The Only True Peace

This really happened and even the commercial message is properly subordinate. This is an excellent way to begin Advent and begin to understand the Gift given to us all at Christmas. 


www.wnd.com/2014/11/famous-christmas-story-ad-stirs-controversy/

The Way Progressives Play the Game

Jonah Goldberg in National Review pens as concise a description of progressive tactics as I have ever read. It explains why Republicans always look like Charlie Brown in his annual Fall kick-the-football fiasco - they keep playing by the rules. Rules, schmules - rules are for chumps. Hence President Obama on immigration, Obamacare and the actions of lesser minions like Jonathan Gruber who made the huge faux pas of explaining the truth behind his actions. Thus saith Goldberg:

"... the story of the progressive movement can best be understood as activists going wherever the field is open. If the people are on your side, expand democracy. If the people are against you, use the courts. If the courts are against you, run down the field with the bureaucrats, or the Congress, or the presidency. Procedural niceties — the filibuster, precedent, the law, custom, the Constitution, truth — only matter if they can be enlisted to advance the cause. If they can’t, they suddenly become outdated, irrelevant, vestigial organs of racism, elitism, sexism, whatever. Obstruction, or even inconvenience in the path of progressive ends is prima facie proof of illegitimacy. The river of history must carry forward. If History hits a rock, the rock must be swept up with the current or be circumvented. Nothing can hold back the Hegelian tide, no one may Stand Athwart History. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. This is the liberal gleichschaltung; get with the program or be flattened by it."

www.nationalreview.com/article/393246/obama-congress-its-my-way-or-my-way-jonah-goldberg

The sooner that Americans realize that nothing coming from a progressive's mouth can be trusted, that everything is tactical and geared toward accomplishing their strategic goals which they will never reveal (except by mistake like Herr Gruber) because they know that a vast majority of Americans will never agree with them, the better off will we be as a nation. 

Lying Through His Teeth

In my lifetime, a lot of politicians have lied but usually made a pretense at the truth. Not any more. The President goes on TV and lies that he has legal authority to unilaterally grant amnesty to 5M illegals in this country when on multiple occasions in the past he has made a big show about saying that it would be nice but he simply does not have that power under the Constitution. He was right then, but now ... 

Jonathan Gruber spilled the beans on this whole approach when he candidly and publicly said that getting Obamacare into law was so important that they wrote a deliberately obtuse bill and then lied and lied again about its impact. I mean really lied - not little white lies but big fat whoppers like the President saying you can keep your doctor or your health insurance costs will go down $2,500/year. They knew none of this was true but the end justified the means and if the "stupid American people" would swallow this stuff, they deserve what they got.

It's now more of the same from the President. A standard jury instruction is that if a jury finds a witness's testimony false in part, then they are entitled to disbelieve the whole of that testimony. Since pretty much everything this Administration says is a lie and they have admitted they have and will do it solely for political gain, the American people should not believe anything they say. The President is no longer entitled to the benefit of the doubt. We have to assume that political expediency dictates what he will say and the heck with the law, trust, honor, or the unbelievably corrosive effect on the Body Politic. Welcome to the Banana Republic of the United States. 

Apple Pie and Chevrolet

Make mine a a small piece please. Interesting stat on cars - the 2-car family is receding into history. As people become more concentrated in cities, car ownership is more and more difficult and that's just one car, never mind two. Hence a statistically significant trend that may signal the end of the 2-car family. Time to sell the GM and Ford stock I guess.

www.cnbc.com/id/102193080?trknav=homestack:topnews:1

Some People Get It

CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is all over the U.S. airwaves and at the White House decrying supposed Islamophobia. The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), however, has just plunked them on its terrorist organization watchlist. Since the President and John Kerry at State seem to think that Iran is going to keep its nuclear promises, I won't be holding my breath for CAIR to hit the U.S. watchlist. Now that I'm thinking about it, weren't these guys in Alicia Silverstone's movie Clueless?

www.foxnews.com/us/2014/11/17/us-group-cair-added-to-terror-list-by-united-arab-emirates/?intcmp=latestnews

What the Frack?!

Fracking is the process where a liquid is injected under high pressure into a deep oil or natural gas well to crack the underground rock layers that then release large quantities of oil or gas. Environmentalists have been warning that the fracking liquid is poisoning our underground water table and we're going to all die, DIE I tell you! Well, deep breath, settle down - not so says the University of Colorado, Boulder.

A new study says that the fracking liquid is pretty harmless. In fact, it compares it to such dangerous liquids in our houses as toothpaste, laxatives, detergent and (shriek!) ice cream! Not good news for the Greenies. 

But then protecting the environment isn't rally the agenda for many of them, it's really about the end of the market-based economy where people make their own economic decisions and its replacement with the rule of the Enlightened Ones to make those decisions for us, like President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Dr. Gruber of MIT, the architect of Obamacare. They know better than we do. Of course they do, unaffected by the weaknesses of human nature like most of us; Philosopher Kings as Plato might say. As my grandson Henry politely says with some frequency, no thank you.

townhall.com/columnists/thomasmiller/2014/11/17/liberal-university-destroys-antifracking-talking-point-n1918979

Correction Alert

I ran a piece on 10/31/14 about the remains of Pharaoh's army being found at the bottom of the Red Sea, thus validating the Biblical story of Moses leading the Israelis out of Egypt. Kelly Jamieson pointed out that several sources (Snopes, for example) rate this as "False" and other are not so categorical but definitely do not consider the evidence totally substantiated. Until there is more definitive evidence, I will have to rate this story as "unsubstantiated" and retract the above post. Sorry for the slip up.

