THIS COMMENT WAS posted Monday morning by Stacie Florer in the comments of my Saturday piece on Sarah Palin below. It was a lovely thing to share and I thought it deserved a wider audience. Thanks again Stacie for taking time to write this! I invite comments and personal stories like this any time.
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Wow, looks like I missed out here on a typical liberal rant...
I was 26 when I went to college. Prior to that, I traveled around the world WORKING for 5 years on ships that carried many of the liberals from the East and West Coasts. I had President Reagan on board one ship, the M.V. Silverado, for 2 weeks in Alaska.
He and Mrs. Reagan were BY FAR the kindest people I had to wait on...the others were the "Elite" that were so educated and superior to me and my kind. Well, those elites were crass, rude and abominable in more ways that are fit to print. I quickly learned that the ELITE were piggish on good days...
Reagan and I would eat breakfast every morning and he treated me like a granddaughter, as did Mrs. Reagan. He chastised me for not having a college education, and working on boats instead. I told him in reply that I don't know too many "educated" people that had the opportunity to eat breakfast alone with a former beloved President of the United States and have the sort of conversations we were having.
This was in the summer of 1992, before he was diagnosed. After all of my traveling, I would much prefer to come to rural America and learn from these folks about how to be a real American than from the educated ELITE's that people think we dislike. You know what? You guys are right. You are disliked. You don't think rationally, you are condescending and we mostly ridicule your ideas as baseless and unworthy of our attention.
Monday, July 13, 2009
A Comment From Reader Stacie Florer
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Mechelle McNair With One of Her Four Sons By Late Husband Steve
Mechelle McNair is pictured above at her late husband's, Steve McNair's, funeral with one of their four boys. Steve died hooked on a feeling. I pray a good and faithful man comes into their lives to take the place that Steve abdicated long ago in his never ending and futile ego quest to fulfill his little idea of manhood. I pray a real man comes to take Steve's place who doesn't define manhood as profanity, pornography, alcohol, violence and threats, preying off weak women in order to momentarily feel good about himself and creating straw men to do battle with. I pray a real man--and not some cheap imitation---comes into their lives who knows that the greatest mission he can ever accomplish is to be a Godly man, a faithful and devoted husband to Mechelle and a great role model/father figure to these four hurting little boys. May God bless and comfort them all during this difficult and humiliating time.
One last thing: I've heard many people say Steve McNair was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I wonder, what if he was finally in the right place at the right time? Isn't enough, at some point, enough?
Conversion of Vladimir I, Russia's Prince
Though Christianity had already penetrated Russia by the early tenth century, it had not become generally accepted. In 957 Olga, the widowed princess of Kiev was baptized. She then asked German King Otto I to send missionaries to her country. However, this missionary effort met with little success.
Vladimir, Olga's grandson, was among the greatest of the pagans. He built a number of pagan temples, made a name for himself with his cruelty and treachery, had 800 concubines and five wives, and when he wasn't fighting a war, he hunted and feasted in grand style. He like Saul of Tarsus was hardly the person you'd pick for spreading Christianity across the land.
Like other rulers, Vladimir waned to keep his people contented and saw he might do this by uniting them in religion. He reportedly sent out men to examine each of the major religions. Neither Islam nor Judaism with their dietary restrictions appealed to the prince, so he had to choose between Roman and Eastern Christianity (Catholicism).
After attending worship in the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople (Istanbul), Vladimir's men reported back to him: "We do not know whether we were in heaven or on earth for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere upon earth. We cannot describe it to you. Only we know that God dwells there among men and that their service surpasses worship of all other places. We cannot forget that beauty."
According to the story because of the beauty, Vladimir chose Orthodoxy, the religion of his nation's most powerful, wealthy and civilized neighbor: the Byzantine Empire. The sister of Byzantine Emperor Basil named---Anna---was offered as a bride to Vladimir as the two neighbor's consolidated their alliance.
In 988 Vladimir was baptized and a year later he married Anna. Vladimir's choice of a wife made certain the Russian church would focus on true worship. Eastern Orthodoxy had always had aesthetic appeal.
After Vladimir's baptism his people started to put aside their old religions without much difficulty. Though Russia would not become a Christian nation over-night, things began to change. At first the mass conversions did not run deep but, with the help of monks, the new religion began to make its influence felt.
Thanks to Methodius and Cyril, Russia had a Christian liturgy in its own language---Slavonic. In the beautiful churches built by Vladimir and his successors, the people could participate in a beautiful liturgy in their own tongue.
Vladimir's conversion clearly affected his lifestyle. When he married Anna, he put away his five former wives. He destroyed idols, protected the poor, established schools and churches and lived at peace with neighboring nations. On his deathbed he gave all his possession to the poor.
The Greek church eventually canonized him.
----The 100 Most Important Events in Christian History
Friday, July 10, 2009
On Sarah Palin's Resignation
FINALLY I SEE: A SHOCKING, SHAMEFUL HIGH-TECH MOB LYNCHING BY DEMS
TRULY NOTHING I can remember in recent times has caused me such consternation and soul searching about any subject as what I personally think of Governor Sarah Palin's surprise announcement she's resigning. I've gone round-and-round with myself over the past week sometimes thinking she's made the political blunder of the century by abandoning her elected commitment, to then thinking she's weak and a gold-digger. Of course I'd seen, heard and read for months how hateful the left MSM media is towards her and her family, but I was wary and upset she wasn't hanging tougher through all this. I didn't want to give her the benefit of the doubt. She'd made her political bed and now needed to sleep in it, at least for the next 18 months.
Now however I'm beginning to think differently about this and see it in a whole new light. After reading countless articles from the right and left over the past week, which haven't done a thing for me, yesterday a friend (thanks, CA) forwarded me a piece by Francis Rice, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, lawyer and chairman of the National Black Republican Association. It changed my heart and mind forever. This piece below astounded me and I encourage everyone to take time to read it.
It should give us all great pause. I realize now how unaware I've been of the full reality of what's gone on in Alaska since Obama's election sent her back to the Alaska statehouse. I am going to publish most of Rice's column here so readers can decide for themselves. I now believe Palin's decision was more than justified and that she did the right thing to resign for her family first, and too for the people of Alaska. Her enemies were putting her and the business of Alaska in untenable gridlock. The frivilous lawsuits against her were creating unmanageable debt and financial burdens she and her family simply were not prepared to withstand on a prolonged basis.
My sadness is that this kind of thing could happen in America today. While I think Sarah Palin will not be POTUS in the foreseeable future, nor should be, I believe she will become a stellar, powerful spokeswoman on the right who will be more effective now than any elected office she could ever aspire to. She will also be the star Republican fundraiser for all sorts of candidates and issues in upcoming elections. In addition, she will make much more money for her family by going on the speaker's circuit in the Lower 48. I hope she makes a killing! No one wishes Sarah Palin success and well-being in whatever she does more than I. I remain one of her greatest fans.
