Why Fox?

Some misguided friends of mine often choose to bash Fox News as a mouthpiece for the right.  In response I say, yes they are.  I don't know if Rupert Murdoch encourages the conservative slant of his media empire because it makes him more money or if he is truly a conservative.  It does not matter, he owns it and can do what he likes.  What is truly important is that Fox provides a counterpoint to all of the other media outlets who are clearly left in their editorial leanings.  Again, that is there business.  But what seperates Fox from the rest of the pack is the patriotic manner in which they conduct themselves.  They are proud flag wavers and make no apologies for it.  Unlike the libtards at MSNBC and CNN, when the rubber meets the road, they step up to make a difference.

I don't know if any of you have been following the recent court decision regarding the morons of the Westboro Baptist Church.  If you are not aware of the name you are surely familiar with their infamously bad behavior in picketing the funerals of service men and women who have been killed in combat.  The father of a Marine killed in action sued the church.  A judicial simpleton ordered him to pay there court costs.  Read the rest of the amazing story here and make sure you continue to watch Bill O'reilly.  Patriot, and mans man. 

Credit where credit is due

I am not as dilligent as I should be at checking some of my favorite blogs.  Life is just busy sometimes.  I tired to catch up a bit today and as you can see from some of the posts I have been "lifting" a thing here or there to post in my space.  To me, it is a form of flattery.  There are a lot of folks out there writing who are way smarter than I and have a great deal to contribute.  With that in mind here is one from the blog of a great patriot, The Bloviating Zepplin. 

Healthcare reality check

The link will take you to a post over at Demure Thoughts.  It will help those of you who have been blessed with good health understand what dealing with the medical establishment is like when you have good insurance and your wits about you (and a cool Mexican Mom who prescribes beer).  After reading this post take a minute and think of what things will be like now that instead of an incompetent local doctor managing your care, you have Nancy Pelosi.  You can find the story of the Boob Saga here.  God help us all, and I am glad Jen is ok.  I would be lost without her rants.

Thought provocation

A post worthy of your consideration over at Random Acts of Patriotism: In the Wake of the Recent Legislation

Entitlement

All glory, laud and honor

We are in the home stretch of Lent and Holy Week is upon us.  Stolen from Whispers in the Loggia I offer you this musical interlude.  For all you old time church types out there you should really enjoy this one.

Obama Care Explained

Found over at the Orthometer.

Call the butcher

They should have tied a pork chop around his neck.

Fairness?

Divorce is just not a nice thing.  Even the smallest dispute is magnified a thousand time when this type of warfare is being waged.  What is disturbing however is the disparate way men fare in the courts.  A divorced father is usually found suitable to pay support, attorney fees and just about every other bill that comes his way.  Yet in terms of guiding their child's upbringing they are often found less than suitable by the judiciary.

A judge ruled an Illinois father involved in a bitter divorce is not allowed to take his 3-year-old daughter to church on Easter because of a dispute over the girl's religious upbringing, according to MyFoxChicago.com.


Joseph Reyes and the child's mother had agreed to raise their daughter in the Jewish faith, but Reyes later had her baptized in the Catholic Church.

You can read the rest here.

How about a deep cleansing sigh?

Admittedly, I have not been too diligent in getting to church on Sunday the last few months.  Despite some really great "worldly" excuses, in the scope of things I really don't have a great reason for not getting there.  Worse yet, this lapse has happened during Lent.  Well, like I said, its something I have to address with the "Boss".  But since there are no atheists in foxholes, no matter how bad the night shift is tonight I will be in the pew at 7:30am praying with new vigor in the hope that the Dems will fail in their attempt to give taxpayers a bullet behind the ear by passing their health care reform bill. 
I guess the common idea here is that no matter what happens it is king of our own fault.  I missed a good deal of my Sunday obligations because I was too tired or had too much to do.  Kind of the same way when we know a liberal is running for office in our district.  We should go campaign for the conservative that best represents our values but have just too many things to keep us from performing some really important work.  Time is going to pass.  It is in our best interests to make the best use of it.

So, if in the morning I am struck by a bus and find myself simmering in Purgatory with a mouthful of excrement, or if Pelosi and her fellow travelers are successful in financially destroying our country, the blame should be laid right at our feet.  After all, ultimately we are responsible for our own shortcomings.  Unless we are Democrats.  In which case someone else will pay the bill or serve the purgatorial sentence for them.

