Lawyer Orly Taitz tries patience of federal court
Those who wonder why I give virtually no time at all to this subject{1}, the article above explains some of the reasons albeit indirectly.
Note
{1} These are the only two postings I am aware of on this subject prior to the present one (posted in order of oldest to most recently):
On How To Approach the Presidential Election Results of 2008 and Analyzing the Political Trends for 2008 and Beyond (circa December 9, 2008)
Clarifying A Previous Point (circa February 25, 2009)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Don't blame Limbaugh for our faults (LZ Granderson)
This thread is a solid read overall and the general principles it outlines apply to all communities, not just the black community.
This thread is a solid read overall and the general principles it outlines apply to all communities, not just the black community.
Senate Finance Committee
Back on October 6th, I went complete William Jennings Bryan "Cross of Gold" speech-like{1} on the switchboard operator of the Senate Finance Committee. She told me the Baucus bill was put online Friday and gave me the link above but I have to update my Java software to get the health care bill link to open correctly apparently. I want to point y'all to it and ask why (if what she says is true) did I have to learn this from calling them and not from the news -ANY news program. And posting it Friday night right before the weekend??? Tell me that was not their attempt to jam it through today hoping no one would find out about it!!!
Note:
{1} In terms of the passion in which I set forth my view on this matter via the telephone.
Back on October 6th, I went complete William Jennings Bryan "Cross of Gold" speech-like{1} on the switchboard operator of the Senate Finance Committee. She told me the Baucus bill was put online Friday and gave me the link above but I have to update my Java software to get the health care bill link to open correctly apparently. I want to point y'all to it and ask why (if what she says is true) did I have to learn this from calling them and not from the news -ANY news program. And posting it Friday night right before the weekend??? Tell me that was not their attempt to jam it through today hoping no one would find out about it!!!
Note:
{1} In terms of the passion in which I set forth my view on this matter via the telephone.
He Won But For What?
I am not one of those alarmists who see sinister machinations behind every news story or end times gibberish under every acorn but I am not gonna lie: when I saw this article and realized that I agreed with Jennifer Loven of all people on something, I thought I might be making out on the horizon the first of the four apocalypse horses ;-)
I am not one of those alarmists who see sinister machinations behind every news story or end times gibberish under every acorn but I am not gonna lie: when I saw this article and realized that I agreed with Jennifer Loven of all people on something, I thought I might be making out on the horizon the first of the four apocalypse horses ;-)
Monday, October 19, 2009
Liberals Lay Off Obama
For those who wonder who could be claiming in lieu of the fact that President Obama has done NOTHING that he is "doing a great job" or has "done something", here is an example from The Daily Beast. Try to not be drinking anything when you read it though.
And yes folks, being "on your way" to doing something is now considered actually doing something by this crowd. The 10,000 point Dow level is considered significant to these same people who did not blink when the Dow under President Bush topped 14,000 in late 2007.
Furthermore, he is actually claiming the stimulus has been "slowing the nation's descent", and considering it an accomplishment that "a universal health care bill’s passage through Senate Committee." Celebrating a bill making it out of committee??? Boy these folks do not realize how they wear their desperation on their sleeves.
For those who wonder who could be claiming in lieu of the fact that President Obama has done NOTHING that he is "doing a great job" or has "done something", here is an example from The Daily Beast. Try to not be drinking anything when you read it though.
And yes folks, being "on your way" to doing something is now considered actually doing something by this crowd. The 10,000 point Dow level is considered significant to these same people who did not blink when the Dow under President Bush topped 14,000 in late 2007.
Furthermore, he is actually claiming the stimulus has been "slowing the nation's descent", and considering it an accomplishment that "a universal health care bill’s passage through Senate Committee." Celebrating a bill making it out of committee??? Boy these folks do not realize how they wear their desperation on their sleeves.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Inflation and Deficits
Dr. Walter E. Williams explains the connection between inflation and deficits in the link above.
Dr. Walter E. Williams explains the connection between inflation and deficits in the link above.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Thursday, October 08, 2009
On Obama, Government Run Health Care, and "Waterloo":
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
[Preface: This was originally drafted in late July, completed before the August congressional recess, and posted in a slightly different form to another publishing medium on September 1, 2009. -ISM]
There has been an analogy in the past month that has been growing rapidly to describe President Obama's health care proposal; namely, that the health care plan he and congress are attempting to shove through before the summer recess will be "Obama's Waterloo." To my knowledge, the first to specifically refer to the health care plan by this label was former Clinton Administration strategist Dick Morris in an article he wrote in June for his website which was published in a variety of outlets including The Hill and Human Events. I find it interesting that Morris' column was published a day before the historical event itself began.{1} Not long after that, we have Senator JimDeMint who presumably read Morris' column in June who last week had this to say about Obamacare:
“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
Before readers think this is just the Republicans playing politics here, they need to consider what the term Waterloo means so a little history lesson is in order here. Though the French Revolution of 1789 (comparable to the American Revolution of 1776 only in a facile way{2}) followed the usual pattern of chaos, mob rule, and execution of "dissenters", the Corsican General Napoleon in the midst of the Rein of Terror and general chaos defeated the armies of coalition nations opposing France twice: once in 1793 and again in 1798. He later took over France itself in a coup in 1799.