Agreed

"After this repudiation, acting on #immigration by fiat would be the political equivalent of literally flipping the country the bird,"  Ron Fournier, The National Journal.

And you think that will stop him?

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/05/MSM-Obama-Exec-Amnesty-Would-Be-Flipping-the-Country-The-Bird

A Very Good Night

It was a good night just about everywhere but Oregon. For those Republicans just elected, get down to business and do what's best for this country!

A Couple of Champions

A couple of cross country runners in Minnesota were leading the race and nearing the finish line when one of the girls behind them fell to the ground exhausted. The two leaders instead of battling it out for a photo finish went back and helped the girl who fell to her feet and supported her across the finish line together. They were disqualified for their efforts.

Not to worry, ladies - you showed more about your character than winning a race could ever do. Nicely done. 

www.foxnews.com/sports/2014/11/04/high-school-runners-disqualified-for-helping-girl-finish-race/

Observation Point

If freedom is worth dying for, it is certainly worth voting for.

                                                                    Chuck Colson

                                  Vote tomorrow!

Dreamweaver

The CMA Church has a number of missions in the Middle East. Over the last 10 or so years our people there have been hearing an increasing number of Muslims tell about dreams where Jesus came to them. Typically, they are both moved and curious, seeking help in understanding what they have seen from the missionaries. 

This article gives some history of the phenomena and a number of anecdotes to illustrate what some of the dreams look like and how the Muslims having them reacted. Clearly, God is doing something very interesting amongst Muslims and on a widening scale. I wonder if He does it with Westerners and we are too plugged in to the Net or elsewhere to notice or understand. 

www.wnd.com/2014/11/rising-number-of-muslims-reporting-dreams-about-jesus/

Z-z-z-z-z-z

A funny piece from Jonah Goldberg at National Review:

"Obama fatigue is setting in. Indeed, I’ve gone from Obama fatigue through full-on Obama Epstein-Barr to end-stage Obama narcolepsy. I hear him talking, or hear some MSNBC-type rhapsodizing about how misunderstood he is, and I start dozing off like a truck driver who took the drowsy-formula Nyquil by mistake. “Gotta stay awake! This is my job!” But then 20 seconds later, Jonathan Alter starts telling me how misunderstood the president is, and suddenly orange traffic cones are bouncing off my truck’s grill as I somnolently drift into a highway work zone. You could fill a cereal bowl with broken glass and barbed-wire shards drenched in hot sauce right below my face. All it would take for me to use it as a pillow is a 30-second loop of Obama saying “Let me be clear.” His speeches are like whale sounds, but with less substance. I’d say they’re all white noise, but I don’t want to get called a racist."

My sentiments exactly. I write a longer blog on it but I'm getting sleepy. 

www.nationalreview.com/article/391620/its-not-obama-its-you-jonah-goldberg/page/0/1

The Obama Way Spreading Like Ebola

Voting is a privilege of citizenship, right? Nah - it's your DUTY AND YOU BETTER GET IT RIGHT! So sayeth the commissars of the Democratic Central Committees in New York and Connecticut. Breitbart reports that:

"Both the New York State and Connecticut Democratic Committees are threatening people into voting on Tuesday by sending bullying letters that claim they can easily determine which potential voters failed to cast ballots."

This was confirmed by tweets obtained by the NY Post which showed such homespun humor as:

“ 'Who you vote for is your secret,” the letter reads. 'But whether or not you vote is public record.' " 

Or knee-slappers like:

“ 'We will be reviewing voting records… to determine whether you joined your neighbors who voted in 2014,' it continues. 'If you do not vote this year, we will be interested to hear why not.' ”

Yessiree, the Party of the People! Well, at least a few people, who celebrate May Day every year, like the color red, and think Stalin was a misunderstood historical figure. 

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/10/31/Bullying-Democrats-Send-Letters-Threatening-People-To-Vote-Or-Else

Kudos to the SF Giants!

Congrats to the Giants for winning the World Series. They fought for it all the way and Madison Bumgarner is a pitcher for the Ages. Randy Johnson's pitching performance in the World Series against the Yankees when he played for the Diamondbacks has been my previous gold standard of athletic excellence, but Bumgarner raised the bar substantially. Well done Giants! 

There's No WMDs in Iraq!

Might want to re-think Bush lied; people died. This very interesting piece is written by the head of a company who says that he personally supervised the removal of 5500 metric tons of yellowcake uranium from Iraq in 2008. He also notes the 5,500 live warheads filled with nerve and chemical agents that the New York Times (what?!) just reported were also removed from Iraq. The Times writer tried to minimize the disclosure by saying that these warheads were "antiques" left over from the Iran-Iraq war from the 1980s, but be assured that one of these "antiques" can kill a bunch of people just as dead in a very horrible way as a shiny new one, as shown by the dead Kurds in the picture that Saddam gassed.

There ain't no WMDs in Iraq! It was bunk then and bunk now. I just hope that the bulk of them that were moved under Russian guard to northern Syria are not now in the hands of ISIS. Fortunately, I think the Israelis took care of that problem several years ago with a mysterious air strike ordered by Chickens*#t Netanyahu, who has more courage in his little finger than El Jefe of the United States in his whole body. 

townhall.com/columnists/carterandress/2014/11/01/we-drove-saddams-yellowcake-to-baghdad-airport-n1912824