The art of how to or how not…

The God of all mercy teaches us that our vocation is to learn to love
and also to be able to love after the image and in imitation
of the Most Holy Trinity.
Christ, therefore, is situated at the heart of marital and family life,
in other words, at the heart of the gestures and the attitudes of
the husband toward his wife, and vice versa,
of the father and the mother of the family toward their children—
which you seek to put into practice in trust and in truth.
Robert Cardinal Sarah
From his book Couples, Awaken Your Love!

(the Mayor struggling with the art of the fondue / Julie Cook / 2021)

In yesterday’s post, I noted that I had not kept up with the news during our
small family’s recent little getaway.
A smart and delightful choice I might add.

And thus, upon our return home, I foolishly thought that I needed to play
a bit of catch-up.

So of course there was the story about the plane full of smug, arrogant
and really stupid Democrats who thought they were running away from Texas,
setting their sights on being liberated in Washington D.C.

But what it really was…was a plane full of super-spreaders of Covid.
So why do we vote for such people…??
I digress.

And then there was and is the continuing migrant story…
but where do we start with that one???
Covid, welfare, gangs, sex trafficking, drugs…
Simply not enough time.

Then there was the typical story of hostility in The House between
Dems and Republicans.
A bipartisan panel to look into that House infiltration fiasco…
HA..bipartisan…that’s a good one!
But what’s new???

And of course there was the story about Dr. Fauci proclaiming that we
all need to mask up again…vaccine or not.
But maybe it’s more about the haves and the have nots.

Yet Dr. Fauci now wants us to mask our toddlers…
wee ones who will be heading to pre-school and or daycare.
So hear me now as I channel my best Charlton Heston voice…
NOT ON MY WATCH–NOT MY GRANDCHILDREN!
And no, NO SHOTS for toddlers.
We simply don’t know enough.
Perhaps that shall be one of my many mountains to perish upon.

And once again, there was the continuing story about CRT.
That idiotic ideology which I referenced yesterday.
How to teach about not being a racist…
Lets set people apart, teach them about shame, teach them about resentment,
teach them about angst and anger—those are some really powerful
kumbiya thoughts…right????
Eyes rolling.

And now there’s this latest story about the White House promoting the
Abolitionist Teaching Network whose desire is to “disrupt whiteness”…

What in the heck is that all about???

So let me backup to where we really need to be with this whole
education thing.

If you want to go backwards, which it seems the woke folks are bent on…
let’s go back to what actually worked back in the beginning…

God.
Prayer.
The Ten Commandments.
Faith.
Family.

That pretty much covers all of this lunacy in a nutshell!
Go back to those particular key components and all this fiasco will
finally be righted.

Righted only if those 5 things fall back into their original place…
then and only then will we ever have some sense of normalcy and peace….
otherwise it’s Katie bar the door—
all Hell is about to break loose and I mean hell with a big H…
as in literally.

Love, by its essence, involves a leap into the unknown, a death to oneself,
because genuine love is a love that loves to the end.
And to love to the end means to die for those whom you love.
Robert Cardinal Sarah
From his book Couples, Awaken Your Love!

Bears, wanting to be God, goodbye St Patrick, pandemic, mayhem, drinking the bitters and will the last one out please turn off the lights…

“Don’t Panic.”
Douglas Adams,
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Pan again!” said Dr. Bull irritably.
“You seem to think Pan is everything.”
“So he is,” said the Professor, “in Greek.
He means everything.”
“Don’t forget,” said the Secretary, looking down,
“that he also means Panic.”
G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

(ABC News)

Bears and Bulls.

If you’re not hiding under a rock, of which I suspect many of us just might be doing during
these precarious days…but if you’re not under a rock, then you have most certainly heard
the dire alarm bells sounding…

Our stock market, the global markets, has/have all taken a downward turn.

Make that more like a free for all free fall…

Thank you very much Covid-19.

Wall Street has heard of your unrelenting spreading nature and turned
itself into a bear market practically overnight.

A bear market is not what we want.
A bear market drops like a rock.

A bull market, on the other hand, is good for our investments, our 401K’s,
our retirement savings…

According to thebalance.com, the average length of a bear market is 367 days.
Conventional wisdom says it usually lasts 18 months.
Between 1900 and 2008, bear markets occurred 32 times with an average duration of 367 days.
They happened once every three years.

Yet as my dad would always say…the market has to always correct itself…
it’s an ebb and flow sort of rhythm.
Ups and downs will each come and go..having their own day in the sun.

Personally, I like rhythm…
on the other hand, I don’t like getting pushed off a cliff and falling with no parachute.

But this was coming from a man who survived Prohibition, the Depression, a World war,
a Police action as a reservist and that infamous Summer of Love…while trying to shield
my eyes.

He was stoic in the face of panic.
Hence that Greatest Generation…

But then he could also be quite the Eeyore.
So who’s to say…

Amid all the Henny penny, the sky is falling mayhem taking place, there is still
news taking place.

I caught a recent little hissy fit offered by our favorite congressional darling, AOC.
That favorite fab four member—

It seems as if AOC became riled up because people were being just oh so racist and bigoted
for not going to Chinese restaurants due to fears over Covid19, aka coronavirus.

Think Wuhan.

Yeah…
I don’t think we’re any more likely to “catch” the virus by eating Chinese food than we
are if we eat Italian food…
but try telling a panicked populace…try telling them that its ok to eat Chinese,
Italian, Korean, Iranian foods…
Panic does not “do” reason.