Below is Rice's article, the best I've read to date, Conservative America:
READ THIS AND WEEP, THEN GET MAD, THEN GIVE TIME AND MONEY AND EFFORTS TO CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATES AND CAUSES:
“Why Sarah Palin Quit: The Five Best Explanations” by Jay Newton-Small quotes Alaska state legislators who lay the blame at the door of the Democrats. Quoted is Alaska State Senator Gene Therriault, a Republican representing the town of North Pole who said: “We started seeing a proliferation of ethics complaints against her. It was an orchestrated effort to take her down”. That article can be found on the Internet here.
Governor Sarah Palin’s surprising resignation announcement in the face of the horrific treatment she received from Democrats and their media allies struck within me a familiar cord. Although Palin’s abuse was mental harassment inflicted through public humiliation via spoken and written words and mounting debt from frivolous ethics charges, she was nonetheless effectively hounded out of public office. This brought to mind the sinister tactics used by Democrats against Republicans after the American Civil War that freed blacks from slavery.
Determined to keep blacks in virtual slavery after losing the Civil War, Democrats set about the task of ending Reconstruction and driving out of the South all Republicans, a result that kept blacks at the mercy of ruthless Democrats for over 100 years.
The facts about the horrors inflicted upon Republicans by Democrats are laid bare in the books “A Short History of Reconstruction” by Dr. Eric Foner and “Unfounded Loyalty” by Wayne Perryman.
The meticulous research by Foner and Perryman uncovered inhumanity by Democrats so startling as to seem surreal. Democrats, Perryman wrote, used every means possible to destroy Reconstruction including lynching, whippings, murder, intimidation, assassinations and mutilations.
Foner exposed how the Ku Klux Klan, that was founded in 1866 as a Tennessee social club and became the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party, spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a “reign of terror” against Republican leaders, black and white. The Klan lynched over 2,000 black Republicans and 1,000 white Republicans.
In a chilling passage Foner wrote: “Jack Dupree, a victim of a particularly brutal murder in Monroe County, Mississippi - assailants cut his throat and disemboweled him, all within sight of his wife, who had just given birth to twins - was ‘president of a republican club‘ and known as a man who ‘would speak his mind’” .
Sarah Palin is a woman who speaks her mind. She is a decent and honorable citizen who loves her family and country. Palin was subjected to a high-tech lynching by Democrats and their media minions because she had the audacity to be a Republican elected official and an apparent great political threat to the Democratic Party’s ruling elite.
For nearly a century, most blacks were aligned with the Republican Party and, thereby, posed a significant threat to the Democratic Party’s quest for power. Terror was used by Democrats for 100 years and monetary handouts for the past 50 years to mold blacks into reliable pawns in the Democratic Party’s political power game. It is ironic that the Democratic Party is now led by President Barack Obama, a black man who unabashedly helps Democrats keep blacks corralled on the Democratic Party’s economic plantation, voting mindlessly for any politician identified as a Democrat.
America, how did we come to the point where we are all held in the Democratic Party’s iron grip of fear of being destroyed personally, as was Sarah Palin, while the Democrats work feverishly to make us economic slaves?
A mock liberal rant, “I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin - The Republicans bring a knife to a gunfight, and lose again” by David Kahane presents a hysterical tirade against Palin by a fictional Democratic Party operative. A comparison of Kahane’s feigned scorn with the real hatred directed at Palin by Democrats shows that his article is close to reality.
The NBRA tribute to Sarah Palin made long before her resignation announcement
John Ziegler at Big Hollywood has more.
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One parting salvo: I believe what happened to Palin is also happening to this country at warp speed. We cannot throw up our hands now and let this happen. The left will do anything to undermine our way of life and freedoms, and destroy the fixed principles this society rests on. We've got to stand up and get rowdy as time goes on.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
McNair & Co: Why Is Infidelity So Rampant In Pro Sports?
FRIDAY UPDATE: McNAIR ALLEGEDLY HAD 6 YEAR AFFAIR WITH EXOTIC DANCER FROM MINNEAPOLIS
GEORGE PLASTER, NASHVILLE SPORTS RADIO HOST SAYS MCNAIR STORY WORST SINCE 9/11: I MEAN, WHEN WILL THIS WEEK EVER END?
I'VE ALWAYS LOVED COLLEGE baseball, basketball and occasionally football. But when fans move up to the pros like the NFL and NBA, I begin to think of most players as over-sexed, over-paid, and over-praised thugs and gorillas, and lose interest. Whether it's true or not, Steve McNair's low-life murder last weekend begs the question: Why is infidelity so rampant in pro-sports? Why is it such a culture of adultery? Can no one control themselves? Sure there's temptation from adoring female fans everywhere, but is there no way for a sports star to control himself and resist? Where are the wives in all this? Do these meatheads just run wild through bars and alleys like gang busters with no one holding them accountable, let alone their families? David Boclair at Nashville City Paper begins to probe.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
A True, Die-Hard Fisherman Who Knows How to Unwind and Improvise
U.S. Marine Corporal Taly Ramirez of St. Paul, Minn. used some downtime Tuesday to fish in a canal in Mian Poshteh, Afghanistan. A real fisherman will use anything he can get his hands on, anytime, anywhere and usually catch fish. But if he doesn't, he's still happy and relaxed. God bless this man and this fisherman.
And may God bless all our troops abroad.
WSJ Photos of the Day
Post Mortem on Former Titans Quarterback Steve McNair
NEWS UPDATE
PHOTO: COUPLE ON VACATION FROM REALITY IN HAPPIER TIMES...
TWO MORE-THAN-IRONIC events happened shortly before former Titans quarterback Steve McNair was fatally shot in his love condo four times---right temple once, heart twice then left temple--while he was passed out/drunk in the early morning hours of the 4th of July by his current exotic "girl friend/soul mate," Iranian Sahel Kazemi, that I find of great and fascinating symbolic interest:
First, he'd just made a community service Public Service Announcement (PSA) for suicide prevention, in the strictest sense of the word suicide. Only, Steve forgot to remember that suicide comes in all shapes and sizes and colors, fast and slow, and all things in between. He forgot that he had been committing slow suicide for years with all his womanizing, fasting living, bar hopping and infidelity to his wife and four sons.
Second, earlier the Friday night of his murder, Steve was out with some of his sycophant friends at the Blue Moon Lagoon out on the Cumberland River---one of my most favorite funky restaurants in Nashville (only I like to go with a my favorite date when it's cold and uncrowded---and was accosted by one of his former, ahem, girl friends who saw him, went over to his table and accused him of secretly slipping her a date-rape drug a year earlier. She said her boy friend was going to kill him and created such a scene she was forcibly escorted out the door. After all, everyone loved and protected Steve's image, no matter what the reality, and anything that threatened his iconic persona had to expelled.