Napoleon amassed powers and got rid of distant French projects that took a toll on the military and the treasury -the struggles with the Haitian revolution{3} and the First Rule of African Warfare{4} prompting him to sell off Louisiana to the United States in 1803 being a prevalent one in American eyes.{4} He then had himself crowned as Emperor in 1804. During the first decade of the nineteenth century and in keeping with the First Rule of French Warfare{5}, Napoleon was able to conquer continental Europe and installed in various countries family members and friends to "rule" them who were answerable to him.{6} In three subsequent attempts by coalitions of nations to defeat France in war on land, Napoleon was victorious. He had by 1811 extended the French Empire throughout continental Europe and even into Norway.
While it is true that Napoleon had had some setbacks in expanding power to the extent he wanted to{7} it was the 1812 Russia campaign which was a turning point in Napoleon's successes since his army was subjected to a Russian approach known as a "scorched earth" retreat which destroyed all the available food sources for the invading French forces. The end result was Napoleon was victorious on the rare occasions when he engaged the Russians but failed to get Czar Nicholas I to abdicate when he captured Moscow. Upon leaving his troops to go back to Paris, there were a variety of factors that broke down his remaining forces including starvation, demoralization, loss of supply horses and supplies, and a breakdown of his troop discipline. Throw in attacks from the Russians and loss of a few battles upon retreating{8} and the tide clearly had turned for Napoleon.
Napoleon was not finished yet however. When he returned to Paris, he had about one tenth of the number of troops he had when he had set off for Moscow. Various nations in seeing the vulnerability seized on his military's weakened condition to launch a sixth united offensive against him. But Napoleon was still able to inflict a series of defeats against his foes until a vastly superior force beat him at Leipzig in October of 1813 -one of the worst defeats of his career. He rebounded with a barrage of victories in the Six Days Campaign despite being outnumbered by opposing forces about 5:1 but was ultimately unable to stop the multi-national opposition forces from capturing Paris. Not long after, unable to count on his generals for support, Napoleon abdicated.
But Napoleon was not done yet and though exiled to Elba in 1814, he would escape the following year and regain his throne. However, this time with an army of 200,000 he decided to go on the offense against his foes and on June 18, 1815 met the British Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at Wellington. Here is how Wikipedia explained the event:
Napoleon's forces fought the allies, led by Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Wellington's army withstood repeated attacks by the French and drove them from the field while the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. The French army left the battlefield in disorder, which allowed Coalition forces to enter France and restore Louis XVIII to the French throne. Off the port of Rochefort, Charente -Maritime, after consideration of an escape to the United States, Napoleon formally demanded political asylum from the British Captain Frederick Maitland on HMS Bellerophon on 15 July 1815.
Historically, Waterloo was the final breaking point of Napoleon: a massive defeat that ended not only his rule of France but also his threat to again have power. He was exiled to St. Helena not long afterward and died there six years later.
How does this have relevance to the current situation??? Well, for one thing like Napoleon the president has sought to fight on a lot of fronts ala what happened with the invasion of Russia and this makes him vulnerable to a sustained assault on any major issue if conservatives and Republicans can stop jumping on every little red-herring side issue and focus fully on an issue like health care.{9} Second, the president is resorting to courting the radicals of his party's fringe and abandoning the moderate and more conservative Democrats who will have to face stiff challenges in next year's election which is the military equivalent of going up against opposition seriously outnumbered. Third, it is evident that there is chaos in the House and Senate in putting together and a public approval of the health-care plan at less than 50% and falling as I write this which mirrors the confusion Napoleon's troops had at Waterloo.
Now obviously all analogies fall short to some extent but when understood in the context of a rousing defeat so bad that the party suffering it never recovers from, the health care issue indeed could be the Waterloo of this president. Your host for one certainly interested in doing what he can to facilitate that occurrence because what is involved here is such an egregious violation of our God-given fundamental rights but enough on this matter for now. The real fight will take place when congress is in their districts for summer recess, at the town halls, and when they return from recess so recognizing the key physiological principle of intensity and duration{10} requires us to rest on this matter now and prepare to go at it full force for the fall battle ahead both on this matter and also oncrap and tax cap and trade.