AOC doesn’t get the notion of a panicked populace.
She wants to control the populace.
The populace is to bow to her commnad.
That’s what socialists want to do.
They control.
She doesn’t get panic.
You can’t control panic.
A politician can’t be God.
Despite their desire.

And if you think a Saint can beat covid19, try telling all the St. Patrick revelers.
Savannah, Georgia—one of our Nation’s largest St. Patrick day celebrations,
has canceled it’s St.Patrick’s Day celebration over the Covid19 pandemic.

Yep, pandemic.

The globally scary word of Bubonic Plague…
Get ready to slap the bells around the necks of the infected.

When was a pandemic used a political weapon?
Today.
As in NOW.

What better way can a defeated party defeat a booming president that they hate?

So yes, the stock market will plummet, our economy will slow and the panic will rise.

Icelandic volcanoes have come and gone, hampering global travel.
Terrorists have hampered global travel.
Now Covid19 hampers global travel.

This too will pass.

Our sporting events are being canceled.
Our large gatherings and celebrations are being canceled.
Schools are shuttering their doors.
Our normally free and carefree lives are suddenly being impeded…
Americans don’t like being impeded.
We are a nation of coming and going as we please.

Yet reality is what it is…

The real question is…will Americans come together as one Nation or will
she remain as a divided dual nation?

In the meantime, I’m finding that the consuming of bitters is both medicinal as well
as most applicable…for these are indeed bitter days…
despite the fact these bitters come from Italy…

(the Drink Shop)

Oh, and will the last person to leave to wherever it is we are either leaving or going…be that
a mandated or self-imposed quarantine, please turn out the lights….

But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
Isaiah 43:1-2

call me old fashioned…

Churchill knew the importance of peace, and he also knew the price of it.
Churchill finally got his voice, of course. He stressed strategy,
but it was his voice that armed England at last with the old-fashioned moral
concepts of honor and duty, justice and mercy.
Suzanne Fields

(Defence mavin)

Call me old fashioned.
It won’t be the first time…nor the last…
but when I saw the latest news story regarding Joe Biden visiting an automotive plant
in Detroit and actually getting into a heated fuss and cuss with one of the employees,
I thought to myself, “what planet am I on?!”

According to the website Blue Lives Matters:
Detroit, MI – Presidential hopeful former Vice President Joe Biden got into a throw down
over guns with an autoworker in Detroit on Tuesday (video below).

The profanity-laced argument happened as Biden visited with members of the International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers at the Fiat-Chrysler plant they’re building on March 10, CNBC reported.

The dispute was captured on video and showed a man in a hard hat complaining the candidate
was “actively trying to end our Second Amendment rights.”

“You’re full of s–t,” Biden replied in the video.

“I support the Second Amendment,” the former Vice President said.
But then he added “the Second Amendment — just like right now, if you yell
‘fire,’ that’s not free speech.”

“I have a shotgun, I have a 20-gauge, a 12-gauge, my son’s gun,”
Biden said. “Guess what? You’re not allowed to own [just] any weapon.
I’m not taking your gun away at all. You need 100 rounds?”

When the auto worker pointed out that Biden has said in the past he will take guns away,
the candidate exploded, the video showed.

“I did not say that! I did not say that!” Biden yelled.

The worker said he’d seen it in a video.

“It’s a viral video like the other ones that came out,”
Biden said, and then he claimed it was all “lies.”

“Don’t be such a horse’s a–,” he told the auto worker in the video.

The link to the full story is below.
But for a major candidate running for president,
when visiting an automotive plant in Detroit, stumping for votes while getting into
a tit for tat with one of the autoworkers, cursing at him,
is not my idea of how to win supporters.

It is not how a professional adult conducts himself.
Not how I was taught to act and I doubt it was how Biden was taught to act.
But act he has and this is not the first time he has “acted out.”

Sadly, however, this is just one more example of the current trend of
lowering ourselves rather than rising above.

There will be, of course, folks who will argue that Biden is simply trying to
“speak the language of the common man”…the language of “the people”…
but in reality, he is talking down to this individual…

It doesn’t matter that they were talking about 2nd amendment rights.
2nd amendment rights happen to be very important to many individuals.
Biden was not treating this man as an equal but rather he was treating him as ‘less than.’

Biden was also being blatantly dismissive of this man and his concerns.

An obvious lack of respect.

Does someone who is wanting votes, garner support by cursing at potential voters?

There once was a time when politicians may have actually cared to hear what
‘the people’ had to say.

I caught an interview clip yesterday with former VP candidate Joe Liberman.
I’ve always liked Joe, despite his being on the other side of the fence.
Maybe because he is a practicing Jew who has always honored America’s
bond with Israel.
Maybe because like me, he’s old school.

He noted that he was old fashioned, much like me, but that he did not agree
with politicians cursing in public let alone cursing at those who they were
meeting and greeting.

He admitted that politicians, like most adults, will certainly use choice language
when gathered in more intimate settings amongst one another,
but he was not, is not, a fan of politicians cursing when they are out and about
publically “politicking.”

Is this devolving causal thoughtlessness of our society a tribute to who we are?
Might it be a key sign that we are moving backward rather than forward?

We once held our elected officials to a higher standard.

