Double Standards

                 There exists a remarkable  phenomena in the political world. When Republicans are in the minority, they are universally  branded as ‘obstructionists’ if they try to uphold  the principles of the people who voted for them. “The people voted, they have spoken loud and clear, just let us  perform the people’s work” their opponents cry. Yet, when they constitute a majority, they are constantly told that they ‘have to reach across the aisle’ and work in a bipartisan and civil manner with the Democrats…or else minorities will be persecuted and nothing will get done. And we know how the people hate a stalemated, ‘do-nothing’ Congress. It is always the Republicans, especially the non-R.I.N.O.’s of course, that are asked to accommodate the other side!

                It’s a bit like the concept of ‘dissent’. When Democrats dissent from a Republican administration, it is universally proclaimed as ‘patriotic’, and even heroic. Remember the bumper stickers that were popular late in the George W. Bush administration? 'Dissent Is Patriotic?' (Or, 'Somewhere a Village is Missing It's Idiot')?

                However, when Republicans dissent from the Democrats position it is reactionary, racist, sexist, and/or damn near  traitorous!

                Absolutely amazing.

Remember the Kosovo War? The conflict had nothing to do with the United States’ national interest, but the Clinton administration stated repeatedly with trembling lips that everyone must support the military effort that our freckle-faced lads who loved baseball, apple-pie, their mothers and their country were expending in that arena. Vietnam, Iraq, Iran? Most of them denigrated our efforts in these regions, especially as time went by.

The War on Terror? Kinda bored with that. Let it go. We actually tried to officially and unilaterally “end” it. The President gave a speech saying, “the War on Terror is over”  back in May 2013. How’s that working out for us so far? I guess we can only fight so many existential threats at a time.

We need to put our precious resources into the fight against “the War on Women.”

President Obama Offers Amnesty To Wayward Voters

                

January 2, 2015

News Syndicate-

                President Obama outlined a new program earlier today that he said would “fix a lot of America’s problems while keeping with the spirit of fairness and decency that have been the hallmarks of my administration. Oh, and it’s also in the holiday spirit.”

                The President proposed to “grant amnesty” to all those Americans who didn’t vote for him in either of the past two presidential elections and “also to all those misguided but possibly well-meaning folks who voted for Republicans this past November.”

                The details of the proposal have yet to be worked out, but the President suggested he favors a “cultural exchange type-deal” whereby the misguided voters, instead of being “punished”- or harassed by the IRS or other Federal agencies- are instead granted amnesty and shipped to Mexico in exchange for illegal aliens who would be likewise granted amnesty upon arriving in the U.S.

                “This has the fairness and symmetry we strive to achieve. This is a win-win. The wayward American voters essentially get off scot-free and I was going to do the illegal amnesty deal anyway. Most of these voters are- uh, were- from suburban and rural areas that are already sparsely populated so they would need to be replaced in any case. This just ties everything up and puts a nice bow on it, I think.”

A Global Agreement To "Halt Climate Change!"

                The Obama administration reached an accord with China a few weeks ago, committing the two countries with the largest economies in the world to cuts in their carbon emissions.

                See if you can detect a slight difference in the wording the two countries used to describe their commitments. The U.S. “will cut emissions up to 28 percent by 2025. China, for their part, “will ‘decrease’ emissions by or before 2030.” ‘Decrease’ them by how much and from what? Will they lower emissions by a percent or two from 2028 to 2029 and/or from 2029 to 2030? And how come they get an extra five years to achieve this un-quantified and likely unverifiable goal?

                Perhaps their commitment isn’t as great?

                Shortly after the U.S. and China announced their agreement, U.N. negotiators and diplomats from across the globe met in Lima, Peru and eventually reached a general agreement on a plan to ‘halt climate change’ as some have termed it. (That would be an amazing success story if it came to fruition, as we’ve never been able to tell the planet what to do before and have it follow our instructions).

                How was this fantastic news greeted by ‘experts’? Most stated opinions along the lines of, “no matter the outcome of the meeting, it probably won’t be enough to stave off the significant effects of near-term global warming. It now may be impossible to prevent the temperature of the planet’s atmosphere from rising by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.” According to a body of research, that is the tipping point at which the planet will experience such global warming- induced disruption that the world’s population and economy  would face significant threats.

                Talk about a buzz-kill.

                Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University and a member of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), also expressed doubts. He said, “What’s already baked in are substantial changes to ecosystems, large-scale transformations.” Baked in? That doesn’t seem like  proper, disinterested, scientific terminology to me. I know no one around these parts felt ‘baked in’ last winter when it was routinely 20 degrees below zero or colder.

