidence and the real saliency of those issues among U.S. voters of all backgrounds and both parties for decades. Indeed, Democrats who argue that the best policies for black Americans are those that are soft on crime and generous with welfare are engaged in much the same sort of cynical racial calculation President Johnson was practicing when he informed skeptical southern governors that his plan for the Great Society was “to have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.” Johnson’s crude racism is, happily, largely a relic of the past, but his strategy endures.

Read more here: http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2013/03/28/history-lesson/?singlepage=true

Are we "On Hold?" Or, is God communicating to us all the time?

Bob Godwin has a website I go to in order to mine for gold. The gold can be found in Bob's thoughts, which he shares daily at One Cosmos. Bob cites an aphorism by Don Colacho:

All truths converge on the one truth, but the routes have been barricaded." Bob adds, "And nowhere are they more heavily barricaded than in a liberal fascist university."

God's communication is occurring all the time. However, Bob writes,

The limiting factor is our capacity to receive it.

Which comes first? Bob writes,

Likewise, we don't say that God must be love because human beings are capable of love. Rather, we love because God does.

That would actually qualify as astonishing, if a single human being somehow embodied the word of God and shared it with the rest of us. But who would believe that?

Bob cites Arthur Koestler

, "The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use."

When religion dies, it is simply replaced by something that is not religion. As a result, it doesn't really die at all, but simply takes a new and perverse form. In our day and age, the most common forms are leftism, AGW, and scientism.

What is AGW? I think he is referring to Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming.

Back to Bob:

This is not to say that a real religion cannot become pathological. But a false religion is intrinsically pathological, with none of the benefits of true religion.

The whole thing's crazy. But so is Islamism. Just because something is a fantasy, it hardly means it has no real world consequences. Hitler, for example, had some fantasies about Jews. Obama has some fantasies about economics.

I don't get it. Why this hatred of our humanness? It very much reminds me of the pathology of liberalism, whereby the liberal is too broadminded to take his own side in a dispute. Muslims want to murder our children? Why, they must have done something to deserve it. Oh, but don't smoke cigarettes in the same zip code as a child. Might harm them.

Bob is trained as a psychoanalyst. He believes that

the mind is intersubjective, which means that we are subjectively entangled with one another. No man is an island, and all that.

But it turns out that the cosmos too is intersubjective, which is why it speaks to us of so many realities on so many levels, not just of scientific truths but aesthetic beauties and ethical values (not to mention scientific beauties, aesthetic values, and ethical truths).

Bob summarizes,

it is but a single step from relativism to barbarism, or from low information to Democrat, or from ignorance to tenure.

Discover more gems at Bob's gold mine here: http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/

Arise!

Mushroom writes,

Pray then obey, and obedience does not usually consist solely in sitting on the couch waiting for the miracle to come.

As David did for Solomon, Christ has done for us. There is much that has been done, much that has been provided for us, but there remains a work for us to do. Christ has suffered for us, borne our sins, griefs, and sorrows. We are to complete that suffering as a ground completes a circuit that the power and presence of God may shine as light in a dark world.

Each of us has a temple to build. We have a vast store of resources on which to call. Christ dwells in us by His Spirit quickening, strengthening, empowering, and enabling us to do His will, but we must arise.

Read more here: http://funglejungle.blogspot.com/2013/03/get-up.html

The left's continuing war on women

Ann Coulter writes about the left's continuing war against women. She cites a long New York Times article on gun control:

the Times doesn’t want abused women to have a fighting chance. Instead, it keeps pushing gun control policies that not only won’t stop violent men from murdering their wives, but will disarm their intended victims.

Read more here: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/27/coulter-the-lefts-continuing-war-on-women/

The Company You Keep

Michelle Malkin writes about the incredible story behind Robert Redford's new movie The Company You Keep.

Redford and Company’s rose-colored hagiography of bloodstained killers defiles the memory of all those victimized by leftwing militants on American soil.

Read more here: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/29/the-bloody-company-hollywood-keeps/

Sorry James Holmes, Jihad is not retroactive!

Robert Spencer reports at PJ Lifestyle that James Holmes, the killer at the Aurora movie theater, has

converted to Islam. He has become quite devout: he has grown a lavish beard, eats only halal food, prays the obligatory five daily prayers, and studies the Qur’an for hours every day.

Unfortunately for Holmes, however, jihad is not retroactive. If Holmes was an infidel at the time of the murders, then it doesn’t make his actions jihad to convert to Islam afterward.

Nonetheless, his conversion illustrates yet again why Islamic supremacist groups make such a concerted effort to make converts in prison. They know that men who are already in many cases notably aggressive and violent, and who have a grievance against society, are perfect fits for a religion that contains teachings that are themselves aggressive and violent, and that sets itself against infidel society. Islamic proselytizers in prisons hope to channel that aggression by sanctifying and thereby justifying it – as Holmes seems to be trying to justify his murders by affecting Islamic piety now.

Read more here: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/03/29/james-holmes-it-serves-him-right-to-suffer/?singlepage=true

What, they think criminals can't read?

How convenient! Criminals who wish to kill children can just read the Des Moines Register to find out which schools have resource officers, and which don't. Then, if there is a massacre of children at one of the schools where there is no armed officer, the Des Moines Register can have a sensational story to write about for weeks, months, years. Newsmax reports,

the map had "Red dots marking those without security, green those with and gray those that did not respond. The map was overwhelmingly red." This obviously helps anyone wishing to cause mischief or mayhem at a school a useful list of soft targets. Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/03/28/des-moines-register-publishes-pulls-map-guarded-and-unguarded-schools#ixzz2P2Yqz0Bx

Friday, March 29, 2013

Good intentions backfire

The Corrections chief in Colorado, Tom Clements, was recently killed by a former inmate, Evan Ebel. Now we learn that

Evan Ebel, the man suspected of killing Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements, probably would still be behind bars were it not for a law approved by legislators and Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2011.

The law, which had the approval of Clements himself, allowed inmates such as Ebel to earn time off their sentences for the months and years they had spent in administrative segregation, commonly known as solitary confinement.

That changed the previous rules that provided inmates time off for good behavior, but that time could be earned only outside administrative segregation.

Ebel had spent most of his adult life in so-called ad-seg, and Department of Corrections documents released Thursday indicate he was far from a model prisoner.

From the time he entered prison until just days before his release on mandatory parole, Ebel was a menace to himself and others. The documents outline his attacks on guards and fellow inmates, death threats against guards and a total of 28 disciplinary write-ups.

Ebel walked out of Sterling Correctional Facility on Jan. 28, about 115 days early thanks to his earned time, much of it stemming from his time in administrative segregation.

Since Clements came to Colorado in 2011, the number of inmates in solitary confinement has nearly been halved.

"The irony is incredible," Hickenlooper said. "One of the things Tom fought for, we have too many people in solitary confinement with mental disorders, like Evan Ebel."