Notes:
{1} June 18, 1815.
{2} The American Revolution is the only revolution in history that resulted in a government that provided its citizens with more freedom instead of less. The French Revolution was standard for revolutions in that it resulted in creating anarchy which was followed by dictatorship.
{3} The Haitian Revolution started in 1791 during the French Revolution and continued until 1804.
{4} There were financial as well as tactical reasons for this on the part of Napoleon. On the American front though, it represented a doubling of territory. It also represented President Thomas Jefferson contradicting his previous "strict constructionist" reading -an unworkable method of approaching the Constitution that I have written on before and which I might add was not a view of the Constitution that was shared by most of the Founders including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin to name several notable figures. (As well as the James Madison of the pre-1790 and post-1815 period.) Therefore, in the interest of being consistent I view Ron Paul and his supporters and anyone else who think that if it is not explicitly in the Constitution something cannot be done should in the interest of being consistent campaign to return those territories to the French and declare the Louisiana Purchase as unconstitutional. Otherwise, there is no reason to take them seriously on their babblings about what is and is not supposedly "constitutional."
{4} First Rule of African Warfare: We can always beat the French. [LINK]
{5} First Rule of French Warfare: France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman. [LINK]
{6} One might even say these people represented Napoleon's "Czars" if they really want to parallel in the nations of nineteenth century Europe what President Obama has done with various parts of the American government and economy with his appointed "czars" who only answer to him.
{7} Including a tactical defeat at the Battle of Asbern-Essling in 1809 which was quickly avenged at the Battle of Wagram.
{8} Including the Battle of Krasnoi and the disaster that was the Battle of Berezina.
{9} Or as I noted in a post election analysis thread back in December when outlining how we can most efficaciously combat the majority party in the two years to come and beyond:
With an incoming Democratic president and a Democratic majority in both houses of the Congress, a lot of issues are going to be pushed -many of them ones that we who did not vote for President Obama and the Democrats do not agree with. The problem is, if we run all over the map and oppose simply to be opposing, that will achieve nothing constructive. And furthermore, it is naive to think that everything they attempt to do we will be able to stop so that also needs to be taken into account. Basically, we need to decide in how we go about this first of all, what we will fight tooth and nail for: what are the issues which we absolutely must stand up and hold the line on without an iota of compromise. From there, the rest can be categorized into basically (i) things we want to try and force the Democrats on record supporting so we can make election issues on them in 2010, (ii) things of a less significant nature we actually think can be accomplished despite the Democrats having control of the government, (iii) things we need to put out there for the future which we know will not succeed in the soon-to-be present but nonetheless are points of reference for the future of a positive nature. In other words, we need to strategerize here and not play the same bullshit of those who opposed the outgoing Bush administration on everything and anything simply because they hated President Bush, thought he was Hitler, or whatever. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa December 11, 2008)]
{10} [Y]our host does not go all out with intense political focus all the time [because] it is physiologically not possible to operate at high intensity for duration; ergo the best way to approach geopolitical stuff is with short bursts of intensity in brief periods with a degree of infrequency. Other than that, focusing elsewhere or addressing these issues with greater frequency but much less duration is the approach to be taken. Notice I am not saying do nothing, only that it is imperative to avoid burnout physiologically to recognize that intensity and duration are two sides of the same coin and cannot be realized at one and the same time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 7, 2006)]
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
[Preface: This was originally drafted in late July, completed before the August congressional recess, and posted in a slightly different form to another publishing medium on September 1, 2009. -ISM]
There has been an analogy in the past month that has been growing rapidly to describe President Obama's health care proposal; namely, that the health care plan he and congress are attempting to shove through before the summer recess will be "Obama's Waterloo." To my knowledge, the first to specifically refer to the health care plan by this label was former Clinton Administration strategist Dick Morris in an article he wrote in June for his website which was published in a variety of outlets including The Hill and Human Events. I find it interesting that Morris' column was published a day before the historical event itself began.{1} Not long after that, we have Senator JimDeMint who presumably read Morris' column in June who last week had this to say about Obamacare:
“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
Before readers think this is just the Republicans playing politics here, they need to consider what the term Waterloo means so a little history lesson is in order here. Though the French Revolution of 1789 (comparable to the American Revolution of 1776 only in a facile way{2}) followed the usual pattern of chaos, mob rule, and execution of "dissenters", the Corsican General Napoleon in the midst of the Rein of Terror and general chaos defeated the armies of coalition nations opposing France twice: once in 1793 and again in 1798. He later took over France itself in a coup in 1799.