Now I’ll admit that many politicians fall far short from that standard
line of thinking.
They fall short from most people’s perceived expectations—
yet nonetheless, we still want to hold our elected officials to what
we think is a representation of who we the people actually are…
a just and upright people.

That we are better than rather than less than.

Yet Biden’s public behavior of his getting into verbal altercations
with ‘we the people’ is not indicative of a person who truly cares
about the everyday man or woman.

Somewhere along the line…the party of FDR and Kennedy fell off the skids.

Socialism.
Radicalism.
Big brother.
Dismissiveness.
Disrespect.
Denial.
Anger.
Division.
Hatred…

One more example as to why middle Americans continue turning away from a devolving Democratic party
that embraces a progressive left and radical drive toward socialism.
A party that is banking on the likes of Joe Biden to save it from self-destruction.

https://defensemaven.io/bluelivesmatter/news/video-biden-curses-at-michigan-auto-worker-who-challenged-stance-on-gun-rights-dQUqm-73WU–VTNSO8seqA

We the people…are not stupid…

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
The Preamble of the Constitution of The United States
Ratified June 21, 1788

Contrary to popular Democratic Congressional opinion, We The People are not stupid…
nor are we idiots, uneducated or deplorable.

We are THE people of these United States and we can’t be fooled or hoodwinked.

I thought I needed to take one more stand before moving on and away to a more
important time…that being Christmas and Hanukkah.

I have felt nothing short of being ramrodded, this past couple of weeks, by the likes of
Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, and their like-minded ilk.

Not only should Republicans and Independents feel shanghaied,
but Democrats as well should be feeling demeaned and insignificant.

For what We The People have been witness to, these past several weeks, months and years,
is that we have been ignored, attempted to be kept in the dark, and actually lied to.

As in ALL of us…

Now I know some don’t care and are just happy that that word now rings throughout the land…
Impeachment
but no person of true desire who yearns to see our Constitution work as it was intended…
should be left feeling pleased let alone satisfied.

Clandestine, hidden, secretive and downright dishonest are each words to describe what
We The People have witnessed.

A horrific precedence has now been set.

So now, if you find yourself not liking a sitting president, or
you didn’t like the end result of an election, or
you simply feel the power has slipped from your control…
simply repeat the word impeachment, and suddenly all your wishes come true.

For We The People have learned that if you just say a word long enough,
it can come true.

Kind of like Dorothy repeating ‘there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…’
all the while clicking those ruby reds…and suddenly poof…she ends up where???
Home.

So if Nancy, Adam, Jerry, Chuck, and Maxine just click their pumps and wingtips
while repeating the word “Impeachment, Impeachment”…
it will magically happen.

Throw-in some sketchy unseen whistleblower, a few secretive closed-door meetings,
a onesided carefully controlled and orchestrated hearing that was
exclusive and invitation-only, then you, my friend, now know how to
hijack the system…

Or so you think.

In the immortal words of legendary college football Coach Lee Corso…
“not so fast my friend”

We The People may have been left off the guest list to the party, but We The People
know who you are and what you have done…or is that what you have not done?!

You think that by having your very own impeachment party, without following the guiding principles
of the Constitution, you now have given yourselves what you wanted…an impeached
president.

But here’s the thing…you haven’t and you don’t.

You merely took a party-line vote.
There has been no offering from the House to the Senate , no call for the necessary trial,
witnesses and sentencing in order to have a real and true impeachment.
All you have is a lopsided vote, nothing less, nothing more.

Kathy over at atimetoshare.me said the following regarding my post of lamentation yesterday…
“I made the mistake of watching a few of the hearings, much to my chagrin.
The only respite for all of this is that God is in control and instead of putting our trust
in those who are supposedly working for us, we need to glorify Him today and every day.”

It has really dampened the things we should be focusing on at this time of year,
but it won’t steal out joy

Elihu at Elihu’s Corner had this to say…
It’s sad no matter what side of the aisle you’re on.
They’ve made a sham out of our electoral process and justice as a whole…
when are we the people going to call them what they are—domestic enemies who’ve violated
the constitution—and boot them out of office?
Thanks be to God that our hope doesn’t rest on the American government,
but in Christ alone.

And that’s the thing…domestic enemies who have each violated their oaths of office,
and worse, The Constitution of The United States of America.

They are playing fast and loose with their positions while attempting to hide their
actions from We The People.

They do not think we are educated enough, smart enough or wise enough to see
what they are and are not doing.

But here’s the thing, we are.

Another election is coming…their elections are coming…
and they just might be the ones surprised by We The People.

When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies
to be at peace with him.
Proverbs 16:7

heartbeat

Listen to your heart when he’s calling for you
Listen to your heart there’s nothing else you can do
Lyrics to Listen to Your Heart by Roxette

The heartbeat…the rhythm of life…or….when it stops without restarting,
becomes an ending…an ending that results in death.

The stopping of the heart is the sole signal to all present that life has passed from
that of the brief to that of the unending.

And so why might it be important that doctors tell us that a baby in the womb,
a fetus’s heartbeat, can be detected by six weeks old?

Would that mean that life, life as we know it, begins at a mere six weeks following inception?

Just a month and two weeks old inside the womb, a baby’s heart beats on its own.

Making this being a separate entity from that of the mother.
Two as one and one as two…

For centuries prior to modern medical technology, those in the know, be it
physicians or priests would be the official determiners of the passing of a life—
They had the final say as to whether or not there was a detected heartbeat.
Much like the attending physician or the coroner today—
they are the ones who sign off on the official death certificates, they were and remain,
in essence, the harbingers of death.