                 Isn’t it conservatives who are supposed to hate change? We are inclined to “stand athwart the world and yell stop!” according to many, including some of our own. And, I wonder, was the Earth any different in biblical times? How long have things been changing…or transforming?

                We can differ and bicker about what affect we have on the planet, but the Earth will do what the Earth has always done.

                And the sun also rises.

Gifts

                 I hope you all get to spend a few minutes- or more- with your family around the hearth and/or Christmas tree this holiday season. Of course, this time of year can be hectic, but let’s all try to remember that this season is about gifts. Not the ones we hope we get, but the ones we give…and the ones we have already received, but maybe don’t truly appreciate or recognize as the gifts they are.  Such as our very lives. Our family and friends, wives and husbands. Shared memories. Accidents we’ve survived or never had.

                I am always taken aback when I see, say, a wealthy young woman come out of a beauty salon when it’s very windy, and put her hands to her hair and shout something like, “damn it, my perm will be ruined, why is this happening to me?”

                And on the other hand, I sometimes see, say, a veteran in a wheelchair with no arms and/or legs, smiling and joking with others. It is a shocking mental juxtaposition. The healthy, wealthy, often very attractive woman, feels oppressed and unlucky. The vet with the grievous, life-changing injuries feels blessed and lucky to be alive. Circumstances don't determine one's fate. It is one’s attitude and fortitude.

                And speaking of grievous injuries and fortitude, there is the specter of Jesus on the cross. Life changing?

                For all of us.

                Resurrection.

                The greatest gift of all.

                Merry Christmas.

                

M.O.A. Protest/M.I.A. Protest

                Thousands of people- of all races-  descended on the Mall of America on Saturday, December 20^th to protest the recent, well-known, deaths of a couple of black males at the hands of white police officers. These protests happened all across the country in one form or another and in varying sizes. In Ferguson, Missouri, stores were looted and vandalized.

                That’s an interesting, if illogical, reaction to indignant cries of innocents being the arbitrary victims of wrong-doing. These shop-owners, and their employees, had absolutely nothing to do with the alleged police ‘attacks’. Nor did they rob a convenience store earlier, rush a policeman or scuffle with one in his patrol-car. Most, if not all, didn’t have a criminal record.

                On the Black Lives Matter Face-book page, a statement  claimed “The police and security shut down the ENTIRE mall for hours- amazing work everyone!” Yes, that’s what we need, economic terrorism.

                So, now  a black man in New York City randomly assassinates two white police officers Saturday, December 20^th. He had earlier announced, on an Instagram account, that he was going to take action against the ‘pigs’, stating “they take one of ours, let’s take two of theirs.” He used the hash-tag ‘Shoot-the-police’ among others. This, again, was a random killing of true innocents. Before shooting and killing the two police officers, he had gone to the home of a former girlfriend and shot and wounded her.

                How big will the protests be for the two randomly- murdered New York policemen? I’m guessing malls around America will soon be swamped with people irate over this injustice. Right?

                 

A Politically-Correct Jihad?

                 Several Islamic Jihadist groups have banned…smoking. Seriously. Yes, enslaving others, as well as gang-raping and beheading them, are considered time-tested and sacrosanct actions, duties in fact, but letting folks  smoke cigarettes, well, that is beyond the pale. Many of the Islamic militants consider smoking to be ‘slow suicide’ according to a blurb in the National Review. Got to get in tune with modern, politically-correct times! So now slow suicide via tobacco is unacceptable, apparently, but the quicker kind, as occurs with suicide bombers, is encouraged and, in fact, an express-route to a tobacco-free Paradise and the 72 virgins?

                Hmmm.

                And that’s not the only anomaly.

                The punishment for engaging in this behavior detrimental to one’s health, a habit that could take years off one’s life?

                The death penalty.

                Beam me up, Scottie.

Happy Holidays... Oh What The Heck, Merry Christmas, Texas!

                Texas has passed a new law that ensures its residents are free to use the holiday greeting of their choice- “merry Christmas,” “happy Hanukkah” or “happy holidays.” Amazing.

                According to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the legislature wanted to make sure that students can exchange traditional holiday greetings- and display Christmas trees, menorahs and Nativity scenes at school as long as more than one religion and a secular symbol are included- without fear of sparking a lawsuit. Those crazy, right-wing zealots! How do they get away with this stuff- in America of all places?