Read more: From a young age, no one could tame Evan Ebel - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22888998/from-young-age-no-one-could-tame-evan?source=pkg#ixzz2OxUZUUcO

Read more: Evan Ebel out of prison early thanks to 2011 Colorado law - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22896714/evan-ebel-out-prison-early-thanks-2011-colorado#ixzz2OxT1ow8V

Hat tip Complete Colorado

Update: It turns out that Ebel's father is a lawyer in Boulder, and is a friend of Governor Hickenlooper. He had talked with Hickenlooper about his son spending so much time in solitary confinement. Hickenlooper, a bleeding heart liberal if there ever was one, worried about how "traumatic" it would be for someone who had spent so much time in solitary confinement when they are released back into communities. He backed and signed the legislation giving people credit for time spent in solitary confinement. (It's the solitary confinement that is bad, not the evil deeds done by people who are sent to solitary confinement!) Another example of the utter stupidity of liberalism!

After Clements was murdered by Evan Ebel, but before anyone knew Ebel was the killer, Hickenlooper, shaken by the murder, told the media about his conversation with his friend whose son had been spending so much time in solitary confinement, not realizing that his friend's son was actually the murderer of Clements! Hickenlooper was relating that conversation in praise of the work done by Clements to alleviate the number of people spending time in solitary confinement!

Is Jesus the Redeemer, or the Wimp?

Is Jesus the Redeemer, or the Wimp? Mark Steyn writes that those who believe in the Wimp Jesus

seem to believe He died to license our sins – Jesus loves us for who we are so whatever's your bag is cool with Him.

In this world, if Jesus came back today he'd most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally-friendly car with an "Arms Are For Hugging" sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams.

On the other hand, people who believe in Jesus the Redeemer believe

Christ had power over His captors but didn't use it, and His sacrifice is our salvation.

Read more of Mark's review of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of Christ here: http://www.steynonline.com/4932/the-passion-of-the-christ

Where is gun violence occurring?

Why is President Obama skirting these facts about gun violence?

RedState reported:

It is not, however, just handguns that must be discussed when discussing gun violence. This gets to why we cannot have a meaningful conversation in this country and never will. To do so will get you branded a racist.

“Blacks were disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and offenders. The victimization rate for blacks (27.8 per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000). The offending rate for blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000).”

The Secular Right revealed this on inner city gun violence.

The most common gun violence, by contrast, is drearily predictable and is the source on average of nearly ten thousand homicides a year. Such violence occurs overwhelmingly in certain locations of cities—over the past 30 years in Boston, for example, 75 percent of the city’s shootings occurred in 4.5% of its area, whereas 88.5 percent of the city’s street segments experienced not a single shooting. Urban shootings are retaliatory or the product of the most trivial of slights. They are committed by handguns, not assault rifles. Victims and perpetrators usually know each other, absent bullets going astray.

Reforming the involuntary commitment laws and beefing up mental health services are largely irrelevant to these shootings, since though the shooters have serious problems with impulse control and are clearly a danger to themselves and others, few would be deemed mentally ill. And both victims and perpetrators are disproportionately minority, by huge margins. New York City is emblematic of the country’s gun violence. According to victims and witnesses, blacks commit 80% of all shootings in New York, though they are 23% of the city’s residents. Add Hispanics and you account for 98% of all shootings. Whites commit a little over 1% of shootings, though they are 35% of the city’s population. These disproportions pertain across the country.

Read more here: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/03/if-obama-really-wanted-to-reduce-gun-crimes-hed-focus-on-the-inner-city-but-he-wont-because-its-too-obvious/

Robert Redford's tribute to Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn

Did you know that Robert Redford's newest film, due out next month is a homage to Weathermen Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn? From Wikipedia:

Bernardine Rae Dohrn . . . born January 12, 1942, is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and the immediate past Director of Northwestern's Children and Family Justice Center. Dohrn was a leader of the Weather Underground, a group that was responsible for the bombing of the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and several police stations in New York.

As a member of the Weather Underground, Dohrn read a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, and was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, where she remained for three years. She is married to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground, who was formerly a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.In a speech during the December 1969 "War Council" meeting organized by the Weathermen, attended by about 400 people in Flint, Michigan, Dohrn said, "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the pig Tate's stomach! Wild!" In greeting each other, delegates to the war council often spread their fingers to signify the fork. -- Wikipedia.

Read more here: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-way-they-werent.html

We happy few

Sippican Cottage has a post today about being in a band of brothers. What kind of brothers? Mark Twain described it as

Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

Meanwhile, this five-year-old has his own vision.

Read more here: http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2013/03/if-we-are-markd-to-die-we-are-enow-to.html

Beware beardless boys!

We know about Islam warning men and women to stay away from people of the opposite sex with whom they are not married. Now a Saudi cleric has issued a warning to Saudi adults to stay away from young beardless boys.

Read more here: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/03/fatwa-bans-men-from-being-alone-with-handsome-young-boys.html

Elf? Gnome?

Someone has built a tiny door in an elm tree in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com.

What to do about babies born alive on abortionists' tables

The Weekly Standard has a video from a hearing in the Florida legislature. In the video a Planned Parenthood official is asked about what to do with babies born alive on an abortionist table.

Go here to read the transcript and view the video: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/video-planned-parenthood-official-argues-right-post-birth-abortion_712198.html

Beheaded, then crucified

Saudi Arabia beheaded a man yesterday and then crucified his body. Daily Mail reports,

He was allegedly forced to confess after the authorities threatened to torture his mother.

He is the 28th person to be beheaded there this year.

Seven juveniles were arrested and convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death in the Southern city of Abha after their appeals to the king were rejected.

One of the youths was interviewed by a human rights agency nine hours before his execution.

'We were forced to make confessions. We were mistreated by the investigators - they took our clothes and it was winter. They tortured us by suspending us from chains on the wall.

'They also used psychological torture such as threatening they would bring in our mothers and torture them in front of us.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300656/Saudi-Arabia-beheads-murderer-CRUCIFIES-body.html#ixzz2Owuv7prM

Puzzled scientists

Scientists have now accepted that there has been a two decade pause in global warming, and they are not sure how to interpret it.

Read more here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/twenty-year-hiatus-in-rising-temperatures-has-climate-scientists-puzzled/story-e6frg6z6-1226609140980

"Good" Friday

On this day we call Good Friday (nailing Christ to the cross is good?), Ann Voskamp asks some questions:
Why didn’t You come down from that Cross in all Your power and Glory? Why didn’t You blind the chief priests with Your divine radiance? Why didn’t You still all their blasphemous tongues with the army of the heavenly host, with Your burning holiness, with Your flaming sword? Isn’t that who You really are?
to find the answers, go here: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/03/when-youre-tired-of-being-torn-why-he-came-a-good-friday-reflection-the-one-piece-life/

Drumming up hatred

North Korean President Kim Jong-un has ordered nuclear strike plans against four U.S. cities: Honolulu, San Diego, Austin, and Washington D.C. Thousands of North Koreans have turned out for a mass rally at the main square in Pyongyang in support of their leader's call to arms. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-holds-mass-rally--soldiers-and-students-chant-death-to-us-imperialists-2013-3#ixzz2OwkErBUM Read more here: http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-releases-strike-plan-photos-2013-3

Christ-like, or Dhimmitude?