The notion of a heartbeat determining life dates back for centuries…
going back to the ages long before the birth of Christ.

Gilgamesh, the hero-king in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh uttered the following lament on
the death of his best friend in 2600 BC:

“I touch his heart but it does not beat at all.”
Gilgamesh, c. 2600 BC

The passage is thought to be the earliest reference to pulse-taking indicating that,
as early as 2600 years BC, man understood that the heart beats and can be palpated.
The National Library of Medicine

Be it ancient Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt, man appears to have long understood the correlation
between the beating of a heart and that of life:

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that the idea of a heartbeat is to be a deciding
factor in regards to a baby in the womb…a heartbeat determining whether or not the unborn
baby is truly a living entity vs that of a simple mishmash of cells and fluid.

Georgia’s House Bill 481, which would ban abortions once a doctor can detect a
heartbeat in the fetus, was put to a vote Thursday evening.

The bill passed… but not without issue.

WSB news reported that:
“In a remarkable show of defiance, House Democrats turned their backs on the Acworth lawmaker
sponsoring the so-called heartbeat bill before it was introduced.”
Acworth lawmaker Ed Setzler did continue,
explaining why he believes Georgia should ban abortion after six weeks, instead of 20 weeks,
as under current law.
“It seeks to recognize that the child in the womb that is living distinct from their mother
has a right of life that is worthy of protection,” Seltzer said.

But even as Setzler spoke, some Democrats walked off the floor.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the response of some Democratic members…
“This is what women will be relegated to,” said state Rep. Park Cannon
outside the House chamber.
The Atlanta Democrat held a hanger with the names of Republican supporters
of the bill, hinting at the tool some women used to end their pregnancies
before abortion was legal in the country.
AJC

Today there have been growing protests outside of the state capital with more defiance planned as
opponents and Democrats have pledged to rally in order to fight this bill before
the Governor signs it into law.

My question, because I honestly don’t understand, is why do a majority of Republicans
and Conservatives believe in life while a majority of Democrats and
Progressive Liberals believe in death?

A heartbeat is the telling sign of life.
Why then would anyone argue otherwise?

May we as a Nation choose life…

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my
portion forever.
Psalm 73:26

Now what did I tell you Mr. Sanders, and minions, about all those isms???

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance,
and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

****As I write my posts the afternoon/evening prior to the morning I post them…
I’d like to hold off a day longer on the prayer results…
holding off in order to allow those who check-in in the evenings a chance to weigh in
should they desire—all before I tallied and shared our consensus…

And with that being said, I’m turning our attention today to more of a current events sort
of posting.

My daughter-n-law teaches social studies to 6th and 8th-grade kids in a parochial school.
She has taught in both public and private schools.
She knows first hand that each type of school has its own share of hurdles and challenges…
throw in the requirements from the State and it can be a real minefield.

So in one particular class, she was discussing the latest rise of the
Progressive Left’s leanings towards Socialism…
rather the notion of today’s Democrats now proclaiming the virtues of Socialism.

I’ve written until I am blue in the face about the ills of Socialism, Communism, Fascism,
Nazism, Totlalianism, Post Christian Progressivism, Liberal Nationalism…
the seemingly nonending and very incurable illness of the isms.

With the current hype in the news of all the young up and coming whippersnappers in the
House singing the songs of Socialism…in part because of the likes of
Mr. Bernie Sanders who was the lead singing Siren during the past election…
my daughter-n-law knew she needed to come up with a teachable moment…
one that her kids would be able to wrap their heads around…
one that could be relatable.

Because we all know that not many Middle School or Junior high age kids can,
let alone care to, actually grasp the magnitude of such a vast array of political and or
governing options…
ideals and ideas that border along the likes of various philosophical schools of thought.

Heady philosophical ponderings quickly fade from the minds of “Tweens” who are more
concerned about when it’s time for lunch, when will the bell ring, when will school let out,
who likes who on this particular day, what time is practice after school…
Political ideologies pale down the line of the life of a middle schooler’s priorities.
And yet we are witnessing an indoctrination of sorts taking place with our children.

My daughter-n-law knew that one of her students was having a birthday.
So she brought in a birthday cake, proclaiming that the class would be celebrating his birthday.
Happy and most pleased to have a cake as well as all the attention,
the young boy was feeling pretty good about how the class would now be going…it was
a school day that would be “his” day.

However, my daughter-n-law explained that since the class had been discussing Socialism, she
would let the birthday and the cake fall under the Socialist umbrella.

The student was now a bit apprehensive, yet the allure of a nice big slice of cake overtook
his concern as to what his teacher might be up to.

My daughter-n-law proceeded to cut up the cake into about 2 inch little squares.
No big tasty slices.
She proceeded to hand out all the little pieces to each now bewildered student.

When the birthday boy received his 2-inch square of cake, a cake that was supposed
to be “his” cake, he immediately inquired, rather irritated, as to why his piece was so small
given the fact that it was his birthday and his cake.

Their rather sly teacher explained that this was how Socialism was to work—everyone,
despite their participation, their input, their assistance, their birthday…or not…
were all to receive an equal portion…no more, no less.

That’s how it is to work.

The student, along with his classmates, suddenly grasped the concept of what Socialism
would mean…and they were no longer keen on that particular ‘ism’.