It was well-known that Steve McNair was a womanizer. Because he was famous, everyone ignored the elephant in the room. He got a free pass. Until the night his free pass expired, so to speak.
Earlier that fateful week, McNair had been in the car with Sahel when she was pulled over and charged with a DUI as he rode in the passenger seat. She was hauled in to jail while he made a quick exit from the Escalade that was registered in both their names into a taxi. He was furious but later bailed her out of jail.
Lots of other red flags, but you get the gist. Steve McNair, like Michael Jackson, was another dead man walking, who made headlines when he finally, actually died.
He will never open that new restaurant Gridiron he was so excited about. He'll never see his wife and four sons again. He'll never make another public service announcement or mentor another up-and-coming Titans quarterback---all because he was hooked on feelings that desperately drove him from one woman to another and another without regard to the real feelings of his wife and little boys.
And no matter what interference Titans nice-guy coach Jeff Fisher runs about "the great Steve McNair he knew," Steve's low-life living of sex, drugs, alcohol, and bar hopping should be a cautionary tale for all of us and in the end detracts from all the good, community service work he's done over the years.
In the end, bullets in the head and chest ended the long, slow suicidal spiral of former NFL great, Steve McNair. Mark Sanford, Eddie George etc, are you listening?
Special thanks for the great local coverage to Kleinheider at the Nashville Post. His best piece here. And also to the Nashville City Paper.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Coming Into the Country, From Grand Junction to Victor, Idaho
SOUTH FORK OF the fabulous Snake River in Idaho not far from the Wyoming line, and just west of Palisades dam and Conan bridge.
Driving from Green River, Utah up through Price then onto I-15 near Provo, behemoth wind turbines greeted drivers as we summited the mountain pass. A common scene of the New West.Sunday, July 5, 2009
How God Created Us
THE EMPTY HOLE IN OUR CENTER
WHILE ON MY DRIVE last week into Colorado, I heard two amazing broadcasts from Focus on the Family. This is the testimony of Adolph Coors IV who spoke of his family and early life, including the disappearance and brutal murder of his father back in the early 60s outside Golden Colorado.
Part 1 of My Journey to Salvation is here, and part 2 follows. Truly poignant and worth listening to from a man who had it all and still found nothing filled the hole in his heart until God invaded it and broke through his many self-defeating patterns.
The thing that stood out the most in my mind is the point that Ad Coors makes about how God creates a hole in our hearts that only He, God, can fill. Yet each of us often spends a lifetime filling the void with everything else: work, play, sex and romance, power, money and success, family, shopping and spending money, writing, alcohol, therapy, pornography,bitterness, drugs, good works and a million other things. At first and for a while, it seems we have found IT, whatever our own idea of IT is. Then when the newness wears off and the fulfillment begins to fade over time, we go after another IT again, hoping it will better fulfill the hole.
This goes on and on endlessly until and unless the Grace of God breaks through in our lives and shows us the hollowness and futility of our endless attempts of making good things ultimate things in our lives. That's what sin is, our putting anything, anything before God. The Word of God isn't kidding when it says, Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all things will then be added.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Fourth of July in Grand Junction
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Long Drives Into the Hot Summer Sun
I've found no matter how good a shape I'm in, no matter how fit, this is one of the toughest things I ever put my body through routinely each year. It's much harder than any half-marathon I used to train for and run.
The reason: driving into the mid-day and afternoon summer sun causes massive drowsiness. And often this drowsiness is way too intense to drive a car safely. I have a friend, in fact the woman of the couple I'm about to visit in Grand Junction---who simply can't drive any distances anymore because of almost narcotic drowsiness she's overcome with in the car, especially in summer.
I've made a study of driving drowsiness, especially in summer, and I'd like to share with my few readers some of the things I've learned over the years.
I've just driven the 20-hour, two day stretch from Tennessee to Colorado---the longest leg of my annual trip to Wyoming---and can happily say it was one of the best drives I've ever had for consistent alertness, focus and energy, even in the hot summer sun. So without further ado, here are a few drug-free tips that I've found to be helpful in my marathon drives:
1. I drink only water, often ice water, and black coffee (Whole Foods Market half-caf-half-decaf) that I put in a small thermos that I carry in the front-seat with me all day. In the ideal world that's all I would put in my mouth all day until evening.
2. I eat as little as possible until the sun goes down and avoid all salty foods, sugars and carbs, surgery drinks, fruit juices, cookies, cereals, breads, muffins, potato chips, and the myriad of other ghastly stuff at gas stations on the Interstate. The only exception is a trail mix with low-sodium nuts and raisins---and then just a hand-full.
3. If I must eat anything for breakfast, I eat only a small amount of raisins or figs with a little piece of cheese (or scrambled eggs) and drink a cup of coffee. Note that I eat no carbs, no toast, no cereal, no milk, no potatoes etc. which I find is the quickest route to overwhelming sleepiness by mid-morning.
The above usually gets me through the morning hours until early afternoon with steady and alert energy.
4. If I must eat lunch, I eat a few more raisins and nuts or cheese and a little more coffee and water then drive on. I will more than replace the calories after the sun goes down later in the day.
5. Polarized sunglasses help with the afternoon glare, but sooner or later, I'm going to have to pull over and rest---actually closing my eyes and lying down---sometimes only for only a matter of minutes at a rest stop to take a break from the pounding sun in my eyes. It also helps to stop at a restaurant for a cup of coffee and a cold glass of water. Beware of eating a lot of food that will weigh you down with sleepiness once you're back on the road.
6. Stopping at rest stops to exercise as well as catch a quick cat-nap is essential. I jog, I run, I walk several times a day. And I have my very favorite trails along the way at which I regularly stop to exercise. The Katy Trail along the Missouri River just off I-70 is a fabulous and beautiful place to exercise and resusitate a weary body and soul.
7. Once the sun goes down, I stop and eat dinner either at a restaurant like Cracker Barrel or from my cooler. This trip I brought cooked brown rice, grilled salmon and steamed kale with olive oil across the country with me, never eating anything from a restaurant. It's one of the reasons I felt so good over the course of the 20-hour, 2-day drive. I always eat brown rice on evenings like this because it helps me sleep better. Rice at night is like a natural sedative.
8. Once the sun goes down and I've had a regular dinner, I drive till I start to get sleepy, then get a motel for the night and sleep until early morning when I start again. I often drive until 10 or 11 but sometimes turn in before 9. I'm not a night owl and don't take any uppers or downers along the way.
Hope these tips are useful to a few of you, and if you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments below. Happy, healthy and safe traveling to you all, especially over the 4th of July holiday weekend! More as I journey on.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Greetings from the West
Accidentally left my computer cord at a motel in Concordia, Missouri. Can't believe I did that! It will have to be Fed-Exed to me before I can write again. Meanwhile, I'm losing my charge and will be forced to visit with friends and hike until it arrives in the next few days....before I leave for Grand Junction and visiting friends for the 4th. It's looking like it will be a light week on the computer.