Pope Francis celebrated Maundy Thursday yesterday by kissing the feet of prisoners in a detention center. One of them was Muslim. Pamela Geller is upset:

While millions of Christians are being oppressed, persecuted and slaughtered under Islamic law ...... this is stomach-churning dhimmitude. This isn't merely a lack of leadership; this is betrayal on an unimaginable level. Kill my people and I will wash and kiss your feet.

For jihadists, this image could very well replace the burning twin towers as iconic of Islamic imperialism and conquest.

What do you think? Read more here: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/

How do you respond to rules?

Gretchen Rubin writes about four types of people.

In a nutshell, under this scheme, people fall into one of four categories–Upholder, Questioner, Rebel, Obliger–depending on how they respond to external rules and internal rules.

Upholders respond to both inner and outer rules; Questioners question all rules, but can follow rules they endorse (effectively making all rules into inner rules); Rebels resist all rules; Obligers respond to outer rules but not to inner rules.

Upholders wake up and think, “What’s on the schedule and the to-do list for today?” They’re very motivated by execution, getting things accomplished. They really don’t like making mistakes, getting blamed, or failing to follow through (including doing so to themselves).

Questioners wake up and think, “What needs to get done today?” They’re very motivated by seeing good reasons for a particular course of action. They really don’t like spending time and effort on activities they don’t agree with.

Rebels wake up and think, “What do I want to do today?” They’re very motivated by a sense of freedom, of self-determination. (I used to think that Rebels were energizing by flouting rules, but I now I suspect that that’s a by-product of their desire to determine their own course of action. Though they do seem to enjoy flouting rules.) They really don’t like being told what to do.

Obligers wake up and think, “What must I do today?” They’re very motivated by accountability. They really don’t like being reprimanded or letting others down.

Do you see yourself in one of these categories? I see myself as falling into all four of them at various times!

Read more here: http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2013/03/do-you-agree-about-these-motivations-of-the-upholder-questioner-rebel-and-obliger/

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Standing up against abortionists

Here is what happens when an outstanding teacher stands up against the abortionists from Planned Parenthood: http://www.lifenews.com/2013/03/21/portland-school-district-boots-teacher-fighting-planned-parenthood/

Million Muslim March on 9-11

The American Muslim Political Action Committee is planning a million Muslim march on Washington on September 11. Wonder why they chose that date? They are feeling victimized, so their actions justify their choice of that date, don't you see? If you feel victimized, then whatever action you choose is justified!

We as Muslims continue 12 years later to be victimized by being made the villains. To this day every media outlet and anti Islamic organization has committed slanderous and libel statements against us as Muslims and our religion of Islam.

Read more here: http://moonbattery.com/?p=27679

Finding the cure

I did my taxes last night. Today I have a mood disorder and back pain. Moonbattery has some ideas of cures: http://moonbattery.com/?p=27707

Wishful thinking

Here is Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signing three gun control bills passed by Colorado's Democrat-controlled legislature.

Mike Rosen wrote the best column I have seen yet on the subject, calling the Democrats' actions

theatrical exercise in emotional self-indulgence and wishful thinking.

Read more: Mike Rosen - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/rosen/#ixzz2OrSCHqQR

Stay out of the hospital!

If you have to go to the emergency room or intensive care, make sure the doctor doesn't give you muscle relaxers. This Brazilian doctor is accused of doing that, then reducing the oxygen supplies to seven patients, and may have done it with 300 others, according to investigators!

Read more here: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/03/28/brazilian-doctor-may-have-killed-up-to-300-patients-investigators-say/

All is not lost

Colorado lost hundreds of jobs when Magpul left the state, because of Democrat gun control measures. All is not lost though; a Canadian firm will employ ten people to make marijuana-infused tea! One wonders; did the people who formed the Canadian company leave the United States in the sixties?

Read more here: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22884472/canadian-firm-eyes-boulder-factory-make-marijuana-infused

Don't do these things!

John Hawkins shows us how to become evil in five easy steps.

1. Treat other people as objects

2. Willingness to use any means to achieve a predetermined "good"

3. Nursing grievances (perpetually feeling victimized, and, therefore, justified in "fighting back")

4. Escalation and line crossing

5. Refusal to accept moral absolutes

Read more here: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/12/09/5-moral-boundaries-you-do-not-want-to-cross/?singlepage=true

Shall we give him free room and board for the rest of his life?

James Holmes is offering to plead guilty if we will feed him in prison for the rest of his life. He is also claiming he killed the people in Aurora because of Islamic Jihad. Hopefully, one or more of the other Muslim prisoners will take offense. Meanwhile, Holmes shed his orange hair coloring and is growing a thick Muslim beard.

Read more here: http://patdollard.com/2013/03/muslim-james-holmes-offers-to-plead-guilty-in-aurora-theater-massacre/

Guy's got chops!

Webutante brings us Billy Joel singing at Vanderbilt University. A student asks to accompany him. Fabulous!

found here: http://webutante07.blogspot.com/2013/03/billy-joel-double-wows-vanderbilt.html

Powerful testimony!

Gun control is people control. It sprouts from racist soil. Listen to these people give us a history lesson about the NRA. Did you know the NRA was founded by religious leaders who wanted to protect freed slaves from the KKK? I didn't know that!

"When they take our guns, they will also seek to take our God. That's when Americans will fight back!"

Many thanks to Webutante, where I found this video: http://webutante07.blogspot.com/2013/03/black-conservatives-discuss-second.html

Some gays want to be included in the institution of marriage, while many heterosexuals are deserting it!

Marriage is in the news, as the Supreme Court hears arguments this week. Roger L. Simon writes a post about marriage at PJ Media:

Committing to another human being and raising a family is the most ennobling and meaningful activity any of us – except perhaps those few curing cancer and such like – undertake in life.

Trouble is — fewer and fewer of us are doing it. The statistics are everywhere. I’ll give just a few: According to a Pew poll from January 2011, 39% of Americans think marriage obsolete. (Up from 28% in the 1990s.) Forty-one percent of babies are born out of wedlock. (That’s up 18% since the 1980s.) Barely half of U. S. adults are married — the lowest percentage ever. And so on.

America’s problem isn’t gay marriage; it’s marriage.

Conservatives should be grateful to gays. These days they seem to be the only ones who want to uphold the institution.

Well, some of them anyway. And that’s part of the point. Those gays and lesbians who want to get married are largely domestic types who seek to participate in a traditional lifestyle that conservatives normally admire and advocate.

And guess what — nothing has happened to the institution of marriage, except, sadly, from those heterosexuals deserting it. And that is clearly not the homosexuals’ fault.

More importantly, as a serial monogamist and devoted romantic about marriage, I would remind them to concentrate on the real problem. Marriage is in serious jeopardy. Pay more attention to that, not to a tiny minority who seek what you already have.