I wrote a post a while back about ‘isms’ with the words of John Dewy leading the post:

“For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an
‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it
is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its
principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive,
constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.”
John Dewey

https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/isms/

That former post came back to mind when I recently caught a news story entitled
“5 things Bernie Sanders doesn’t want you to know about Socialism”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/5-things-bernie-sanders-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-socialism

Sanders being a man who wants to equally divide everything amongst everyone but who
lives rather lavishly himself.
Three lovely homes that he doesn’t seem to be equally divvying up and sharing.

A man who touts equity but has long courted the likes of the fallen Soviet Union and
Fidel’s crumbling Cuba.

This story then leads to another story…that Sanders actually spent his honeymoon in the USSR.
He had parlayed a courting trip of Soviet leaders into an equally pleasurable trip for a honeymoon.

Not exactly my idea of a romantic honeymoon.

Sanders also excitedly visited Communist Cuba at a time when Americans knew the dangers of
Cuba’s link to the Soviet Union

He also attended a celebration for the anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.

Sanders seems to have an affinity for all this Communist.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bernie-sanderss-soviet-honeymoon-john-fund/

And whereas an aging 77-year-old Communist wannabe will most likely not receive the Democratic
nomination for the 2020 election…it is the young, ignorant of the past, up and coming
seemingly glamorous darlings of the Democratic party that will be the real shakers
and movers of a serious shift in our Nation’s sense of identity.

They don’t understand that they are desperately trying to force open Pandora’s box.
Ignorant of history.
Ignorant of man’s affinity for selfishness.

And yet history teaches us that dictator after dictator, regime after regime, ism after ism…
each eventually crumbles and fades away…unable to maintain the staying powers of
both Democracy and freedom.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.
George Washington

no shame…but where are we really?

“the age of self-afflicted shame, is over…”
Mike Pompeo

Our (latest) Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo was in Cairo this past week.
And depending on your choice of news coverage, you may or may not have heard much about his trip
or of the speech he made.

And depending on that news outlet you tend to watch, read or listen to…you might have
gotten some mixed signals.

And to be honest, I’d like to be able to say huzzah to his speech…but does Pompeo’s speech mirror
the full policy of the US?

That, I’m not sure.

Our President tells us we’re pulling out of Syria.
His Secretary of Defense, General Jim Mattis, has resigned.
Word is that they are at odds over such a decision.

I have really appreciated what I have read about General Mattis’ leadership—I even wrote
a post about the character behind General Mattis…the type of military leader you’d want
having charge over your own son or daughter.

Last evening I heard that Trump is the most popular Republican president, in well, ever.
And as I am a huge Reaganite, I had to go double check out that latest factoid and there does some
to be some validity to such a boast.

Not that I don’t support our President, I do…it’s just that I feel that we, as a Nation,
have entered a new era of something other than…other than who and what we use to be.
An era that I’m not fond of.

Socialistic Democrat is an oxymoron that I don’t think I care to wrap my brain around.

When the likes of Joe Lieberman is publically mocked and disrespected by a  new up and coming
young Democrat, we’ve got trouble worse than most millennials will sadly ever understand.

But one thing I can appreciate is the speech that Mike Pompeo offered in Cairo.

America is not a nation that apologizes for supporting various nations.
With Israel being one of those nations—the elephant in the room when it comes
to the United States and the Middle East.

Nor shall America excuse the Muslim world for its culpability for those
who, in the name of Islam, commit heinous crimes against humanity.

We did not excuse a fallen Nazi regime.
In fact, there was an allied trial holding those who remained, accountable for their actions…
despite the argument that they were merely the following orders of others.

Here is an excerpt of Secretary Pompeo’s speech.

I found it powerful and reminiscent of an America I once knew…
I suppose we’ll see what will follow…

“It was here, in this city, another American stood before you” and, “told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from ideology.”

Pompeo’s view is unequivocal and crystal clear: “America is a force for good in the Middle East.”
He didn’t even add the usual qualifiers about our historic imperfections.
Expect our adversaries abroad and snowflakes at home to be mighty upset at this moral clarity and self-confidence
from the greatest, freest country on Earth. Our real allies will love it.

Pompeo’s speech had three watershed components:

First, Pompeo made it clear that the chief focus of U.S. policy in the Middle East is thwarting Iran’s
dangerous and tyrannical ambitions.
While violent jihadist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda still exist and deserve our attention,
they are now a lesser threat.
Also, by condemning Obama’s decision to do nothing in 2009 and 2010 when Iranians took to the streets
to protest their oppressive regime, Pompeo opened the door to supporting Iran’s internal opposition.

Second, Pompeo specifically called out “radical Islamism” and condemned Obama for not doing so.
This is a refinement and extension of President Trump’s condemnation of “radical Islamic terrorism,”
which is the tactic that Islamists use when they go violent.

Far from semantics, this change from “Islamic terrorism” to “radical Islamism” means that finally,
40 years after Islamists took over Iran, 36 years after Islamists blew up our Marine barracks in Beirut,
and nearly 18 years after Islamists attacked us on 9/11,
we can clearly name the ideology that animates most of the problem actors in the Middle East.