Napoleon amassed powers and got rid of distant French projects that took a toll on the military and the treasury -the struggles with the Haitian revolution{3} and the First Rule of African Warfare{4} prompting him to sell off Louisiana to the United States in 1803 being a prevalent one in American eyes.{4} He then had himself crowned as Emperor in 1804. During the first decade of the nineteenth century and in keeping with the First Rule of French Warfare{5}, Napoleon was able to conquer continental Europe and installed in various countries family members and friends to "rule" them who were answerable to him.{6} In three subsequent attempts by coalitions of nations to defeat France in war on land, Napoleon was victorious. He had by 1811 extended the French Empire throughout continental Europe and even into Norway.
While it is true that Napoleon had had some setbacks in expanding power to the extent he wanted to{7} it was the 1812 Russia campaign which was a turning point in Napoleon's successes since his army was subjected to a Russian approach known as a "scorched earth" retreat which destroyed all the available food sources for the invading French forces. The end result was Napoleon was victorious on the rare occasions when he engaged the Russians but failed to get Czar Nicholas I to abdicate when he captured Moscow. Upon leaving his troops to go back to Paris, there were a variety of factors that broke down his remaining forces including starvation, demoralization, loss of supply horses and supplies, and a breakdown of his troop discipline. Throw in attacks from the Russians and loss of a few battles upon retreating{8} and the tide clearly had turned for Napoleon.
Napoleon was not finished yet however. When he returned to Paris, he had about one tenth of the number of troops he had when he had set off for Moscow. Various nations in seeing the vulnerability seized on his military's weakened condition to launch a sixth united offensive against him. But Napoleon was still able to inflict a series of defeats against his foes until a vastly superior force beat him at Leipzig in October of 1813 -one of the worst defeats of his career. He rebounded with a barrage of victories in the Six Days Campaign despite being outnumbered by opposing forces about 5:1 but was ultimately unable to stop the multi-national opposition forces from capturing Paris. Not long after, unable to count on his generals for support, Napoleon abdicated.
But Napoleon was not done yet and though exiled to Elba in 1814, he would escape the following year and regain his throne. However, this time with an army of 200,000 he decided to go on the offense against his foes and on June 18, 1815 met the British Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at Wellington. Here is how Wikipedia explained the event:
Napoleon's forces fought the allies, led by Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Wellington's army withstood repeated attacks by the French and drove them from the field while the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. The French army left the battlefield in disorder, which allowed Coalition forces to enter France and restore Louis XVIII to the French throne. Off the port of Rochefort, Charente -Maritime, after consideration of an escape to the United States, Napoleon formally demanded political asylum from the British Captain Frederick Maitland on HMS Bellerophon on 15 July 1815.
Historically, Waterloo was the final breaking point of Napoleon: a massive defeat that ended not only his rule of France but also his threat to again have power. He was exiled to St. Helena not long afterward and died there six years later.
How does this have relevance to the current situation??? Well, for one thing like Napoleon the president has sought to fight on a lot of fronts ala what happened with the invasion of Russia and this makes him vulnerable to a sustained assault on any major issue if conservatives and Republicans can stop jumping on every little red-herring side issue and focus fully on an issue like health care.{9} Second, the president is resorting to courting the radicals of his party's fringe and abandoning the moderate and more conservative Democrats who will have to face stiff challenges in next year's election which is the military equivalent of going up against opposition seriously outnumbered. Third, it is evident that there is chaos in the House and Senate in putting together and a public approval of the health-care plan at less than 50% and falling as I write this which mirrors the confusion Napoleon's troops had at Waterloo.
Now obviously all analogies fall short to some extent but when understood in the context of a rousing defeat so bad that the party suffering it never recovers from, the health care issue indeed could be the Waterloo of this president. Your host for one certainly interested in doing what he can to facilitate that occurrence because what is involved here is such an egregious violation of our God-given fundamental rights but enough on this matter for now. The real fight will take place when congress is in their districts for summer recess, at the town halls, and when they return from recess so recognizing the key physiological principle of intensity and duration{10} requires us to rest on this matter now and prepare to go at it full force for the fall battle ahead both on this matter and also on
Notes:
{1} June 18, 1815.
{2} The American Revolution is the only revolution in history that resulted in a government that provided its citizens with more freedom instead of less. The French Revolution was standard for revolutions in that it resulted in creating anarchy which was followed by dictatorship.
{3} The Haitian Revolution started in 1791 during the French Revolution and continued until 1804.