Read more here: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/03/26/on-marriage-again/?singlepage=true

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

That's what you get for lovin me

Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot sing it with optimism! found here: http://legalinsurrection.com/

Pro Choice, except for...

found here: http://www.mobyrebuttal.blogspot.com/2013/03/funny-cause-its-true.html

Time for a workout?

found here: http://theborderlinesociopathicblogforboys.blogspot.com/

North Dakota takes the lead on abortion

Did you know that North Dakota's Governor signed into law yesterday

a ban on abortion if a fetal heartbeat can be detected. He also signed a first-of-its-kind law banning abortion for reasons of genetic defects such as Down syndrome.

Poor Richard's News has the story here: http://poorrichardsnews.com/post/46345156401/north-dakota-governor-signs-ban-on-abortion-because-of

Wait until the deer leaves the parking lot

If you see a deer in the parking lot at Wal-Mart, maybe you should wait until he leaves the property before you start shooting. This guy opened fire on the deer, and now he faces criminal charges:

The Pennsylvania Game Commission says 40-year-old Arcangelo Bianco Jr., fired several rounds from a handgun at a 10-point white-tailed deer from within the Burrell Township store’s parking lot, and then bagged the animal near Old William Penn Highway.

Read more here: http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/03/27/man-charged-for-hunting-in-a-walmart-parking-lot/

Hat tip The Laughing Conservative

Obama has more flexibility

Remember when President Obama was heard on a live microphone assuring out-going Russian President Medvedev in a private aside that he would have “more flexibility” to negotiate on missile defense after the November presidential election? Well, he has kept that promise. Tom Maguire writes,
Russian officials here have so far declined to comment on the announcement, which was made in Washington on Friday by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel as part of a plan to deploy additional ballistic missile interceptors to counter North Korea. The cancellation of some European-based defenses will allow resources to be shifted to protect against North Korea.
Read more here: http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2013/03/more-flexibility.html

What do I need to pretend to believe in order to get elected?

Tom Maguire writes about the Unbearable Lightness of Democratic Principles:

The NY Times traces the evolution of Bill Clinton's position on gay marriage, from his signing of the Defense of Marriage Act to his current opposition to that law. Clinton's current story is that his heart was always in the right place but those rube voters and his pesky pollsters forced him to sign the bill. And take out radio ads touting his signing of the bill.

Whatever. This could be an article on any prominent Democrat on any number of important issues, such as Hillary or Kerry on the Iraq war vote, the Patriot Act, or No Child Left Behind. It could be Obama's story on gay marriage. When a party's guiding principle is 'what do I need to pretend to believe in order to get elected?', a constancy of positions is not to be expected.

Read more here: http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2013/03/the-unbearable-lightness-of-democratic-principles.html

Would you hold hands with either of these guys?

Robert Spencer has been saying since 2006 that Iran is trying to make Iraq an Iranian client-state. In the photo above Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki holds hands with Iranian terror supporter Ahmadinejad. Secretary of State John Kerry has asked Maliki to stop Iranian shipments of weapons to Syria. Those shipments go through, or over, Iraq. We'll see how Maliki responds.

Read more of Spencer here: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/03/kerry-finally-notices-that-iraq-is-an-iranian-client-state-tells-maliki-to-stop-iran-flights-to-syri.html

How Muslims can put an end to "Islamophobia"

Are you a Muslim who wants to put an end to "Islamophobia?" Robert Spencer has some suggestions for how you can achieve that:

1. Focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.

2. Renounce definitively, sincerely, honestly, and in deeds, not just in comforting words, not just "terrorism," but any intention to replace Western constitutions (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means. In line with this, clarify what is meant by their condemnations of the killing of innocent people by stating unequivocally that non-Muslim civilians, including Israelis, are innocent people, teaching accordingly in mosques and Islamic schools, and behaving in accord with these new teachings.

3. Teach, again sincerely and honestly, in transparent and verifiable ways in mosques and Islamic schools, the imperative of Muslims coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis, and act accordingly.

4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach sincerely against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.

5. Actively and honestly work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

If Muslims do those five things, voila! "Islamophobia" will evanesce!

Read more here: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/03/european-network-against-racism-calls-on-eu-to-recognise-islamophobia-as-racism.html

Betrayed for $32

The story of Anne Frank is the most famous of the stories about people who hid Jews during the Holocaust. The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous tells the story of the person who hid her:

Amsterdam, The Netherlands… July 1942 – Miep Gies and her husband, Henk, were good friends with Anne Frank’s parents. Miep worked for Otto Frank.

In 1941 Otto Frank began making plans for his family to go into hiding, should the need occur. He built a secret annex adjacent to his factory and asked Miep if she would help. She said yes without hesitation. In July 1942 when his oldest daughter, Margot, received an order to report for deportation, the family immediately went into hiding. A total of eight Jews hid in the annex.

Every day Miep and three others who had also agreed to help had to find food for the eight Jews in hiding. This was a difficult and dangerous job, as food was very scarce and one could not buy any food without ration coupons issued by the Germans.

On August 4, 1944, Miep was working quietly at her desk when a man in plain clothes burst through the office door and pointed a gun at her. “Don’t move. Don’t make a noise,” he said. That day, after more than two years in hiding, the Franks, the van Pels and a dentist, Fritz Pfeffer, were betrayed for a bounty of 60 guilders, about $32 today. They were arrested and deported to concentration camps. Later that day, Miep climbed to the empty hiding space. Lying on the floor were Anne’s diary and papers. Miep told herself that she would keep them for when Anne returned.

When friends of the Franks found out about the arrest, they gave Miep money and told her to see whether she could bribe the German officials to have them released. Miep tried, but her brave bid failed. She kept the diary and waited for Anne to return. Miep never read the diary.

Otto Frank was the only one of the eight to survive. When he came back from Auschwitz at the end of the war, he lived with the Gies family. Miep did not give Anne’s diary to him. She knew it was not his. Although they knew that Mrs. Frank had died in Auschwitz, they still hoped that the children might return. Finally Otto Frank received a letter from a nurse who had been with Anne and Margot when they died, just one month before Bergen-Belsen was liberated. It was then that Miep gave Otto Frank Anne’s diary.

Miep Gies died in Amsterdam on January 11, 2010 at the age of 100.

Read many other stories of righteous moral courage here: http://www.jfr.org/pages/rescuer-support/stories

Block out those interruptions!

Can't find the right position? Have somebody talking to you while you are trying to nap? This meerkat shows us how to block out the interruptions!

found here: http://www.jokeroo.com/videos/animal/meerkat-fighting-sleep.html

Hat tip: I Own the World

The people!

Since I no longer have a long commute to work, I listen much less to radio. Still, however, while cutting melons or doing dishes, I might turn it on. Most of the time my dial stays on NPR and Colorado Public Radio, because I do not like to be bombarded with commercials.

Today I listened to Nina Totenberg give a lengthy report on yesterday's Supreme Court debate on the Defense of Marriage Act. No matter who you listen to, there is bias. I realize that NPR tilts left, even though they do make an effort to present both sides to issues. For example, Ms. Totenberg mentioned that marriage has always been left up to the states. Oops! The Constitution says if the government of the United States has not been given authority to act, then it is left up to the states or the people.