There's always something right about what's going wrong.
Am most eager to start writing about a story that I find utterly fascinating but now will have to wait.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday
THEREFORE I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
---The Apostle Paul
Friday, June 26, 2009
Memo to Washington Times: Get Real About Michael Jackson's Death
SUNDAY UPDATE
ANDREW BREITBART DISPENSES WITH PLATITUDES
LOOK, YOU HAVE TOO MANY SMART PEOPLE TO INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE
I MEAN, THE HEADLINE this morning is rather silly for a grown-up newspaper: World laments Michael Jackson, Awaits Answers (May take months to find exact cause). Who's writing your headlines these days? Eighth grade summer interns from Sidwell Friends?
A more reality based Webutante-type headline might read: DEAD MAN WALKING FINALLY DIES.
I'll it say again, you have too many smart people there---Pruden, Breitbart, Miniter just to name just a few---who can help figure this thing out and write a decent PAGE 1 story. It's not rocket science. You're not the National Enquirer or TMZ. So let me give you some clues and exact causes while I'm still buzzing on my softer early morning patience:
There are surely a few people and family members lamenting Michael's death in earnest (see Lisa Marie's touching quote, below, and my heart goes out to them). There are quite a few who aren't. I'm one of them. There may be millions, even billions who're awaiting answers (they already know) to satiate their morbid curiosities because they don't have anything else going on in their lives.
However, no person in your reading audience in their right minds and not completely bonked out on drugs---with all due respect to Elizabeth Taylor---should be surprised, let alone shocked at Michael's death. Nor should anyone with a modicum of sense act as if they don't know what caused it. In fact,if you ask me, instead of being shocked that he died "suddenly" on Thursday, I'm shocked that he miraculously lived as long as he did. (BTW, there were a few brave former associates of Michael who were brave enough to tell the truth.)
So let's here's the scoop, fellas: Michael Jackson died Thursday, not suddenly at all, but after decades of slowly dying from massive drug abuse, alcohol, spending more than he made--at last count, he was over $400 million in debt---untreated pedophilia and child abuse which he should have gone to prison for, and a group of family, friends and hired professionals and servants who enabled him to live outside the world of reality, responsibility and accountability.
In the end the laws of nature, if not of man, caught up with him. It's a cautionary tale. Amazing talent, fame and money does not conquer all. There are many inner-city kids in DC and their parents who need to hear the real story.
Questions?
Oh yes, who administered the last lethal injection---the doctor the entire city of LA is looking for to blame? How low can we go when we want to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey of someone who has been paid years, maybe decades, to give Michael injections to mask his deep pain and paranoia. We need someone to blame, to take responsibility for Michael's choices over the past thirty years?
And none other than the Rev. Jesse Jackson is leading the charge towards this nonsense. Oh please. It's truly insane. The poor doc was just doing his job on another hum-drum day at the Ranch of insanity land. But now fans are working themselves up into a huge group victim lather: they're getting madder and madder about what others did to Michael to cut his life short. It was all their fault! The poor doctor has hired a lawyer and I'm sure preparing for the worst.
I hope you'll quit this front page nonsense, and write something about Michael's death that has a ring of reality to it. While you're at it, get some sober adults on this story with a little perspective. Again, this is a cautionary tale and lots of those inner city kids and parents in DC might benefit from a little dose of Michael reality. The sadness is how many young people look up to Michael and his famous lifestyle which, like Elvis, was a series of self-medications, indiscretions and refusals of help and advice from loved ones desperate to save him, up until the bitter end.
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WSJ Photo taken at Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum outside the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, a fan makes public her grief after the museum moved the figure outside, following Jackson's death Thursday in LA of cardiac arrest from a probable drug overdose.
Fading, but will be back in the morning with a few rambling thoughts on Michael's death.
Meanwhile: Heartfelt entry from Lisa Marie Presley's MySpace page:
Michael Jackson’s ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley blogged Friday on her MySpace page that while talking 14 years ago with Jackson about the death of her father, Elvis Presley, he paused and said, “‘I am afraid that I am going to end up like him, the way he did,’” referring to Elvis’s fatal overdose of prescription drugs. “I promptly tried to deter him from the idea,” Presley continues, “at which point he just shrugged his shoulders and nodded almost matter of fact as if to let me know, he knew what he knew and that was kind of that.” During her relationship with Jackson, Presley said, she grew exhausted from “her quest to save him from certain self-destructive behavior,” but she assures fans the marriage was not a sham, though it ended quickly in divorce. “His family and his loved ones also wanted to save him from this as well but didn’t know how and this was 14 years ago. We all worried that this would be the outcome then... I desperately hope that he can be relieved from his pain, pressure and turmoil now. He deserves to be free from all of that and I hope he is in a better place or will be. I also hope that anyone else who feels they have failed to help him can be set free because he hopefully finally is. The World is in shock but somehow he knew exactly how his fate would be played out some day more than anyone else knew, and he was right."
Read it at MySpace H/T The Daily Beast
Posted by Lisa Marie at 7:29 PM June 26, 2009
Calling My Congressmen and The Winner of My No Cigar Award Today Is....
UPDATE: HOUSE OKS BILL IN CLOSE VOTE (219-212) AND NO ONE HAD TIME TO READ.
...my very own Congressman and nice guy, Rep. Jim Cooper of Nashville....No, Jim, a thousand times, NO!
RHETORICAL QUESTION OF THE CENTURY: ROGER SIMON ASKS, IS MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING THE BIGGEST SCHUCK OF ALL TIME?
GLOBAL WARMING BILL SET FOR TODAY
Today, case in point. I called each of Tennessee's Congressional delegation and found out exactly where each of them stands. Then I either congratulated or scolded each of their well-trained phone people in as civilized a way as I could.
Here's the head count: All Republican Congressmen (Roe, Duncan, Blackburn, Wamp), are voting nay. And Two Democrats--Rep. Lincoln Davis and Rep. John Tanner are both voting nay too! (Tanner says it's not the right time for this bill, with the economy in shambles and he also thinks his mostly agricultural constituents will be penalized more as this bill is now written.) The other Dems are voting yes, or on the fence---Rep. Bart Gordon and Rep. Steve Cohen--or at least they say they're still undecided. I certainly tried to give a few talking points to their staff that might be compelling enough to pass on.
The biggest disappointment is my Congressman, Jim Cooper from Nashville, who likes to purport himself a fiscal conservative. Fiscal conservative my hind-end! His rationale is simply---are you ready for this?---jobs creation. That's it. Totally. It sounds pretty lame to me. Never mind that to create some of these green jobs, many more jobs will be destroyed through higher costs of doing business not to mention higher taxes and costs passed on to consumers.