{4} There were financial as well as tactical reasons for this on the part of Napoleon. On the American front though, it represented a doubling of territory. It also represented President Thomas Jefferson contradicting his previous "strict constructionist" reading -an unworkable method of approaching the Constitution that I have written on before and which I might add was not a view of the Constitution that was shared by most of the Founders including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin to name several notable figures. (As well as the James Madison of the pre-1790 and post-1815 period.) Therefore, in the interest of being consistent I view Ron Paul and his supporters and anyone else who think that if it is not explicitly in the Constitution something cannot be done should in the interest of being consistent campaign to return those territories to the French and declare the Louisiana Purchase as unconstitutional. Otherwise, there is no reason to take them seriously on their babblings about what is and is not supposedly "constitutional."
{4} First Rule of African Warfare: We can always beat the French. [LINK]
{5} First Rule of French Warfare: France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman. [LINK]
{6} One might even say these people represented Napoleon's "Czars" if they really want to parallel in the nations of nineteenth century Europe what President Obama has done with various parts of the American government and economy with his appointed "czars" who only answer to him.
{7} Including a tactical defeat at the Battle of Asbern-Essling in 1809 which was quickly avenged at the Battle of Wagram.
{8} Including the Battle of Krasnoi and the disaster that was the Battle of Berezina.
{9} Or as I noted in a post election analysis thread back in December when outlining how we can most efficaciously combat the majority party in the two years to come and beyond:
With an incoming Democratic president and a Democratic majority in both houses of the Congress, a lot of issues are going to be pushed -many of them ones that we who did not vote for President Obama and the Democrats do not agree with. The problem is, if we run all over the map and oppose simply to be opposing, that will achieve nothing constructive. And furthermore, it is naive to think that everything they attempt to do we will be able to stop so that also needs to be taken into account. Basically, we need to decide in how we go about this first of all, what we will fight tooth and nail for: what are the issues which we absolutely must stand up and hold the line on without an iota of compromise. From there, the rest can be categorized into basically (i) things we want to try and force the Democrats on record supporting so we can make election issues on them in 2010, (ii) things of a less significant nature we actually think can be accomplished despite the Democrats having control of the government, (iii) things we need to put out there for the future which we know will not succeed in the soon-to-be present but nonetheless are points of reference for the future of a positive nature. In other words, we need to strategerize here and not play the same bullshit of those who opposed the outgoing Bush administration on everything and anything simply because they hated President Bush, thought he was Hitler, or whatever. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa December 11, 2008)]
{10} [Y]our host does not go all out with intense political focus all the time [because] it is physiologically not possible to operate at high intensity for duration; ergo the best way to approach geopolitical stuff is with short bursts of intensity in brief periods with a degree of infrequency. Other than that, focusing elsewhere or addressing these issues with greater frequency but much less duration is the approach to be taken. Notice I am not saying do nothing, only that it is imperative to avoid burnout physiologically to recognize that intensity and duration are two sides of the same coin and cannot be realized at one and the same time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 7, 2006)]
Sunday, October 04, 2009
The Agony of Obama's Defeat
When Politico is talking about "the agony of Obama's defeat", you know there is "big trouble in little China" on this matter folks!!!
When Politico is talking about "the agony of Obama's defeat", you know there is "big trouble in little China" on this matter folks!!!
The Olympics, Obama, and the Permanent Campaign
Jay Cost summarizes well a key reason why I am optimistic about the upcoming 09 governors races as well as the elections of '10 and '12.
Jay Cost summarizes well a key reason why I am optimistic about the upcoming 09 governors races as well as the elections of '10 and '12.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Points to Ponder:
[T]hose who have comments boxes are capable of manipulating the content there to suit their own agenda including banning people who raise strong enough arguments against the "prevailing orthodoxy" at a given weblog. You would be surprised at how often those who laud their "willingness to interact with others" will put censors on their comments boxes that would make the monitors at Pravda in the days of the old Soviet Union blush and as we do not believe in unnecessary censorship, that means we would inexorably leave out there potentially a variety of assertions that our lack of time to respond to would give the unintended perception of being "unanswerable" by us. Those are the main reasons for our refusal to use comments boxes in a nutshell. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa December 1, 2008)]
[T]hose who have comments boxes are capable of manipulating the content there to suit their own agenda including banning people who raise strong enough arguments against the "prevailing orthodoxy" at a given weblog. You would be surprised at how often those who laud their "willingness to interact with others" will put censors on their comments boxes that would make the monitors at Pravda in the days of the old Soviet Union blush and as we do not believe in unnecessary censorship, that means we would inexorably leave out there potentially a variety of assertions that our lack of time to respond to would give the unintended perception of being "unanswerable" by us. Those are the main reasons for our refusal to use comments boxes in a nutshell. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa December 1, 2008)]
Firestorm threatens to engulf Blanche Lincoln (Politico)
Senator Blanche Lincoln whatever else one wants to say about her was the only Democrat on Senator Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee to vote for Senator Jim Bunning's amendment which would have prevented the attempt to jam Baucus' proposals through without being seen or even read. Those of you who want to call and scream at the Democrats on that committee for being a bunch of unethical f##king cowards who preach "transparency" yet do the exact opposite (in classic 1984 fashion I might add), kindly spare Ms. Lincoln from your wrath. She (unlike the other twelve Democrats on that committee) did the right thing ethically and in principle and for this she deserves to be commended.