Countdown

So the counting continues as the Socialists attempt to bankrupt our nation with what is still being euphamistically called health care reform.  Candidly, economic disaster would be a more appropriate monicker if they were concerned with truth.

According to FoxNews the Dems have 216 votes locked up and need ten more to guarantee passage of the bill.  This will enable them to pass the law in a manner consistent with that troubling document known to the rest of us as the Constitution.  Please join me in hoping the remainder of the House of Representatives cherishes their collective political futures enough to say no to Obama, no to Pelosi, and no to socialized medicine.  The story is here.

In the holiday spirit

Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over by a train.  His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised and he is walking with a limp.

What happened to you? asks Sean the bartender.

Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight, says Paddy

That little shit, O'Conner, says Sean, He couldn't do that to you, he must have had something in his hand.

That he did, says Paddy, a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin' he gave me with it.

Well, says Sean, you should have defended yourself, didn't you have something in your hand?

That I did, said Paddy.  Mrs. O'Conner's breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but useless in a fight.

Bashing Benedict

Since the main stream media can't seem to bring themselves to call the Congress and our esteemed President on their continued trip toward the poorhouse they were without a worthy target.  It seems they have settled on the Pope for now.  If you would believe the thinly veiled accounts of an emerging abuse scandal in Germany it would seem that they intend to lay the blame right at the tips of the shoes of the Fisherman.  How do these bastards sleep at night?  I will not be including a link.  You should have no trouble finding the product of their smear without looking too hard.

Manilla John

It seems like just yesterday I overcame the procrastination inherent in my being and canceled HBO.  Not that I have anything against the cable giant.  It was just that after subscribing for many years and enjoying much of their programming, they had slid in to the repetitive abyss of other cable providers and kept repeating the same tired repertoire of movies.  So after a suitable period of mourning for Rome, and having found other places to watch repeats of the Sopranos and Six Feet Under I finally called and canceled the account.  The budget here was fifteen bucks to the good a month and I limited my TV viewing to other channels that provided crappy programming as part of my basic subscription.  Then.....they screwed me.

Tonight at 9pm EDT I will be glued to the flat screen and the DVR will be whirring as I drink in what should be an epic, The Pacific.  Like many of you I grew up on a steady diet of black and white war films starring greats like Robert Mitchum and John Wayne.  As I got a bit older and understood the necessary horrors of war I found myself drawn to more contmporary films about war.  But thanks to the Hollywood left most of it amounted to America bashing under the guise of art.  The genre took a great turn after Private Ryan and Band of Brothers.  And now, a special treat.  The story of Marines as they slogged through hell in the Pacific Theater.  It promises to be a great bit of TV.

But even more intriguing for me is the inclusion of a local New Jersey hero as one of the main characters.  John Basilone was from Raritan, New Jersey.  Raritan was and stills is largely a town populated by Italian families many of whom were stone masons that were brought here from Italy to work on the construction of the expansive Duke estate (think Duke University tobacco fortune money).  John Basilone won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on Guadalcanal.  After receiving the awarded he was shipped back to the states to help sell war bonds.  A true leatherneck he could not stay here in the states while his comrades were in peril and his country needed him.  He returned to combat and was killed in action on Iwo Jima.

So while I enjoy the heroic exploits of the United States Marines over the next ten weeks I will also be thinking about "Manila John" and the price he and so many neighbors have paid over the decades to keep our country safe.

The Big Blow

So, this is what it is like to have a bit of time to catch up on blogging.  About time.  As they say, life happens and it has been incredibly busy here at the command bunker so in the spirit of tirage, those things you would rather be doing fall to the back in deference to those things you just have to get done.

I hope that all of my north east neighbors fared well during yesterday's storm.  As for me I wish I could report that we emerged unscathed.  Sadly, I now have a nice collection of roof shingles in my backyard that looked much nicer when they were affixed to my roof.  In the scope of things though, I am thankful.  An early visit from my friend Bob the Builder and his talented cohort should remedy the problem in short order.  Succinctly, no injuries here.  All pluses.