All-in-all, Jim Cooper gets my No Cigar Award today and I will now actively work against his re-election next year. He's a nice fellow who I personally like, but I have no patience with his voting for this bill. No doubt, he's been schmoozing with my neighbor Al Gore and feels like he owes him this vote. What about us!?
Ugh. If you have time, there are still Congressmen on the fence and calls mean a lot to them and sometimes affects how they vote. Can't tell you how glad I am I took the time today.
Heritage on Waxman-Markey Boondoggle, Grossly Over-Estimating Benefits, Under-Estimating Costs
GLIMMER OF HOPE FOR AMERICAN PEOPLE?
Higher Taxes and Economic Devastation in Return for ... Nothing? Article.
"Regardless of the CBO's cost estimates of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade program, the necessary second part of the question--what benefits do the costs generate?--remains unanswered.
"Americans will get almost nothing in exchange for these higher taxes, and the legislation will provide nothing for future generations except more debt and less economic opportunity.
"According to climatologist Chip Knappenberger, Waxman-Markey would moderate temperatures by only hundredths of a degree in 2050 and no more than two-tenths of a degree at the end of the century.[8] This does not sound like a great deal for the next generation--millions of lost jobs, trillions of lost income, 50-90 percent higher energy prices, and stunning increases in the national debt, all for undetectable changes in world temperature.
"The CBO analysis of Waxman-Markey fails to take into account all the adverse effects that will ripple through the U.S. economy if cap and trade becomes law. CBO's grossly underestimated costs means Members of Congress will be grossly misinformed when voting on the legislation."
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Just Say No To Waxman-Markey! Gore to Gore Us With Cap and Trade Mega Tax
HIGHER TAXES AND ECONOMIC DEVASTATION IN RETURN FOR......NOTHING?
CONTACT INFO US SENATORS/CONGRESSMEN. TIME OF THE ESSENCE! NANCY P. TO RAHM THIS THROUGH HOUSE FRIDAY. Gore stays in Tennessee working phone lines.
ACT NOW TO OPPOSE the greatest tax on the American people ever enacted, not to mention the largest increase in government regulation into our lives ever conjured up.
Al, below, looks and sounds like Simon Bar Sinister.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Sanford Returns From BA
THE DISTURBING GLEE OVER MARK SANFORD'S DOWNFALL; TINA BROWN DECODES WHAT WASN'T SAID. NOT JUST TOAST; HE'S CHARCOAL
SO DISAPPOINTED today on hearing the news of Gov. Mark Sanford's affair with an Argentine woman. I'm sad for his wife and four boys, sad for South Carolina and sad for our country's diverted attention from more important events here and Iran. Then again, maybe this is something we need to look at.. I'm glad his wife Jenny has asked him to leave home and also glad they are attempting to reconcile their marriage.
It's time for her and them to draw some hard lines. Define themselves to themselves and each other.
If Sanford doesn't give up this exotic woman soon and completely, then his wife should leave him sooner rather than later and grieve the loss of their marriage. They can either grow together or she'll grow as she cuts the cord and lets this man stew in his own juices.
Not a great model for his sons, though it's all redeemable.
Sanford stands at the greatest crossroad of his life. He will either grow from here, now or lose a great deal personally and professionally, as rightly he should. He can't have it both ways though we all wish we could. Perhaps he'll decide to give his life up here for sexual infatuation---a good, good friend, as he describes it. After all there's a lot of great fishing and hiking in Argentina.
I'm very sad to see this all happen. The whole power/ aphrodisiac thing is an equal opportunity home and profession wrecker, irregardless of political party or religious affiliation. It also has a way of bringing big egos down. This is no exception.
Sanford is old enough to know better than to think becoming "good friends" with a divorcing, attractive woman with whom he shared intimate emails and advice for EIGHT years---wherever she's lived---wouldn't sooner or later lead to sexual intimacy and fireworks. His judgment is sadly lacking and his selfishness is overwhelming.
He's taken the lazy man's way out in dealing with his marital issues. It's always easier to have faux intimacy with a fantasy person than to deal with what needs to be dealt with in the day-to-day real world of marriage. My heart goes out for Sanford's family.
Comments will be limited.
David Solway at Pajamas: Same-Sex Miscarriage
ONE OF THE FINEST PIECES ON THE MISCARRIAGE OF SANITY AND THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO DEGENERACY IN THE QUESTION OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE I'VE EVER READ:
FOR A FAMOUS instance of same-sex marriage, the first in the recorded history of the West, we can read Suetonius’ account in The Twelve Caesars of the emperor Nero’s betrothal to a certain Sporus, going through “a wedding ceremony with him — dowry, bridal veil, and all — which the whole court attended.” Nero couldn’t get enough of what he reckoned a good thing and later married his freedman Doryphyrus. This exercise was only one among many of Nero’s extravagances, but it is symptomatic of an accelerating cultural degeneracy......
Recent legislation favoring same-sex marriage is not, in my view, an indicator of a compassionate and socially progressive culture as many have automatically presumed.
It is, rather, a prime indicator of decadence, the weakening of common sense, and the dissipation of belief in a common future.
What we do in our private lives is for the most part our own business, but in the public sphere the disciplined adherence to the principle of continuity is indispensable. The fiscal and social amenities that accrue to the married condition are a form of recompensation, a reward for the duties of procreation and bringing up children in, ideally, a stable environment.
There is no reason for gay unions to profit from status recognition, tax breaks, pension and inheritance rights, family courts, civil enactments, and the like. These are privileges that must be earned and that reflect the labor and sacrifice involved in the reproduction of the generations.
What else is there that renders us deserving of such exemptions and prerogatives? Unions which are in their nature unreproductive do not merit special dispensation by the state, as if Big Brother had turned into Big Daddy.
This is not a moral question we are debating but a civilizational requisite we forfeit at our peril.
The issue is not the bed but the altar. People can sleep with whom they wish, live with whom they want, but legal vetting and economic advantages are properly accorded to the progenitive or, since not all marriages are fecund, the potentially fertile. The beneficiaries of legal recognition and appropriate indemnification should be those who have invested in, or are at least capable of endowing, the larger social enterprise, namely, perpetuation.
We have now entered the realm of farce. The Ontario Court of Appeal, for example, adjudicating a case in which a lesbian couple accepted a sperm donation from a homosexual friend, decided that a child may have two legal mothers and that the donor father may claim access. Clearly, marriage and the nuclear family are being reconstrued out of existence by a Carrollian judiciary since the precedent that has been established is effectively non-containable.
Indeed, Piet Hein Donner, Dutch minister of justice, has recently pleaded the case for the legitimacy of polyamorous “group marriage.”
Adding to the element of burlesque is the fact that it is now the gay community among the secular population that appears to have become the most outspoken stakeholder in the traditional institution of marriage. No matter. There is little future in an empty crèche.