Senator Blanche Lincoln whatever else one wants to say about her was the only Democrat on Senator Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee to vote for Senator Jim Bunning's amendment which would have prevented the attempt to jam Baucus' proposals through without being seen or even read. Those of you who want to call and scream at the Democrats on that committee for being a bunch of unethical f##king cowards who preach "transparency" yet do the exact opposite (in classic 1984 fashion I might add), kindly spare Ms. Lincoln from your wrath. She (unlike the other twelve Democrats on that committee) did the right thing ethically and in principle and for this she deserves to be commended.
On Recent Funerals and Suspending My "No More Funerals" Stance of Recent Years:
I attended another funeralyesterday eleven days ago -my twenty-first in the last nine and a half years.{1} This was despite the fact that I decided to take a "no more funerals" approach to things after attending my Aunt Cecilia's funeral in the second part of 2006. At that point, I had attended twenty funerals in six and a half years and simply could not deal with it anymore. And that was not even all the family, friends, etc. who died in that span of time. But I had to suspend my stand for Jerry Dykstra, a good friend of my fathers and whose eldest son I played soccer with for six of the eight years I played in years past.{2}
I knew Jerry for nearly thirty years and was able to see him in the final weeks when he was getting to the point to where his cancer was becoming unbearable. But he always had a smile on his face, always was of good cheer, and continued to drink two rusty nails a night until recent months.{3} He was a good man and will be missed -most of all by his family of course and I told his sons if they wanted to talk about it to feel free to give me a call. No sooner did I get back than I heard from my mother that my Uncle Don passed away earlier that same day so if his funeral is in the Seattle area,{4} I will again suspend my "no more funerals" policy and go to that one.
I have known Uncle Don{5} literally all my life. I am sure he held me in his arms at least once when I was still in diapers: I note that to give an idea of how far back this connection goes. He was also a good and decent man. I had not seen either Uncle Don or his wife my Aunt Sheila{6} in probably three or four years -I think the last time was at their son Paul's wedding in 2004. But unlike in the case of Jerry of whom we knew was going to have less than a year,{7} Don's death came completely out of the blue unexpected. Jerry died three months shy of his seventy-first birthday, Don two months shy of his sixty-first birthday.
Prayers for both of them would be most appreciated.
Eternal rest grant unto their souls oh Lord and let thy Perpetual Light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. May the souls of Jerry Dykstra and Don Hellstrom along with the souls of all the faithfully departed, through the Mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.
Notes:
{1} In that span of time, I lost thirty-five persons either close family, relatives, close friends, etc.
{2} I covered the subjects of funerals in general around that time and also on the subject of Aunt Ceil in another thread. Here they are for those who are interested:
On Prayer Requests (circa October 3, 2006)
More on Cecilia Flynn (circa October 5, 2006)
{3} Jerry and my father used to drink rusty nails together and after my father died, Jerry would drink two a night: one for him and one for my dad. That was his story anyway and he stuck to it until for health reasons he could not.
{4} It is most likely going to be in Wenatchee, Washington though.
[Update: It was held in East Wenatchee and I did not attend due to the distance. -ISM]
{5} Basically an honourific title: Don was married to Sheila my dad's adopted sister. (It was her mom Jenny whose death in March of 2000 started this long chain of passings but I digress.)
{6} I am sure my dad figured this out years back but when I was a teenager, I had a crush on my Aunt Sheila.
{7} And most likely he was slated to live for less than six months.
I attended another funeral
I knew Jerry for nearly thirty years and was able to see him in the final weeks when he was getting to the point to where his cancer was becoming unbearable. But he always had a smile on his face, always was of good cheer, and continued to drink two rusty nails a night until recent months.{3} He was a good man and will be missed -most of all by his family of course and I told his sons if they wanted to talk about it to feel free to give me a call. No sooner did I get back than I heard from my mother that my Uncle Don passed away earlier that same day so if his funeral is in the Seattle area,{4} I will again suspend my "no more funerals" policy and go to that one.