Three words, or the people: don't forget those words, Nina Totenberg. As long as I am a law-abiding person, why should any government, federal or state, have anything to say about whom I choose to live with?

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

A sad ending to a young life

This beautiful arch in Utah was the place where rope swinging became very popular as a result of a viral You Tube video.

Unfortunately, a 22-year-old plunged to his death there this week, because he miscalculated the amount of rope needed. The Blaze reports

As with any such stunts, there are risks, and now a 22-year-old from Utah was killed trying to perform the same swing through the arch’s opening. Kyle Lee Stocking, of West Jordan, left too much slack in the rope he was using, and it sent him crashing into the sandstone base of Corona Arch near Moab, Grand County sheriff’s officials said. He died Sunday afternoon.

Read more here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/26/22-year-old-suffers-fatal-accident-at-popular-landmark/

Hat tip i Own the World

Free will and God not giving up on us

Mushroom at Fungle Jungle wonders which end of the telescope we should be looking through.

What causes a man to plant an apple tree? Is it because he tasted apples in the past or because he wishes to eat them in the future? We think our past determines our future, but perhaps we should look occasionally through the other end of the telos-scope.

Then, in another post Mushroom adds that

My absolute certainty of free will does not preclude me from believing that, once stepping through the strait gate, we will most likely follow all the way to the end. We will be made into the image of Christ, no matter what it takes or how long it takes. I am pretty much counting on the fact that God will not give up on me until I am conformed to the image of the Son, until you and I and numberless others are unified in faith, brought to maturity in the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Read more here: http://funglejungle.blogspot.com/

Loving unconditionally

Do you have people in your life who love you unconditionally? How do they show their support for you? Usually it is parents or spouses who give that kind of love, and, if we are really lucky, our children. It must be terrible for people like Barack Obama to have grown up without the love of his father, although his grandparents were there for him. Yet, he certainly seems to have found an awful lot of people who love him. Update: After I wrote the two paragraphs above, I read a few pages from The Kingdom Way by C. Wayne Stewart. He wrote about David, the writer of the Psalms. Stewart writes, "The amazing gift of David was his miraculous ability to always have an acute awareness of God's nearness and companionship." So, when talking about unconditional love, let's not forget the One who created us and loves us eternally!

Are our lives bearing fruit?

What was the last miracle Jesus performed before being nailed to the tree? Being hungry, and stressed because He knew what was coming, He went to a fig tree to eat some figs. Finding none, He said to the tree, may you never produce another fruit! And the tree withered and died right there.

Ann Voskamp writes,

The authentic Christian life has got to be more than leafage.

Faith has to have fruit.

It’s the fig-bearers who live a faith that bears fruit. And it’s the leaf-wearers who just live this front that wears thin.

These brittle, dry days — they can be kindle for burning bushes and God can come upon the dry bones and they can bud and blossom. And we can eat almonds and taste miraculous fruit from limbs just surrendered.

Please read more of Ann's wonderful post here: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/03/christian-easter-activity-family-holy-week/

Monday, March 25, 2013

Would your dog want one of these?

found here: http://mungowitzend.blogspot.com/2013/03/when-engineers-have-dogs.html

Hog-swatting in South Georgia

AR-15s are being used in Georgia to protect crops from hogs.

U.S. Border Patrol uniforms now manufactured in Mexico

Guess where U.S. Border Patrol uniforms are made? Mexico! CNS reports

(CNSNews.com) - U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has granted uniform contracts to VF Imagewear, Inc., an apparel company that relies on manufacturing sites in Mexico for a “significant percentage” of its occupational garments.

The latest contract with the company was awarded on Dec. 20, 2012, to make “uniform and insignia items” for the CBP at an estimated cost of $6,157,997.57, and a ceiling of $8 million.

Read more here: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/us-border-patrol-uniforms-manufactured-mexico

Fatter milk = Slimmer kids

Allison Aubrey reports at NPR's The Salt blog that

A new study of preschool-aged children published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, a sister publication of the British Medical Journal, finds that low-fat milk was associated with higher weight.

That's right, kids drinking low-fat milk tended to be heavier.

The researchers had hypothesized just the opposite, but found that

the relationship between skim-milk drinkers and higher body weights held up across all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

Parents, if this leaves you confused, one thing to keep in mind is that — whether it's whole, 2 percent or skim — milk is probably not a major driver when it comes to childhood weight problems. Many studies have shown that sugar-sweetened beverages play a much bigger role.

Read more here on possible guesses why these findings are happening: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/03/19/174739752/whole-milk-or-skim-study-links-fattier-milk-to-slimmer-kids

Sequester Joe Biden

The New York Sun reports that Joe Biden recently spent $585,000 taxpayer dollars for a night at the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris, and that did not include his ride in from the airport. Innominatus also has an inside report on Biden's meeting with Pope Francis.

Read more here: http://www.nysun.com/editorials/sequester-joe-biden/88238/

and here: http://innominatus87.blogspot.com/2013/03/joe-joe-joe-to-rome-gently-down-drain.html

Lebanon's government collapses

Michael Totten writes that Lebanon's government has collapsed - again. Totten says
the country is closer now to collapse than it has been at any time since the civil war ended.
Read more here: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/lebanons-pro-hezbollah-government-collapses

Turning his back on Iraq

At Power Line, Paul Mirengoff asks

Why has Obama turned his back on Iraq?

The impression that Obama has turned his back on Iraq stems from the fact that Obama largely has turned his back on Iraq. The question is: why does Obama ignore a country of Iraq’s strategic importance? And also: why does Obama feel an oblgiation to assist the Palestinians, who hate the U.S. to the point of cheering al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, but not the Sunnis of Iraq, many of whom rose up to fight alongside the U.S. against al Qaeda?

Is it because Iraq was “Bush’s deal”? Is it because the West Bank is where the potential glory for Obama resides? Is it because a Middle East policy that focuses on America’s strategic interests is insufficiently enlightened? Or is it because Obama the “progressive” sympathizes more with Middle East radicals than with those who have aligned themselves with the U.S.?

Some of each, I imagine.

Read more here: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/03/why-has-obama-turned-his-back-on-iraq.php

Iran close to having a nuclear bomb?

Water vapor (circled in red) rises from the Arak nuclear complex in Iran. This recent imagery suggests the plant is nearing operational capability, giving Tehran the "heavy water" option for producing nuclear weapons (DigitalGlobe imagery/McKenzie Intelligence Ltd assessment, via the UK Telegraph)

Read more here: http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2013/02/plan-b-for-bomb.html

Is technology outpacing our Constitutional protections?

In the Cold links to a story about a North Dakota farmer. A Homeland Security drone was used to spy on him and his family. Another farmer had accused him of not returning some cows. Spook86 writes

there is a very good chance that your home, your car, or your activities may fall under the gaze of a police drone in the near future. Couple that various data-mining techniques and systems like Stingray (which can locate any cell phone, as long as it's turned on), and you've got handy tools for an authoritarian regime, if not a police state.

The ability of technology to outpace existing laws--particularly in regard to the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments--cannot be overstated.