Pregnancy in the developed world has tended to become something of a fashion statement and marriage a ritual performance to validate the barren. As Claire Berlinski writes in her dirge for a civilization, Menace in Europe, “Not since the Great Plague has Europe’s population been so dramatically gutted,” the reproductive replacement rate plunging sharply below the magic number of 2.1.
Only in those Western nations still committed to preserving their historical and cultural lineage do the numbers resist erosion: the United States, which — up to now at any rate — has maintained the ratio, and Israel, which exceeds it.
It is truly as if we no longer wish to perpetuate ourselves and to take custodial responsibility for the future but instead prefer to knit our energies and loyalties to a convergent present, the acquisition of ancillaries, career and sensations, immediate remunerations, the cult of private pleasure, and political infatuations that pander to our easy sense of righteousness and our emotional autism.
The global warming hysteria with its avowed planetary solicitude does not invalidate the hypothesis. Based on demonstrably incomplete science and riven by contradictions and bogus claims, the ecological crescendo has become a process whereby the New Age pursuit of self-esteem and “self-realization” is magnified as the salvation of the earth. It has not occurred to our environmental zealots that without children, there is no afterward, regardless of the temperature.
In effect, the Western individual has “progressively” tended to become a pure consumer preoccupied chiefly with the aggrandizement of self, owing as often as not to his or her credentials as a member of some presumably marginalized class, group, organization, or faction. Profiting from an ethnology of complaint, resentment, immunity, and special treatment, he or she manifests as what the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus called a “desiring machine...”
This condition of domestic recreancy and unfettered emotivity comprises, as much as anything else, a “clear and present danger.” It is a danger that may assume many different forms, including, as we have seen, the social redefinition of marriage in terms of the couple rather than in terms of the children.
As Allan Bloom (despite his own sexual leanings) cogently argued in The Closing of the American Mind, since the family must be understood as both the nucleus and reflection of the larger civilization, the fate of the latter cannot be separated from that of the former.
It is important that the distinction I am making between same-sex unions and same-sex marriage is not interpreted as a form of homophobia. What I am saying is that, unlike the freedom to choose one’s erotic or live-in partners, same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue, as many activists erroneously claim. Rather, it is the right to express one’s sexual orientation without fear of repressive legal measures or state persecution that qualifies as a civil rights issue.
But the legal and plenary status of traditional marriage is integral to the welfare and propagation of culture, society, and civilization and must therefore be safeguarded.
Gays have come out of the closet and entered common life without shame or inhibition, which is a necessary and desirable outcome of liberating social movements. It does not mean, however, that a person’s heteroclite sexual choices permit him or her to enter the Constitution or the sacraments, that is, into state-sanctioned formal arrangements.
The individual’s sexual orientation and erotic preferences, as such, have nothing to do with the state, any more than his or her appetites, tastes, reveries, longings, or dreams can be legislated or licensed. Given the virtues of limited government and the proviso of non-interference in the private and intimate life of its citizens, the state’s proper objective is to ensure the security and survival of the society which it serves.
In this regard, upholding the institution of marriage is critical. If, for example, we lived in a Hollywood/Arnold Schwarzenegger world, as in the film Junior, in which a man could bear a child, there would be no scruple over waiving the legal impediments to same-sex marriage. Regrettably, this is not the case, transgender Thomas Beatie, a.k.a. Tracy Lagondino, notwithstanding. Beatie, after all, assuming his much-publicized claim to pregnancy is not a hoax, did not have his reproductive organs surgically altered.
Same-sex marriage is quite literally a no-brainer. Predicated on the disintegration of a fundamental structure of social and civilizational viability and the desertification of the womb, it’s only function is to deplete society of a sustainable future while catering to the whims and “needs” of what we might call the “group individual.” All this under the sign of “progressivism,” a doctrine that has espoused the ideology of identity politics in which group membership trumps both the autonomous individual and the larger social contract.
Same-sex marriage is both a cause and an effect of the pervasive narcissism and acedia that is coming more and more to characterize the therapeutic world we live in — a world in which the state replaces the community, recreational sex is promoted at the expense of procreational sex, an improvisatory legalism does duty for traditional morality, the underdog has been rebadged as the overlord, and the group individual rejoices in the grievances which empower him.....
Whole article.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Loving and Appreciating Sex Appeal and Style of Hats More and More
NO HAT MAKES THE GRADE IN MY BOOK UNLESS A NET COVERS PART OF THE FACE
SURE, SURE some hats look silly and ridiculous on some women. But when you know how to wear one and also what looks smashing on you and your unique coquetishness, there's nothing more feminine and wonderful than a lady in a hat, especially a hat with netting over part of her face. Only part, mind you. Here's a series in the fashion section of The Telegraph on hats (in that, only two or three capture my fancy). Nevertheless I'll link to the article and let you be the judge.
Monday, June 22, 2009
The World Must Know
TOTO REVIEW
VOICES OF WOMEN DO NOT MATTER HERE
The Stoning of Saroya M is a true story of the cold blooded murder of a woman falsely accused of adultery by her husband in an Iranian village in 1986. It's a movie we all should see and its poignancy won't be lost on all of us who've watched unprecedented protests unfold in the streets of Iran over the last few weeks. I've always wondered where all the so-called liberal, elite East coast feminists are when stories like this surface. They never seem to be very bothered by the oppression and slavery of Muslim woman who are treated more like livestock and chattel than human beings.
Andrew Klaven writes in the WSJ on the Tragedy of Multiculturalism in Iran. The take-home message is this: No matter what anyone says, all ideologies---and religions---are not the same. They are not all equally good and morally equivalent. And anyone who really thinks this should leave this country now and go try living in one of these morally bankrupt political systems.
Chuck Devore reviews the movie for Big Hollywood. I don't want to miss this one though I'm sure it will be heavy.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
True Nature of Unbelief All Non-believers Share
THE FOLLOWING quote is from the pen of Horatius Bonar (1808 - 1889), the great Scottish preacher, poet, author and hymn writer. It talks about the characteristics of the true nature of unbelief. It’s worth reading and pondering. This from a post last week on Tim Challis' site:
*****
In all unbelief there are these two things—--a good opinion of one’s self and a bad opinion of God.
Man’s good opinion of himself makes him think it quite possible to win God’s favor by his own religious performances; and his bad opinion of God makes him unwilling and afraid to put his case wholly into His hands.
The object of the Holy Spirit’s work (in convincing of sin) is to alter the sinner’s opinion of himself, and so to reduce his estimate of his own character that he shall think of himself as God does, and so cease to suppose it possible that he can be justified by an excellency of his own. The Spirit then alters his evil opinion of God, so as to make him see that the God with whom he has to do is really the God of all grace.
But the inquirer denies that he has a good opinion of himself and owns himself a sinner. Now a man may SAY this, but really to KNOW it is something more than SAYING. Besides, he may be willing to take the name of sinner to himself, in common with his fellow-men, and yet not at all own himself such a sinner as God says he is—such a sinner as needs the cross, and blood, and righteousness of the Son of God. It takes a great deal to destroy a man’s good opinion of himself; how difficult it is to make a man think of himself as God does! What but the almightiness of the Divine Spirit can accomplish this?
Unbelief, then, is the belief of a lie and the rejection of the truth. Accept, then, the character of God as given in the gospel; the Holy Spirit will not give you peace irrespective of your views of God’s character. It is in connection with THE TRUTH concerning the true God, “the God of all grace,” that the Spirit gives peace. That which He shows us of ourselves is only evil; that which He shows us of God is only good!
Friday, June 19, 2009
At the Very Top of My Summer Reading List
It's the story of a small band of Special Forces from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky who were ordered to Afghanistan by Bush's Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately after 9/11. After getting the order, these secret soldiers were airlifted, then dropped there days after the attack on our homeland. Little did these brave men know what they were getting into behind enemy lines or that they would very soon become accomplished horseman warriors under tribal war lords fighting the Taliban in some of the roughest terrain in the world.
My kind of book! When I start, I don't plan to stop. If you want to fall in love with the military again, and if you want one of the great reads of your summer, then consider putting this on your list. And when I've gotten to it, I'll come back and tell you more.
Meanwhile, some Amazon reviews.
And from Simon and Schuster:
Horse Soldiers is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. The bone-weary American soldiers were welcomed as liberators, and overjoyed Afghans thronged the streets. Then the action took a wholly unexpected turn. During a surrender of six hundred Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers were ambushed. Dangerously outnumbered, they fought for their lives. At risk were the military gains of the entire campaign: if the soldiers perished or were captured, the effort to defeat the Taliban might be doomed.
Until now the full story of the Horse Soldiers has never been told. Author Doug Stanton received unprecedented cooperation from the U.S. Army's Special Forces soldiers and Special Operations helicopter pilots, as well as access to voluminous after-battle reports.
In addition, he interviewed more than one hundred participants and walked every inch of the climactic battleground.
Reaching across the cold mountains of Afghanistan and into the homes of small-town America, Horse Soldiers is a big-hearted and thrilling epic story from one of our preeminent storytellers.
That and it's all true taking Stanton years to interview, research and to write!
My Other Jobs Are....
ED (TOTAL DUDE, BELOW) AND I BOUGHT THIS FORECLOSED HOUSE---WITH AN IRS LIEN ON IT---ON THE COURTHOUSE STEPS IN MARCH
BESIDES WRITING HERE AT WEBUTANTE which I love, love, love, I have a couple of other jobs that keep me busy during the work week: 1) I'm a stock trader--- one of the most fun and challenging jobs I've ever had. Keeps the mind sharp and the spirit very, very, very humble. Especially in these wild markets which maketh believers in humbleness of us all.
Job One is to always preserve capital by not losing a lot of money. It has taken me years just to get to the point of not losing a lot of money. (IBD has taught me so much over the years!) The next step is to actually make a little money in either an up or a down market. It's a challenge, but one I find extremely satisfactory. To make a few hundred or a few thousand here and there is icing on the cake of my life. It supplements my blogging and fly fishing habits, by bringing in a little cash flow.
Lately and for the foreseeable future, I've spent more of my computer time each day on the trading, rather than the blogging side of the Internet because it actually brings in money and I want to make as much as I can before the economy collapses and/or the government taxes us into oblivion. I'm seriously not kidding.
The other work I do is 2) I buy an occasional down-and-out, rundown house with good bones, renovate it with my own style and then turn it into a rental property with a monthly cash flow.
I'm never out to make a killing. But I love to make something I consider wonderful out of a rundown structure and use my old engineering skills in the process. Most of all I love the opportunity to bring new light and spaciousness into small, dark spaces. It's a woman thing, I guess. I'm never done with it until I've kept costs low and the finished product is something I'd move into myself.
For the past few months when I'm in town, I've been working with my intrepid contractor Ed on the latest house we've bought and are renovating together. It's been a wonderful project. The teamwork between us out in the real world makes it all happen.We've been doing this for about 7-8 years. I wouldn't have started this without Ed.
What makes all this especially satisfactory is the Ed can do, make anything. And he, like me enjoys doing it on a shoe string. That's the fun of it and he's taught me a lot over the years. I've probably taught him a little too. Somehow we work well together, though we butt horns often. I know when to back off with him and he with me. And the finished product is usually better than I and we could ever imagine.
But the nicest part of all is that through Ed, Iwe are able to employ men who have families and bills to pay, making a very small positive impact on the economy. Yesterday, Ed and I spent several hours at the Habitat store here buying sows ears that we could turn into silk purses--- kitchen cabinets that we bought at 1/4 price.
Won't get it rented until I get back from the West late this summer. But I trust, the right person or family will find its way to it. Will post some pictures later of the finished product. These guys are the best and there's no way to thank them enough for the great work they're doing.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Word To The Wise---Shaky Markets Going on the Defense
MEANWHILE IN DEBT MARKETS: GEITHNER TO ISSUE RECORD NUMBER OF BONDS AS USA FALLS DEEPER, DEEPER IN DEBT 
WHOLE LOTTA SHAKING GOING ON
What's going on in the markets continues to be a tug-of-war between the stock and the bond markets, between the dollar and the non-dollar (commodities).
Meanwhile, things have gotten crazier and crazier at the Fed (under Bernanke) and Treasury (under Geithner).
How nuts you ask? For starters and among other things, Treasury is selling more and more bonds (our burgeoning debt) to pay for run-away, out-of-control spending by the federal government and Obama administration, and the Fed is buying it up and counting it as an asset!
Both agencies are doing little bookkeeping sleights of hand to make our country look as if it's not nearly as bad off as we really are.
This entire deal is a massive House of Cards that will come crashing down. Only question is when and how devastating the carnage when our national bankruptcy is seen for what it really is. It won't be pretty and it certainly won't be fun. And it may not right itself in many of our lifetimes.
Markets fading, fading, fading.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Where's Atomic Ahmad? In Case You're Wondering....He's Not in Iran
RealTime Tweets from Iran, more Tweets 
WHERE would a despicable dictator like Atomic Ahmad be hiding out while millions of voters in his country start a revolution in protest of his fraudulent re-election last week? They're mad as hell and they're not going gently into the night. Surely, you don't think he's waiting around twiddling his thumbs in Tehran, do you?
Here are some possible answers, in case you don't know:
a) Damascus, Syria
b) Los Angeles, California
c) Jerusalem, Israel
d) Moscow, Russia
e) Istanbul, Turkey
f) On a Love Boat cruise around the Baltics
Answer later with links....and rest assured, he's not in Iran or anywhere close. Even though he may act self-assured, he's running scared right now. As well he should be. Wouldln't it be amazing if he never was able to return to his country?!