I have known Uncle Don{5} literally all my life. I am sure he held me in his arms at least once when I was still in diapers: I note that to give an idea of how far back this connection goes. He was also a good and decent man. I had not seen either Uncle Don or his wife my Aunt Sheila{6} in probably three or four years -I think the last time was at their son Paul's wedding in 2004. But unlike in the case of Jerry of whom we knew was going to have less than a year,{7} Don's death came completely out of the blue unexpected. Jerry died three months shy of his seventy-first birthday, Don two months shy of his sixty-first birthday.
Prayers for both of them would be most appreciated.
Eternal rest grant unto their souls oh Lord and let thy Perpetual Light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. May the souls of Jerry Dykstra and Don Hellstrom along with the souls of all the faithfully departed, through the Mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.
Notes:
{1} In that span of time, I lost thirty-five persons either close family, relatives, close friends, etc.
{2} I covered the subjects of funerals in general around that time and also on the subject of Aunt Ceil in another thread. Here they are for those who are interested:
On Prayer Requests (circa October 3, 2006)
More on Cecilia Flynn (circa October 5, 2006)
{3} Jerry and my father used to drink rusty nails together and after my father died, Jerry would drink two a night: one for him and one for my dad. That was his story anyway and he stuck to it until for health reasons he could not.
{4} It is most likely going to be in Wenatchee, Washington though.
[Update: It was held in East Wenatchee and I did not attend due to the distance. -ISM]
{5} Basically an honourific title: Don was married to Sheila my dad's adopted sister. (It was her mom Jenny whose death in March of 2000 started this long chain of passings but I digress.)
{6} I am sure my dad figured this out years back but when I was a teenager, I had a crush on my Aunt Sheila.
{7} And most likely he was slated to live for less than six months.
On ACORN and Corruption:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
I originally was going to post this as a minor posting back around September tenth but was not able to get around to it until now and since the original draft, a lot has developed on this subject so I want to go over it all here. Let us start with the original material of this posting which was to be led off with this link:
Exposed! ACORN Gets Its Nuts Cracked: Teenage Prostitutes, Money Laundering and Tax Fraud (Doug Giles)
Originally I was going to say that the mainstream media would not cover this of course any more than they covered the 11 ACORN persons arrested for voter registration fraud in Florida earlier in the month{1} (one of whom registered "Paul Newman" to vote incidentally enough) or the fact that ACORN is under investigation in twelve states for voter fraud. But bear this in mind: if ACORN was in any way connected with a prominent Republican, the msm would be all over this. Once again though, President Obama's connections with this organization from his community organizing days will likely be ignored.
To get the gist of the story, read the link above because what Hannah Giles (posing as a prostitute) and James O'Keefe (a film maker posing as a pimp) did in the Baltimore branch of ACORN was duplicated in a variety of other ACORN offices. ACORN fired the two employees involved in the sting in Baltimore and also two more who were involved in a similar sting in the ACORN Washington DC office. You can read more on the DC matter here.
Now the rest of the media other than Fox they were as silent as a whore in church initially. But then there was a sting in Brooklyn, New York upon which employees from ACORN there were fired and the Brooklyn DA will pursue investigating ACORN perhaps even under RICO statutes. Then we have the Census Bureau stripping ACORN of participation in the 2010 census, another video emerging out of San Diego, California and another one in San Bernadino where a woman is on camera talking about killing her husband along with the usual prostitution stuff.
ACORN kept trying to play it down and has threatened to go after the film makers but they also fired all their employees involved in the various offices where Giles and O'Keefe caught them on camera giving advice on various ways of breaking the law from advice on opening a house of prostitution to tax evasion to smuggling underage illegal immigrants from El Salvador to work in the house of prostitution, etc. Yet despite all of this (and this is not all there is), ACORN has the aucadity to accuse Giles and O'Keefe of immoral conduct when all they did was trap ACORN's employees on camera endorsing some of the worst kind of filth imaginable!!!
Meanwhile, the Senate voted 83-7 to defund ACORN on September 15th with the House following suit on Thursday with a 345-78 vote.{2} All of this happened not because of the mainstream media but instead in spite of them because other than Fox News, they were all very late to this story and it is not as if they were ignorant of ACORN being a corrupt organization.
There is a reason why your host has for years sought as much as possible to get news from sources other than the mainstream media which is frankly little different (at all) than a state-run media. If anything has made this irreversibly clear, it is the media's woeful performance in the past week in covering stories from the Van Jones resignation to the 912 march to the ACORN scandals: all of which put the Obama administration in bad light. And this means the depths of disgrace to which the mainstream media sunk last year are depths to which they remain.