Read more here: http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2013/03/standing-with-rand.html

Sunday, March 24, 2013

What the Johnson tapes reveal about Nixon and LBJ

Richard Nixon may have been even worse of a human being than we thought! David Taylor writes at BBC.com about the Johnson tapes. Yes, Richard Nixon was not the first to have tapes of White House conversations. LBJ originated the idea.

One of the tapes reveals that LBJ found out that Nixon talked the South Vietnamese into withdrawing from peace talks in 1968, promising them that if he got elected, they would get a better deal. North Viet Nam was on the verge of getting an end to the war, and LBJ was about to call a halt to the bombing. However,

LBJ had the The FBI bug the phone of Nixon's liasion to Viet Nam, Ambassador Anna Chennault, and the transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the South Vietnamese ambassador to "just hang on through election."

In a series of remarkable White House recordings we can hear Johnson's reaction to the news.

In one call to Senator Richard Russell he says: "We have found that our friend, the Republican nominee, our California friend, has been playing on the outskirts with our enemies and our friends both, he has been doing it through rather subterranean sources. Mrs Chennault is warning the South Vietnamese not to get pulled into this Johnson move."

He orders the Nixon campaign to be placed under FBI surveillance and demands to know if Nixon is personally involved.

When he became convinced it was being orchestrated by the Republican candidate, the president called Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader in the Senate to get a message to Nixon.

The president knew what was going on, Nixon should back off and the subterfuge amounted to treason.

Publicly Nixon was suggesting he had no idea why the South Vietnamese withdrew from the talks. He even offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.

So, why didn't LBJ make all this public?

Johnson felt it was the ultimate expression of political hypocrisy but in calls recorded with Clifford they express the fear that going public would require revealing the FBI were bugging the ambassador's phone and the National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting his communications with Saigon.

So they decided to say nothing.

The president did let Humphrey know and gave him enough information to sink his opponent. But by then, a few days from the election, Humphrey had been told he had closed the gap with Nixon and would win the presidency. So Humphrey decided it would be too disruptive to the country to accuse the Republicans of treason, if the Democrats were going to win anyway.

Nixon ended his campaign by suggesting the administration war policy was in shambles. They couldn't even get the South Vietnamese to the negotiating table.

He won by less than 1% of the popular vote.

Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives - quite apart from the lives of the Laotians, Cambodians and Vietnamese caught up in the new offensives - before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968.

The White House tapes, combined with Wheeler's interviews with key White House personnel, provide an unprecedented insight into how Johnson handled a series of crises that rocked his presidency. Sadly, we will never have that sort of insight again.

Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668

P.S. I wonder if something similar to what happened to Humphrey also happened to Romney. Did you notice how he backed off confronting Obama on Benghazi in the last two debates?

Hat tip here: http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com/2013/03/nixon-again.html

Clean eggs!

On Colleen's farm one of the jobs performed by my sons Jon and Greg is to clean hundreds of eggs every day. Jon turns thirteen soon, and got a new computer for his birthday. Naturally, he immediately found a You Tube video of an egg-cleaning machine, and he wants one! Do you blame him?

Righteous courage

There is a website called The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. It features stories of people all over Europe who hid Jewish individuals from the Nazis. For example, here is one from Russia:

Novozybkov, Russia... Summer 1941 – Shortly after the Germans occupied Novozybkov they rounded up all the Jews for execution. It was then that the Safonov family decided they had to do something. In their cattle-shed they dug a hole and hid nine Jews. Three were from the Mogilevskyi family, neighbors of the Safonovs; three were from the Gutin family; and three were from the Uritskyi family. At night the Jews would come out of the hole for fresh air. The Safonovs fed and cared for them for several months.

In the fall, the Safonovs' children, Vasilyi and Nadezhda, went into the forest to make contact with the partisans. One night Vasilyi and his sister led all the people into the forest to the partisans, except Mrs. Mogilevskyi, who was sick. She died at the Safonov's house and was buried in their garden.

Mr. Mogilevskyi and his son, who was later killed, fought alongside the partisans, as did Nadezhda and Vasilyi. Vasilyi's parents were betrayed to the Germans and were shot because they had hidden Jews. Mr. Mogilevskyi adopted Vasilyi as his son; they went through the remainder of the war together.

Vasilyi Safonov passed away in 2003.

Read many more stories of courage here: http://www.jfr.org/pages/rescuer-support/stories/russia-/-vasilyi-safonov

Giving credit where it may be due

Larry Kudlow writes that maybe we ought to be giving Ben Bernanke some credit for an improving economy.

Interestingly, while the inflation rate has remained subdued, so have market-price indicators, such as gold, the dollar and commodity indexes. The suggestion here is that Bernanke, rather than mounting a high-inflation policy, has been avoiding deflation.

At the end of the day, the Federal Reserve is not the engine of growth. Low tax rates, light regulation and limited government spending create the incentives for more rapid economic expansion and prosperity-inducing opportunities.

But if I have this story right, the market monetarists want the central bank to enforce a nominal GDP growth rule, which will avoid both deflation and inflation, and thus give fiscal incentives breathing room for a more rapid job-creating expansion.

I don’t agree with Bernanke’s unemployment target or his criticism of lower government spending. But I confess that he may have the monetary-stability story more right than I originally thought.

If gold remains soft, and King Dollar steady, perhaps the former Princeton professor deserves a little more credit. He may have gotten that story right.

I like it when a conservative is willing to break free of the pack and give credit to someone who may deserve more credit than he is being given by everyone else who is in lock step with the prevailing conservative view! Isn't that what we would want from the other side when we have ideas of merit?

Powers reserved to the people!

George Will has an interesting column on DOMA. He hopes the Supreme Court will strike it down. The tenth amendment says,

“the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Will concludes,

Liberals praise diversity but generally urge courts to permissively construe the Constitution in order to validate federal power to impose continental uniformities. DOMA is such an imposition. Liberals may be rescued from it by jurisprudence true to conservative principles, properly understood.

Read more here: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/21/will-a-matter-of-jurisprudence/

Messages from God

The American Bible Society has created a glossy magazine entitled Messages from God. In just over one hundred pages it summarizes the key messages of the Bible in very readable form. It was published by Time Home Entertainment. It should be available in the magazine section wherever you buy books and magazines in your community. I have just read it, and found it to be riveting!

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Taking away from you

Stephen Goddard writes at Real Science that Obama has a universal solution to every problem: take things away from the American people.

Whatever the problem is, Obama’s solution is to take things away from the American people.

Budget cutbacks? Take away whatever hurts the American people most.

Take away their guns, their Bill of Rights, their car, their coal, make them turn the thermostat down and tell them what and how much they are allowed to eat.

Reagan’s core philosophy was growth and freedom. Obama’s core philosophy is to take control away from the peasants, and put himself control of everything

When he said “bitter people who cling to guns and religion” it was pretty obvious where he was coming from. The only reason to cling to anything is because someone is trying to take it away from you. That person is Barack Obama.

found here: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/the-universal-obama-solution/

Five ways to lose your man card

John Hawkins writes at PJ Lifestyle about five ways men forfeit their man card. They are:

1) Geeking out on children’s entertainment

2) Crying in public under most circumstances

3) Being afraid to shoot a gun

4) Being whipped

5) Refusing to stand up when the situation calls for it

Do you agree? Can you think of other ways?