After a frustrating day trying to finish and upload a grad school final with intermittent power and internet access (that should really dash my hopes for a high honors GPA) I wound up going in to work the night shift on the medic truck.  Thankfully, not too much misfortune around the area but there was a great deal of flooding and we found ourselves having to execute a twenty mile detour just to return to our station from a trip to the trauma center.  You forget how dark it really gets at night until there is absolutely no power.  I would like to say that there were elements of our local populace that illuminated the area with their good judgment.  Not hardly.  C'mon honey, there is a seventy mile an hour wind a'blowin and street signs are flying around like pivoting guillotines.  Let's pack the kids and grandma in the car and go for a ride.  Sigh.  Freaking Darwin.  So, so wrong.

Is it just me?

More apocalyptic Democratic hijinks

Fresh off the Fox News site Robert Kennedy's grandson has decided not to run for the US Congress.  Could it be that the Kennedy political apparatus has determined his chances of success are as good as Uncle Ted explaining how Catholics can be pro choice whilst standing outside the Pearly Gates?
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Up next in the batting order, Charlie Rangel.  Stay tuned for the continued unravelling.

Al Gore still drinking Kool Aid

From the Sunday NY Times OpEd page, ladies and gentlemen.....the shameless Al Gore.

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis — inconvenient as ever — must still be faced.

The science has been proven false.  Apparently in the face of being marginalized in the history books Al is now going to lecture us about using law for human redemption.  If he is even slightly serious about this new pursuit, how about coming out against Roe v. Wade?  You can read the NY Times article here without giving them any money to support their shamelessly slanted newspaper.

Pelosi is donning her suicide vest

Honestly, after the drubbing conservatives took at the polls in the last national election I was in a very dark place.  It seemed clear to me that the political tides were solidly against almost everything I look for in my government.  While soccer moms and liberals everywhere were celebrating hope, politically, I saw none.

Who would have thought just a year ago that I would be able to gleefully read the headlines almost daily and see the Democratic machine slowly consume itself.  One would think that having control of both houses and the Presidency, the Dems would have been able to cause more damage to our Republic than all enemies, both foreign and domestic could have imagined over the last two hundred years.  Yet despite having every political advantage, it looks as though they are about to experience their most monumental failure.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.
Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week."
"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."

Basically, Nancy Pelosi is hoping that the representatives of her party will ignore the will of the public in order to enact her socialist agenda.  In essence she is asking them to strap on their political suicide vests in the hopes of receiving their promised 72 socialist virgins at a later date.

It's unclear whether Pelosi's remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls.

Is it really that unclear?  It does not take a PHD in Political Science to rightly assume that 2010 will be a political blood bath for liberals in this country.  Yet Pelosi and Reid continue to resist the will of the people.  Apparently she and Harry really believe they are smarter than the rest of us.

It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."

No Nancy.  Things are different.  The American voter is smarter.  They realize that sometime in the future the bill will come due for your view of Utopia.  And we are not willing to mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren to finance your pipe dream.  You lost Ted Kennedy's seat.  How much more convincing do you need?

Read the entire article here at Fox News.

Smelling the coffee

One of the things that I try to do while reading the various blogs that I visit is to learn.  It is easy to fall in to a trap of just wanting to be entertained all of the time.  There is a very fine blog written by a very orthodox Priest that I like to read.  Father Know It All has a very nice explanation of the need for reform of the reform from a personal perspective.


And so I repented for my sin of the sixties. We thought we were better than those who had gone before. We were not. We, like they, were sinners in need of grace. That arrogant spirit still infects the society and the Church. It is the belief that I know better, that I am part of a generation that is smarter, more technically advanced, and more powerful than all that’s gone before. Because of our superiority, God and the Church should accommodate themselves to us.  Above all, the Sacrifice of the Mass should accommodate itself to our more enlightened tastes. I have come to think differently. Those, who so radically changed the liturgy, among whom I count myself, succeeded only in emptying the churches. They made what was mysterious and unique into something commonplace. They replaced incense with air conditioning and silk with polyester. They replaced Calvary with a stage performance. They did all this in defiance of the Second Vatican Council, and while they did it, they prattled endlessly on about “the spirit of Vatican II.” We were lied to and in consequence we lied to you. We have replaced the truth with what we wanted to be true.

You should stop by and read this entire post.


Unhappy with the Priest at your church?  Father Z has an interesting suggestion about how to stimulate change here.