Notes:
{1} And over 40 since July of this year.
{2} ACORN's Enablers
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
I originally was going to post this as a minor posting back around September tenth but was not able to get around to it until now and since the original draft, a lot has developed on this subject so I want to go over it all here. Let us start with the original material of this posting which was to be led off with this link:
Exposed! ACORN Gets Its Nuts Cracked: Teenage Prostitutes, Money Laundering and Tax Fraud (Doug Giles)
Originally I was going to say that the mainstream media would not cover this of course any more than they covered the 11 ACORN persons arrested for voter registration fraud in Florida earlier in the month{1} (one of whom registered "Paul Newman" to vote incidentally enough) or the fact that ACORN is under investigation in twelve states for voter fraud. But bear this in mind: if ACORN was in any way connected with a prominent Republican, the msm would be all over this. Once again though, President Obama's connections with this organization from his community organizing days will likely be ignored.
To get the gist of the story, read the link above because what Hannah Giles (posing as a prostitute) and James O'Keefe (a film maker posing as a pimp) did in the Baltimore branch of ACORN was duplicated in a variety of other ACORN offices. ACORN fired the two employees involved in the sting in Baltimore and also two more who were involved in a similar sting in the ACORN Washington DC office. You can read more on the DC matter here.
Now the rest of the media other than Fox they were as silent as a whore in church initially. But then there was a sting in Brooklyn, New York upon which employees from ACORN there were fired and the Brooklyn DA will pursue investigating ACORN perhaps even under RICO statutes. Then we have the Census Bureau stripping ACORN of participation in the 2010 census, another video emerging out of San Diego, California and another one in San Bernadino where a woman is on camera talking about killing her husband along with the usual prostitution stuff.
ACORN kept trying to play it down and has threatened to go after the film makers but they also fired all their employees involved in the various offices where Giles and O'Keefe caught them on camera giving advice on various ways of breaking the law from advice on opening a house of prostitution to tax evasion to smuggling underage illegal immigrants from El Salvador to work in the house of prostitution, etc. Yet despite all of this (and this is not all there is), ACORN has the aucadity to accuse Giles and O'Keefe of immoral conduct when all they did was trap ACORN's employees on camera endorsing some of the worst kind of filth imaginable!!!
Meanwhile, the Senate voted 83-7 to defund ACORN on September 15th with the House following suit on Thursday with a 345-78 vote.{2} All of this happened not because of the mainstream media but instead in spite of them because other than Fox News, they were all very late to this story and it is not as if they were ignorant of ACORN being a corrupt organization.
There is a reason why your host has for years sought as much as possible to get news from sources other than the mainstream media which is frankly little different (at all) than a state-run media. If anything has made this irreversibly clear, it is the media's woeful performance in the past week in covering stories from the Van Jones resignation to the 912 march to the ACORN scandals: all of which put the Obama administration in bad light. And this means the depths of disgrace to which the mainstream media sunk last year are depths to which they remain.
Notes:
{1} And over 40 since July of this year.
{2} ACORN's Enablers
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Hi-Ho, the Derry-O
This paragraph is like Mastercard:
[Michelle Obama] spoke of her own culinary efforts: "There are times when putting together a healthy meal is harder than you might imagine." Particularly when it involves a soundstage, an interpreter for the deaf, three TV satellite trucks and the closing of part of downtown
Washington.
I seriously do not know what more could I add to that. But I am sure my Accord is the real "carbon footprint maker" not the caravan of vehicles that Michelle Obama used to go shopping right???
This paragraph is like Mastercard:
[Michelle Obama] spoke of her own culinary efforts: "There are times when putting together a healthy meal is harder than you might imagine." Particularly when it involves a soundstage, an interpreter for the deaf, three TV satellite trucks and the closing of part of downtown
Washington.
I seriously do not know what more could I add to that. But I am sure my Accord is the real "carbon footprint maker" not the caravan of vehicles that Michelle Obama used to go shopping right???
Organizing Against World Net Daily
The beauty of being a conspiracy theorist is you do not have to subject your ideas to things like logic, reason, non-contradiction, or any other factors that people who take thinking seriously would do. To the extent that World Net Daily entertains this kind of crap, they do the opposition to President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and their radical ilk a grave disservice.
The beauty of being a conspiracy theorist is you do not have to subject your ideas to things like logic, reason, non-contradiction, or any other factors that people who take thinking seriously would do. To the extent that World Net Daily entertains this kind of crap, they do the opposition to President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and their radical ilk a grave disservice.
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