Joel Rosenberg has the correct ANSWER , d) Moscow, Russia.
Al Gore: He's Not Dead Yet, He's Not Dead Yet, He's Not Dead Yet.....
......you either love it, or hate today's local news on the Al Gore statue controversy--that lawmakers voted NO to--here in Tennessee and Nashville.
There's little middle ground regarding reaction to Tennessee Senates' vote Tuesday rejecting a proposal to erect a privately funded statue of Al Gore---and Cordell Hull---both Nobel prize winners---on state capital grounds.
The rationale for rejecting the statue was that it must depict someone who has already gone to his reward, rather than still reaping it here on planet Earth with inconvenient truths.
Of course, Mr. Gore has not, nor has he made any noises to the effect that he's inclined to shuffle off this mortal coil any time soon. Never mind that Mr. Hull, who helped establish the, ahem, United Nations in 1945, died in 1955.
Still, some would say it was all about politics: It was pretty much a vote down party lines, though Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey voted with the Democrats to erect the statue.
Supporters said Gore's achievements as a politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner were sufficient to waive a long-standing state policy against building statues to the living.
But opponents said the verdict on Gore is still out until he passes away.
"Things change over time," said Sen. Ken Yager, R-Harriman. "Sometimes we may erect a statue and a person changes. … It's probably a better rule to wait until a person is dead."
As to my take on the matter. What can I say except to agree with conventional wisdom: He's not dead yet. He's not dead yet...and so forth and so on...
No surprise, the liberal Nashville Scene didn't take kindly to this deicision by lawmakers. How dare lawmakers deny its king his honor during his lifetime!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Tea Party in Tehran
Amazing, RealTime Tweets and more Tweets. Latest Photos
TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES, THEY CAN DETECT YOU....
NOT SINCE THE 1979 Iranian Revolution that deposed the Shah (our ally who then-president Jimmy Carter turned his back on) and installed the dreadful mullahs (again, thank Jimmy) has there been such an outpouring of protest and pent-up anger in the streets of Tehran. Holy Moses, what a crowd! An estimated 1.5 million people took to the streets to demonstrate against the fraudulent re-election of the little man who would soon be known as Atomic Ahmadinejad.
Maybe I've been too focused on the Fed's antics and stock market sideways trading to see it coming, but this amazing, dazzling show of resistance and protest literally takes my breath away.
And you know what? We should take some BIG lessons from these brave Iranians and gear ourselves up to march on Washington, D.C if things continue to go downhill with out-of-control government spending and bureaucracy.
We should go and make a huge, huge scene---blocking traffic, causing business-as-usual to-grind to a halt until we've re-established some accountability with our elected officials. Karl Denninger tells why we taxpayers in the U.S. we should be outraged and then go and do something loud and unruly about it.
Meanwhile, The Washington Times has more on the growing unrest in Tehran:
Opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who many here think was the real victor of Friday's elections, emerged from seclusion for the first time since the vote to address the crowd, which was estimated to number as many as 1.5 million people.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Muslim cleric who initially confirmed an Ahmadinejad victory, abruptly changed direction and promised a probe into allegations of ballot-rigging, although it was not clear whether the action was merely a ploy to curb unrest.
I doubt anything is going to curb this soon. The mullahs never counted on Twitter, the horizontal platform that shakes and rattles vertical tyranny and oppression.
Michael Ledeen writes at Pajamas:
What’s going to happen?, you ask. Nobody knows, even the major actors. The regime has the guns, and the opposition has the numbers. The question is whether the numbers can be successfully organized into a disciplined force that demands the downfall of the regime.
Yes, I know that there have been calls for a new election, or a runoff between Mousavi and Ahmadinezhad. But I don’t think that’s very likely now.
The tens of millions of Iranians whose pent-up rage has driven them to risk life and limb against their oppressors are not likely to settle for a mere change in personnel at this point. And the mullahs surely know that if they lose, many of them will face a very nasty and very brief future.
If the disciplined force comes into being, the regime will fall. If not, the regime will survive.
*****
Thanks, Greg for Tweeting my interest.
Our Behaviors, Our Health
Sure government can try to bail us out of these chronic diseases, if only temporarily, but the cost to taxpayers is enormous and growing exponentially. The system will one day collapse of its own weight (no pun intended).
According to this editorial, Safeway is doing its part to reduce government spending and skyrocketing health costs by rewarding its employees for healthy behaviors in the form of lower premiums. Read Burd's piece.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Moody Siblings Argued, Parted Ways Over Doctrine
DWIGHT L. MOODY, the famous evangelist, had two very different sons.
William Moody and his younger brother, Paul, were both dearly loved by their father yet had little in common with one another. William, ten years older than Paul, was serious and formal with conservative theological beliefs. Paul was a theological liberal and had an easygoing nature and reputation as a practical joker.
In addition to large campaigns for which he was well known, D.L. Moody shifted his focus to Christian education in order to bring the gospel to the masses. In 1879 Moody started Northfield Seminary for girls and in 1881 Mount Herman School for boys in his birthplace of Northfield, Massachusetts. They became known as "The Northfield Schools."
Then, in 1887 Moody launched the Bible-Work Institute of the Chicago Evangelization Society, renamed Moody Bible Institute shortly after his death.
Both Willaim and Paul graduated from Yale. Moody intended that his sons would jointly manage the Northfield Schools after his death. However, soon after their father's death, the brothers became estranged, their differing theologies causing them continual conflict.
Believing Paul would change the school's theology if he could, Will decided to force Paul out of leadership by consolidating the two schools. On April 8, 1912, a bill proposing the merger of the two schools was presented to the Committee on Mercantile Affairs of Massachusetts and was passed. Paul was in Chicago at the time and did not have a chance to voice his opinion.
Will ended up serving in a general leadership role over both the Northfield Schools and also the Moody Bible Institute. He also published the first biography of his father's life.
Paul achieved a distinguished career for himself outside the Moody enterprises, becoming an influential voice in the liberal wing of American Protestantism. He graduated from Hartford Theological Seminary and became pastor of a church in Vermont. During WW1 he served as senior chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces. After the war he served as president of Middlebury College for twenty-one years. Like his brother, Paul published a biography of his father's life.
Whereas the Northfield Schools evolved into typical New England private academies, Moody Bible Institute became America's premier Bible institute. By the late 1920s it had one thousand students in its day and evening programs. In 2000, it had 1,400 day students and 18,000 in its extension and correspondence programs. Moody Bible Institute has trained more foreign missionaries than any school in the world.
----The One Year Christian History, E. Michael and Sharon Rusten
They will act as if they are religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. You must stay away from people like that. (ed. note---Timothy is talking about staying away from teachers who preach false doctrine.)
-----2 Timothy 3:5