In contrast to failed efforts to either spread American democracy or apologize for it,
this means we can rally all of those opposed to radical Islamism,
including monarchies and imperfect republics across the Middle East that oppose Islamist theocracy.
It means we can be clear about opposing not only terrorists like Al Qaeda,
but Islamist political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Third, Pompeo outlined the Trump administration’s rigorous efforts at diplomacy across the Middle East,
which have contributed to radical change and unprecedented cooperation.
Pompeo disclosed that “Egypt, Oman, Kuwait and Jordan have all been instrumental in thwarting Iran’s
efforts to evade sanctions,” and lauded assistance from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

He added that “private companies in France, Germany, Britain and elsewhere have calculated
that enriching themselves through work with the regime is bad for business” –
a gentle and much-deserved slap at the governments of those fading allies
that have actively opposed getting tough on Iran.

Pompeo reminded the audience that last year,
“the Israeli national anthem played as an Israeli judo champion was crowned the winner
of a tournament in the UAE.”
This story and scores like it have been missed by our mainstream media.
American strength and moral clarity and fear about the threat from Iran are dissolving
old animosities and creating new alliances. We may actually see new Arab embassies in Israel.

Finally but crucially, Pompeo included a cautionary principle regarding what the U.S.
is willing to do in the Middle East.
Remarking about U.S. support he said: “But ‘assist’ is the key word.
We ask every peace-loving nation of the Middle East to shoulder new responsibilities for
defeating Islamist extremism.”

This is the fundamental essence of “America First.”
We will not apologize for America, we will stand up for our interests,
and we will cooperate with our allies as long as they are willing to share the burden
of preserving freedom.

Adding an additional touch of pragmatism, Pompeo condemned the Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad,
but cracked open the door to aiding postwar reconstruction if Assad kicks the
Iranian military out of Syria.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pompeo-at-site-of-obamas-address-to-muslim-world-rebukes-his-legacy-age-of-self-inflicted-american-shame-is-over

This is the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem:
Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets,
and their tongues will rot in their mouths.
On that day people will be stricken by the Lord with great panic.
Zechariah 14: 12-13

oh how the times are a changin’

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Bob Dylan

(the Mayor’s new ride)

Sadly the Mayor has come and gone…having returned to her official office in Atlanta.
In her wake, this satellite Woobooville office is now in a bit of disarray.

There is washing, cleaning, boiling of bottles and rearranging of a few moved rugs…
chores that this aide must attend to which help to ease the bittersweet sting
that comes with the here then there, the ins and outs of grandchildren coming and going.

Like any grandparent, I obviously love my grandchild.
I see so much wonderment and joy in her existence.

And like her parents…the sun rises and sets in this little girl.

So it only makes sense that we as her family look out and around this oddly
changing world of ours a bit warily.
Troubled by what we see and what we hear.

We wish to hold her just a bit tighter.
Holding her in the protection of our arms within a presumed assumption of safety
in this little corner of this world of ours.

As Bob Dylan sang in 1963…the times, they are a changing…

And the changing is not to my liking.

Friday evening I was watching the news.

There was a story complete with video—
because don’t we seem to video everything these days,
don’t we feel we must record every moment rather than simply living it????…
anywhoo, I digress—
…there was a recorded clash between two very different minded individuals…
and the clash was not pretty.

There was a lady standing on a busy street corner in Portland, Oregon who happened to be
wearing an NYPD ballcap.
Some punk, and yes the word punk is most appropriate, came up behind the woman and
began harassing her….all because of the ballcap.

He had a foul angry tirade directed at this woman for her obvious support of law enforcement.

Antifa came to mind and Antifa he was…

He cursed, berated and belittled this woman…He was crude, crass and vile…
all because she seemed linked to the police–a group he obviously held vehement disdain for…

She turned to the punk and told him that the hat was because her husband had been killed in 9/11.
Rather than backing down or even expressing a bit of remorse, his response grew even viler,
cruder and laced with a deep seething hatred.

I immediately felt my own blood pressure shoot up as I wanted to jerk this dude up by
the scruff of his neck and read him my own form of the riot act.

I call it having a ‘Peter moment’…

I really like both Peter and Paul—
I feel very much akin to their often expressed sense of unworthiness due to their faults and sins…
I know all about faults and sins…
all about not living up and yet thankfully all about redemption.

Yet I probably identify more with Peter than I do Paul.
Peter is more of an emotional hot head.
He often lead by the heat of the moment and of his heart whereas Paul was more
calculating in his actions…
he was full of thought and recourse.
A cause and effect sort of leader.

It was Peter during the height of confusion and conflict, on the night in the garden
during the arrest of Jesus, who draws his knife in a fit of rage and proceeds to cut off
the ear of one of the soldiers
He’s reacting as I would…defensive, protecting, frightened and angry.

Jesus screams out to Peter to stop.

Jesus rebukes him and then proceeds to heal the soldier’s ear…
Now why at that moment the soldiers didn’t all drop their swords and run away,
I don’t know… but that wasn’t to be the ending of the story now was it…

But the gist here is that Jesus rebuked that knee-jerk reaction of Peter’s.
Just as he would have rebuked me when I turned and dotted this jackass’s eye…an expression
my students would often say…”I’m going to dot that eye of yours…”

But the woman maintained her cool, for the most part, and only appears to curse the fellow at the
end before the light changes and they both, I assume, go on to cross the street.

That clash, that confrontation bothered me to no end.

First…who whips out a phone to videotape that kind of crap?
Who has a bunch of cronies standing behind them, snickering and laughing
when one of the members tells a widow that he hopes her husband rots in the grave…
all because he’s a cop.

I don’t understand Nancy Pelosi saying that anyone who disagrees with her party’s agenda
will simply be “collateral damage” and that they just don’t matter.