                Why the need for the law? State Representative Matt Krause said, “It’s unfortunate we got to a place where we had to have a law that says it’s ok to say, ‘Merry Christmas’, but we started to see no Christmas trees, instead holiday trees, and people couldn’t sing ‘Silent Night’, changing the words to ‘cold night.’”

‘Cold night’ isn’t a neutered, unemotional, ‘inoffensive’ replacement of ‘Silent Night’, in this case it is  very nearly the antithesis of it.

                A winter party held last year at a Frisco elementary school banned any mention of Christmas and prohibited Christmas trees as well as the colors red and green. You banned those ultra-religious colors red and green? That should have made everyone see red. What if black was included, or yellow? Would that have been ok? What if the green was meant in tribute to Islam? Banned colors?! Colors? What’s next, we ban the numbers 9 and 7?

                Many say the law wasn’t needed. “I think it’s stupid,” said Terri Burke, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas. “There is no ‘war on Christmas.’ There’s no need for this law.

                “It is just such frivolity,” she said. “There are important things for the Legislature to work on, and this isn’t it.”

                Like what, Terri? Making sure abortion is legal? “There is no ‘war on abortion’, Terri.”

                And, by-the-way, God had a choice. He chose a birth…that we all may live.

Abortion As Birth-Control?

                There are many in the ‘pro-choice’ movement making statements such as “abortion is just another tool in birth-control.” That is-or should be- shocking and disgusting. That is like saying that “the Nazi Holocaust was just another tool in the fight against over-population.” If we cannot recognize that anything might actually be immoral, especially the arbitrary taking of innocent life for our convenience, we are- at best- at a societal tipping-point. If we are so hyper-tolerant that we’ve become desensitized to any act, no matter how selfish and brutal, we are not likely to ever climb out of this cultural abyss. Worshipping only at the altar of tolerance, we lose sight of good and evil…or openly mock the concepts themselves in order to believe that they don’t exist. This hardy belief in the non-existence of any absolute ethical standards is a hallmark of modern day progressivism. They tend to place great faith in the meaninglessness of faith.

                This is just another irony from those who claim to want a kinder, more civil and civilized society or ‘community’. What they really want is what they think is best-and/or easiest- for them. They just don’t want to feel bad about it or have others question their motives and actions.

                Abortion as ‘birth-control’ or ‘prevention’ is ludicrous. By definition you can only abort what is already in existence or under way.

                 A few radicals even believe we should allow after-birth abortions to be put in the category of 'birth-control', which is ludicrous by definition. If the baby was born, there was a birth...that wasn't 'controlled'. There can be no such thing as an 'after-birth abortion'. That would be murder. 

                 We've certainly been remarkably successful in aborting logic and character.

President Offers To Normalize Relations With North Korea

December 23, 2014

News Syndicate-

                In yet another bold move that stunned many and  angered his critics, President Obama offered to normalize relations with North Korea earlier today, if the Hermit Kingdom would “Promise not to prevent us from releasing any more motion pictures in the future.

                “We need to talk reason, here. Britain didn’t threaten to blow up theaters across our country before the release of ‘the Patriot!’ I mean, come on. And we really wouldn’t want to let a small, starving, communist nation led by a pudgy little dictator tell us what movies we can and can’t release. That could make us appear weak.

                “But look, Cuba released just one American hostage and I normalized relations with them. I’ve gone around the Congress to try to ease tensions with Iran. So, if the North Korean government promises not to interfere anymore in our nation’s film and television industry, I will absolutely normalize relations with them. Because, you know, I can. Anyway, it’s obvious that, as with Cuba, our long-held policy of isolation hasn’t worked. Maybe if we opened an embassy there and installed, say, Dennis Rodman as an ambassador we could start working together to find common ground.”

                

North Korea Announces Hollywood Sanctions

 December 22, 2014
News Syndicate-



                   The North Korean government announced today that, going forward, all future Hollywood motion picture and television story ideas and scripts will have to be approved by the ‘Dear Leader’ himself. The statement, issued by a high-ranking government spokesperson, read as follows:  “Since the American motion-picture industry has proven unable to police itself in terms of proper content, we are forced to perform that job for them. We simply cannot stand by while the U.S. cranks out unacceptable comedies that openly make fun of the sacred things in life, such as the people’s North Korean government and its Dear Leader.
                 "I must say, we did like ‘The West Wing’ though. Oh, and ‘Girls’ on HBO.”