Read more here: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/03/21/5-ways-to-forfeit-your-man-card/?singlepage=true

What got banned this week?

Mary Katherine Ham writes at Hot Air about The Week in Banning. To go along with recent bans on finger guns, pop tart guns, and pink guns that shoot bubbles, this week we saw bans of Axe Body Spray, an honors award ceremony (students who didn't earn honors might be offended), hugs, homemade treats, and because of Facebook photos of an eleven-year-old son holding up a legally-owned weapon, Child Protection social workers were called to investigate.

Read more here: http://hotair.com/archives/2013/03/20/the-week-in-bannings-hugs-homemade-treats-awards-ceremonies-and-axe/

Popularity of Congress

How low has the popularity of Congress become in the eyes of the American public? A new survey of American preferences concluded:

Asked for their preference between Congress and lice, the microscopic insects prevail 67-19 percent. Ditto colonoscopies (58-31 percent), root canals (65-32 percent), and being stuck in traffic (56-34 percent).

How does Congress compare with other unpopular groups?

Used car salesmen are favored 57-32 percent over members, while NFL replacement referees earn a 56-29 percent favorability.

However, there is good news for members of Congress:

Congress was favored over more than half of respondents over diseases like gonorrhea and ebola, and eked out polling wins over playground bullies, telemarketers and meth labs.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/276121-poll-congress-less-popular-than-colonoscopies-root-canals-nickleback#ixzz2OO9vQ6vK

The Glowing Eye Nebula

Planetary nebulae appear simple, round, and planet-like in small telescopes. However, images from the Hubble Space Telescope have become well known for showing these fluorescent gas shrouds of dying Sun-like stars to possess a staggering variety of detailed symmetries and shapes. This composite color Hubble image of NGC 6751, the Glowing Eye Nebula, is a lovely example of a complex planetary nebula. Winds and radiation from the intensely hot central star (140,000 °C) have created the nebula’s streamer-like features. The nebula is about 0.8 light-years across, roughly 600 times the diameter of our Solar System. It’s 6,500 light-years distant in the constellation Aquila (the Eagle).

Image Credit: NASA

found here: http://hogewash.com/2013/03/13/an-eye-in-the-sky/

Instilling confidence in children that most of life's challenges can be handled

What is the job of a parent? I like this brief example:

However, as parents it is not our job to put emotional subtitles to our children’s lives. It is our job to help children use language to bring feelings down to size and to instill confidence that most of life’s challenges can be handled.

How well do you manage negative emotions?

When children are expected to manage discomfort in order to meet the demands of the outside world, they usually do. In the process, they develop crucial internal resources that can be drawn upon throughout their lives. Children — and adults — who learn to manage negative emotions enjoy more pleasures and many more options than those who don’t.

Read more here: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/how-psychologists-limit-their-own-children/?smid=tw-NYTMotherlode&seid=auto

and, here: http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-therapists-screw-up-their-children.html

They should fight!

Stuart Schneiderman links to a National Review article by Michael Walsh urging Republicans to fight on. He points out that

After suffering an ignominious loss in the 2004 presidential election Democrats mounted a domestic political insurgency against the Bush administration and the Republican Party.

To its eternal demerit the Bush administration failed to defend itself. It never fought back.

Unfortunately, I think that may be true. Bush was above politics, honoring his office by trying to run things with dignity, and not bothering to fight back against the constant onslaught of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the media.

Then, it was John McCain's turn. Schneiderman writes,

Republican pusillanimity continued through the 2008 presidential election when war hero John McCain acted as though he was “too proud to fight.” The Obama campaign pounded the Republicans and McCain was beaten badly.

But, what about the Tea Party victories in 2010?

After their 2008 defeat Republicans launched their own domestic insurgency against the Obama administration. It coalesced around the Tea Party and produced significant electoral gains in the 2010 mid-term elections.

But then, in an effort to unlearn the lessons of the past and to placate the mainstream media Republicans called off their insurgency and nominated Mitt Romney for president.

Romney sailed through his opposition in the Republican primaries, although I preferred the Newt Gingrich "fighting back" strategies, especially with the media.

Romney was Johnny-on-the-spot when it came to trashing Republicans but he, like McCain, was “too proud to fight” the Obama campaign.

Worse yet, in nominating Romney the Republican Party abandoned its best issue: Obamacare.

Romney suffered an ignominious defeat, dragging the party down with him.

Now, Michael Walsh writes in National Review that Republicans should adopt the tactics that worked for the Democrats. They should launch their own domestic political insurgency. Republicans should not conciliate; they should not rebrand; they should not re-message. They should fight.

Loving people and using things

Do you love people and use things? Or, is it the other way around? Stuart Schneiderman writes

Having lost the meaning of friendship and having forgotten how to relate to other human beings, we have transferred our love on to things. We are obsessed with electronic gadgets, to the point of creating cults to the Apple computer company. Often we love our cars more than we love our spouses.

What is the appeal of objects? Schneiderman writes

Objects always do as they are told; they never talk back and never hold us to account. Objects are also more reliable than people. We might lose them but they never reject us. Many people feel that this makes objects supremely lovable.

What if you act well toward people, and they do not act well toward you?

If it counts as a consolation, when you act well toward others and others do not act well toward you, you know to a high degree of certainty where the problem lies.

How a dog lawyer would defend a cat killer

Found this Gary Larson cartoon here: http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-genius-of-gary-larson.html

A beautiful American

Two women came into the store together yesterday. One was a local, the other was from the Congo. They left with over $1700 worth of purchases made by the local woman for the woman and her village in the Congo. I will try to find out more details and update this post.

One detail I know is that the African woman has a friend in her village who wants to start a beauty shop. Therefore, many of the purchases were supplies to get her started in business.

Another detail I heard was that the local woman asked neighbors to chip in, and they did.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Looking for someone you can bamboozle? Better look again!

There is a woman who works four hours a day as a cashier in the store where I work. She is 84-years-old. She has worked retail her whole life, beginning in a grocery store at age sixteen. She owned a flower shop at one point in her career.

A young man was in the store the other day, seeking to steal over a thousand dollars worth of electronic items. His method was to take the barcode sticker off of one low price object and put it over the barcode sticker of a more expensive item. He looked around for the cashier he thought would be most vulnerable to his sleight-of-hand. He picked my friend, who I described in the first paragraph. Big mistake.

He took the first item out of his cart and placed it on the belt for the cashier to scan. She noticed the item and the price. The item was a cell phone, and the price was three dollars! She excused herself and went over to another register and dialed the operator, telling the operator to get somebody from electronics up there right away. As it happened, three members of management were in electronics, and responded right away to the call.

She showed management the first item. They then looked through the rest of the items in the cart, and found what he had been doing.

I asked her what her secret was. She said, "I pay attention to detail!"

Kudos to her, and kudos to the store for being smart enough to keep her employed there!

Kids who "help" their parents shop

Do you take your kids with you when you go grocery shopping? Someone should do a research study on how much extra money parents spend each year just by having their kids "help" them shop. I bet it is a substantial amount of money.

If the child is a toddler, the extra money is likely to be a small toy or something to suck or munch on. If it is an elementary school age child, it is likely to be gum, candy, a Barbie accessory or a Monster High package for girls, and a box of Legos for boys. Teen boys are likely to slip in a Monster Energy Drink, while teen girls will slip in a hair color kit or nail polish tube.

At any rate, isn't it money that could be better spent paying down credit card debt?

Never give up; keep the dream alive!

Do you bemoan the things you cannot do? Or, do you marvel at the things you can do? How patient are you with yourself? With others? If there is no patience, eventually there is no trying. No trying, no advancement in achievement. Persistence, kindness, love and warmth: that is what we have to give ourselves and others. That way every moment will bring new hope and new possibilities. Do you talk with your children about their abilities? Are you raising them with praise? Do you remind them how far they have come; what they couldn't do yesterday, but can do today? Do you celebrate their accomplishments? That gives them hope for continued growth.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Not many Muslims in Iran?

Flares of Darkness links to an article by Spengler on the decline of Islam, especially in Iran.

Iran may be one of the world’s most secular countries; some reports put mosque attendance in the Islamic Republic at just 2%, lower than Church of England attendance. When the odious Islamist regime falls at length, we probably will find that there are as few Muslims in Iran as there were Communists in Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like other religions rooted in traditional society, for example the nationalist-Catholic faith that Europeans abandoned after the two world wars, Islam cannot abide the onset of modernity. Some forms of religion can flourish in modernity; Islam is not one of them.

Muslim civilization is in catastrophic decline. It is passing from infancy to senescence without ever reaching maturity. Iran has one last bulge generation of military age men, born before the fertility collapse got underway. It perceives one last historic opportunity to achieve Shi’ite dominance. It won’t have another.

Read more here: http://yargb.blogspot.com/2013/02/islams-crisis.html

He had to walk that valley for hisself

Nobody else can walk it for ya. You got to walk that valley for yourself. Mississipi John Hurt has some advice for us.

found here: http://yargb.blogspot.com/2013/02/you-got-to-walk-that-lonesome-valley.html

Okay, Jon and Greg, try this!

found here: http://fkclinic.blogspot.com/2013/03/musical-interlude-of-day_15.html

Church bulletins can be a source of humor

Lessons for life found in church bulletins:

The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals...

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The sermon this morning: Jesus Walks on the Water. The sermon tonight: Searching for Jesus.

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Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.

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Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell' to someone who doesn't care much about you...

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Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.

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Miss Charlene Mason sang 'I will not pass this way again,' giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.

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For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

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Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.

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Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

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A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow...

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At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be 'What Is Hell?' Come early and listen to our choir practice.

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Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

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Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

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The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.

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Potluck supper Sunday at 5pm - prayer and medication to follow.

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The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

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This evening at 7pm there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

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Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10am. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. Is done.

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The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.

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Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7pm. Please use the back door.

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The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7pm. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

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Weight Watchers will meet at 7pm at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.

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The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new campaign slogan last Sunday: "I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours!"

found here: http://fkclinic.blogspot.com/2013/03/religion-post-of-day.html

No answers from Obama administration on bullet purchases

Still no answer from the Obama administration on why Homeland Security has purchased 1.6 billion bullets. Congressman Timothy Huelscamp says a number of Congressmen are asking, but getting no answers.

Stand with Rand? Maybe not!

According to Mark Krikorian at National Review Online, some of the shine is off Senator Rand Paul. Paul followed up his successful 13 hour filibustor and victory at CPAC with a speech on immigration, which Krikorian says Paul doesn't know much about.

Read more here: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/343384/dontstandwithrand-mark-krikorian

PETA killed more than 1,600 cats and dogs at its Virginia headquarters last year

Mail Online reported yesterday

Animal rights charity PETA killed almost 90 per cent of dogs and cats placed in the care of the shelter at its Virginia headquarters last year, it has been revealed today.

They may not want to publish any more of these particular ads:

Read the whole story here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296572/PETA-killed-1-600-cats-dogs-Virginia-headquarters-year--90-animals-handed-charitys-American-shelter.html

Why America is exceptional

Every once in a while Victor Davis Hanson writes a wonderfully uplifting post about America.

The world now wakes up to iPhone communication, Amazon online buying, social networking on Facebook, Google Internet searches, and writing and computing with Microsoft software. Why weren’t these innovations first developed in Japan, China, or Germany — all wealthy industrial countries with large, well-educated, and hard-working populations? Because in such nations, young oddballs like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs more likely would have needed the proper parentage, age, family connections, or government-insider sanction to be given a fair shake.

Even in its third century, America is still the most meritocratic nation in the world. Unlike under the caste system of India; the class considerations of Europe; the racial homogeneity of China, Japan, or Korea; the tribalism of Africa; or the religious orthodoxy of the Middle East, in America one can offer a new idea, invention, or protocol and have it be judged on its merits, rather than on the background, accent, race, age, gender, or religion of the person who offers it.

The end of American exceptionalism will come not when we run out of gas, wheat, or computers, but when we end the freedom of the individual, and, whether for evil or supposedly noble reasons, judge people not on their achievement but on their name, class, race, sex, or religion — in other words, when we become like most places the world over.

Read much more here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343499/america-s-big-fat-advantage-victor-davis-hanson?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Bystander syndrome

Bystander syndrome. David Warren writes about it:

The term describes our modern, non-participatory democracy quite well. Everyone is equal, & everyone has rights. We might call them “the rights of the bystander.” One might say that the most fundamental of these rights, on which all others can now be constructed, is the right to assume that “someone else is taking care of it.”

Do people have no conscience? Warren writes,

It is a myth that people have no conscience. Our Maker implanted that in each of us. We all know that voice perfectly well, even those who deny it. It is the voice to which we reply: “There was nothing I could do.”

This has been the basic “liberal” act, through all ages: as much among the Pharisees as among our modern adepts of “secular humanism.” It is to refute the True, with the Plausible. It is to answer the hard moral argument with the soft tendentious argument; with mild heckling; with pseudo-moral posturing; with a display of insolence if it comes to that; & finally, with “statistics.” It is to be glib, by reflex, persisting into habit. And yet all these responses are founded in an uncompromising & absolutely necessary act of faith: that there is no God who will come in Judgement.

Czeslaw Milosz called this “the true opium of the people.” He defined it as, “a belief in nothingness after death; the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Read about some incidents where people were bystanders: http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2013/02/23/bystander-syndrome/

Failing to be a victim of his environment

Have you heard of Sung Bong Choi? I had not, until I read about him at David Warren's blog. He grew up an orphan on the streets of Seoul, South Korea. Listen to him sing the song Whitney Houston made famous:

Read about him here: http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2013/03/07/a-tenor-voice/