I disagree so therefore I’m collateral damage and I don’t matter.

I don’t understand Eric Holder telling his minions to ‘hit republicans
low and hit um hard’ —because his minions are taking that literally.

I don’t understand Rep Maxine Waters telling crowds to attack any and every republican
that they see out and about…make their lives miserable she extols the crowds.

I don’t understand what is happening.

I don’t understand the loss of civility.

There is a WWI cross memorial in Maryland that has been on public display since the end of the war
erected in 1925 to remember those Maryland boys who had lost their lives in “The Great War”, the war
that was to end all wars…

Its case is coming up for review at the Supreme Court as there is a suit that has been brought forth
attempting to have the cross removed because it now sits on Government property.
Never mind that the cross is a memorial to war dead.

And so now the hairs of the sites are set on Arlington.
What of all those crosses on graves in Arlington?

I think of all those crosses, and stars, in Normandy.
Foreign soil yes, but an Amercian governed Cemetery.

We have forgotten who we are.

From punks on street corners to leaders in office to people who view
memorials…we have lost our humanness… we have lost our sense of sensibility.

Some days I’m left shaking my head.
Some days I just want to keep my head under the covers.
Some days I simply hang my head
But every day, I need to lower my head to pray…
Lord have mercy on our souls…..

**Tomorrow I will have a story about what should and does matter—
It goes far beyond this idiocy we’ve allowed to consume us–
It’s a story that actually has something to do with a kid who loves his
college and his football and whose life is tragically very limited…

http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/10/20/911-widow-harassed-leftist-protester-portland-tucker-carlson-ann-coulter-react

looking for saints in all kinds of places

This is the very perfection of a man,
to find out his own imperfections.
St. Augustine

(St. Augustine of Hippo painting by Philippe de Champaigne, 1650)

Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise;
your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning.
And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you –
we who carry our mortality about with us,
carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud.
Yet these humans, due part of your creation as they are, still do long to
praise you.
You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy,
because you have made us and drawn us to yourself,
and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

The passage above appears to have been written by a person who was painfully aware
of his own mortality and sins yet yearns, nay longs,
to be in the arms of the Beloved Creator.

And so perhaps it might be hard for those of us reading these long ago penned words
to imagine that this person was not always so deeply attuned to
living life worshiping the Triune God.

For the past couple of days, my posts have veered toward the idea of saints.
No particular reason really…and when there seems to be no real rhyme nor reason for my
ramblings, that usually just means the Holy Spirit is at work and not so much
me.

Yesterday’s post offered two quotes summing up the notion of sainthood quite nicely…
yet it was especially the Kierkegaard quote which serves to remind us that God’s mastery
of creation is one thing, but to be able to make saints from sinners…
well, that’s something else altogether.

Augustine of Hippo…
a giant when it comes to thought and theory has been studied down through the ages by
all sorts of students—from theologians and philosophers to literates and historians…
many of whom have been Believers and many who have not.

Yet Augustine was not always one of Christendom’s most learned and revered theologian
turned saint.

According to Wikipedia,
“His first insight into the nature of sin occurred when he and a number of friends stole
fruit they did not want from a neighborhood garden.
He tells this story in his autobiography, The Confessions.
He remembers that he did not steal the fruit because he was hungry,
but because “it was not permitted.”
His very nature, he says, was flawed.
‘It was foul, and I loved it.
I loved my own error—not that for which I erred, but the error itself.”
From this incident, he concluded the human person is naturally inclined to sin
and in need of the grace of Christ.”

Augustine went on to have a long-lasting affair with a woman who bore him an
illegitimate son.
He later broke off that relationship in order to marry a 10-year-old heiress but had to wait
two years until she was of legal marrying age.
During his wait, he took up with another concubine.

Yet the time came in which Augustine abandoned all concubines and fiancees alike
lamenting“that he was not a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust”

Eventually, at the age of 31, Augustine broke off all his relationships with these
various women because he, like many before and after him, had his Road to Damascus moment.
He was struck from his lofty, self-absorbed, carnal way of living by the
One True Omnipotent God who literally called out to him..

As Augustine later shared
“his conversion was prompted by a childlike voice he heard telling him to
“take up and read” (Latin: tolle, lege), which he took as a divine command to open the Bible
and read the first thing he saw.

Augustine read from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans –
the “Transformation of Believers” section, consisting of chapters 12 to 15 –
wherein Paul outlines how the Gospel transforms believers,
and the believers’ resulting behaviour.
The specific part to which Augustine opened his Bible was Romans chapter 13,
verses 13 and 14, to wit:

“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness,
not in strife and envying,
but put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”

It was at this moment that his life turned.

Augustine eventually penned an autobiography of sorts which many of us,
trained in the classics were at some point, required to read— Confessions.

It is from the pages of his Confessions that we read these beautiful and deeply
haunting words:

Late have I loved Thee, O Lord; and behold,
Thou wast within and I without, and there I sought Thee.
Thou wast with me when I was not with Thee.
Thou didst call, and cry, and burst my deafness.
Thou didst gleam, and glow, and dispel my blindness.
Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.
For Thyself Thou hast made us,
And restless our hearts until in Thee they find their ease.
Late have I loved Thee, Thou Beauty ever old and ever new.

And thus what we have learned is that many of those who are known to us today as saints
seem to have, at some point or other figured things out.

Namely, that life isn’t all about them.

But life, rather, is a yearning…and that yearning is the created’s longing to be
one with the Creator.

Some seem to understand this better than others.

Many have been rogues and scallywags.
Some have been liars and drunkards.
Some have been rich and arrogant.
Some started out as cowards and turncoats yet became brave and true.
And some will simply be known only to God and God alone.

And so with all this talk about saints and sinners, I am struck by a current circus of sorts.

Brett Kavanaugh, the latest Supreme Court nominee, has been in the center of a maelstrom.

I don’t know much about him, but from what legal experts and judges on ‘both sides of the
aisle’ have said, he is a stellar wealth of legal prowess.
A fair and just man who is deeply knowledgeable with regards to right and wrong.

Yet his experience, his record, his knowledge, his examples don’t seem to matter to
this pack of hearing committee members who are foaming at the mouth,
as they rip into this man for the simple reason that they hate the man who nominated him.

Desperate Democrats are grasping at ugly straws to do their darndest to stop this nominee’s
chance of confirmation…even resorting to highschool hearsay.

And in so doing…these very politicians who so vehemently cling to the separation of
Church and State and find themselves cringing over the notion that their precious
Roe v Wade would be overturned… these worshipers of all things cultural and secular
now seem to be seeking a saint…a saint who doesn’t exist.
As all of this is just one more example of the irony of man standing at odds with
his blinding self-serving pride.

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micha 6:8

fall from Grace…

“Freedom has been elevated to a total eclipse of a person’s obligations,
to a freedom from any obligation.
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

“After the Western ideal of unlimited freedom….
here is the true Christian definition of freedom.
Freedom is self-restriction!
Restriction of the self for the sake of others!”
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

In his book A Pope and A President, Paul Kengor recalls the admonishment of a young senator from Massachusetts to a college audience….

“In 1955…Senator Kennedy told Assumption College that the Communists had a ‘fear’
of Christianity and allowed ‘no room for God.’

In a passage that could have been spoken by President Ronald Reagan thirty years later,
Kennedy said that Communists sought ‘to make the worship of the State the ultimate objective of life’ and could not ‘permit a higher loyalty, a faith in God,
a belief in a religion that elevates the individual, acknowledges his true value,
and teaches him devotion and responsibility to something beyond the here and now.

As president, Kennedy candidly warned America of its “atheistic foe,” the
fanaticism and fury” of communions, and the “communist conspiracy” that
“represents a final enslavement.”
“The enemy is the communist system itself—implacable, insatiable, unceasing
in its drive for world domination,” Declared Kennedy.
“This [is] a struggle for supremacy between two conflicting ideologies”
freedom under God versus ruthless, goddess tyranny.”

“Years later President Reagan went to the home of Senator Ted Kennedy…
where he spoke at an endowment fundraiser for the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library. On hand were Jackie and her two grown children.
Reagan commended JFK for his shrewdness in recognizing the enemy:
“He understood the tension between good and evil in the history of man;
understood, indeed,
that much of the history of man can be seen in the constant working out
of that tension.”

Reagan noted that Kennedy knew that the United States had adversaries,
real adversaries,and they weren’t about to be put off by soft reason and
good intentions.
He tried always to be strong with them and shrewd.”

It’s hard for me, in this very surreal 21st century of ours, to imagine that there
were once two presidents serving roughly 20 years apart—
men from two very different parties,
who each understood who the nation’s collective enemy was.

These two very different men who, despite being decades apart in their service to
their nation as well as being nearly 30 years apart in age…men who were each of
different ideologies could actually collectively agree then on what today has
become a more satirical farce than serious consideration.

And not only did these two very different presidents understand who the
collective enemy was…they also deeply understood the connection between a nation
who rested under God’s dominion verses a nation resting under the dominion of man.

Imagine today the party of Kennedy speaking about an “atheistic foe”…
Or referring to an adversarial nation as having “no room for God”
as well as those who have a fear of a Christian nation—
Imagine that a leader of the party of Kennedy would actually claim the United States
to be a “God fearing, Christian nation”
That there would be those who would speak of godlessness when referring to
oppressive regimes.

Imagine the party of Reagan, in turn, speaking words of agreement…

Oh how far we have fallen from who we once were.

When did it happen?

When did we think it necessary to scorn and scoff the notion of being
collectively under the yoke of an Omnipotent Creator?
When did we decide that we were free of any obligations other than to our own
selfish individual whims?

When did we decide there was no real good nor evil…
rather just the altar of individual humanism?

And what is the irony that the words of a one time Soviet dissident
would remind us, those of us who have lived in and with “freedom” most of our
lives, that our’s is a precious gift…one that we have been entrusted with
to cherish and maintain…as blood has been spilled and lives have been lost
all in the name of this very “freedom.”

So on this Veterans day, it would behoove us as individuals as well as a Nation to
recall, as well as honor, the selfless sacrifices made by those men and women who,
since those early days when we were but a collection of bedraggled colonies,
who down through the decades understood exactly who the enemy always was and
that we as human beings have been called to a greater good…
These very men and these women who have often offered the utter sacrifice–
of both lives and limbs, for a Nation that now is at war with itself…
having lost her way.

May their service never have been in vain.

“…it would have seemed quite impossible, in America,
that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose,
simply for the satisfaction of his whims.
Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in in the west;
a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian
centuries with the great reserve of mercy and sacrifice.”
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn