The Rescue Dogs of 9/11: 10 Years Later

This is so precious. I wish I’d posted it for the 9/11 anniversary. I highly encourage you to read this great piece about some other kinds of heroes of that dreadful day, and how they’re faring a decade later. These are the rescue dogs, mostly Labradors and Golden Retrievers, who worked tirelessly alongside their heroic masters to search for bodies among the rubble of the twin towers. Enjoy the wonderful photos and the little stories about each dog.

Travelling across nine states in the U.S. from Texas to Maryland, Dutch photographer Charlotte Dumas, 34, captured the remaining dogs in their twilight years in their homes where they still live with their handlers, a full decade on from 9/11.

Their stories have now been compiled in a book, called Retrieved, which is published on [...], the tenth anniversary of the attacks.

Noted for her touching portraits of animals, especially dogs, Charlotte wanted ‘Retrieved’ to mark not only the anniversary of the September 2001 attacks, but also as recognition for some of the first responders and their dogs.

…

Contacting the NYPD, the New York Fire Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Charlotte discovered that out of the nearly 100 dogs among the first responders deployed by FEMA, there were in fact only 15 still alive last year.

More on the book, ‘Retrieved’, and an interview with the photographer Charlotte Dumas here. Charlotte’s website here.

The Nachtmerrie: Death by Sleep Paralysis

Thanks to my FB friend Scott for this utterly fascinating article. Ever heard of SUNDS (Sudden Noctural Death Syndrome)? Me neither. Read about it here, how scores of people all around the world have died in their sleep from paralyzing fear.

By 1986, the Hmong deaths had slowed, but remained a striking epidemiological fact. Adler was a graduate student at UCLA studying traditional belief narratives at the time. She’d been researching what she called “nocturnal pressing spirit attacks,” or what scientific literature called sleep paralysis. Fascinatingly, sleep paralysis is known to just about all cultures, and it is almost always associated with nocturnal evil. In Indonesia, it’s called digeunton (“pressed on”). In China, it’s bei gui ya (“held by a ghost”). The Hungarians know it as boszorkany-nyomas, “witches’ pressure.” In Newfoundland, the spirit that comes is called the Old Hag, and the experience of sleep paralysis, ag rog, “hag ridden.” The Dutch name comes closest to what English speakers know. They call the presence nachtmerrie, the night-mare. The “mare” in question comes from the German mahr or Old Norse mara, which denoted a generally female supernatural being who in Adler’s words, “lay on people’s chests, suffocating them.” The etymology of mare isn’t clear, but the term is a fruit of the Indo-European language tree, likely from moros (death), mer (drive out), or mar (to pound, bruise, crush).

This is so intriguing. I’ve never experienced any sort of paralysis during sleep. The worst dreams I’ve had involve me moving in extreme slow motion, desperately trying to run from something, but completely unable to move quickly. I do remember one terrifying dream where I was trying to reach for my rosary but no matter how far I stretched my arm I couldn’t grasp it. I don’t remember any paralysis, though. And I once dreamt I was in the Apocolypse. The skies were dark and all around the land seemed to be war-ravaged. The faces of the people around me were stricken with terror and worry. Everyone was lining up in front of tables to get tickets to leave. I know. Weird, right? Tickets to try to leave the freakin’ End of Days. Amidst the chaos I heard someone say, very somberly but without fear, “There is nowhere to go. It is everywhere.” Anyway, back to the SUNDS story, which half-way through delves into the nature of belief and biology– and the theory that intense (negative) beliefs might literally kill you.

Drawing on all this evidence, Adler makes the provocative claim that the Laotian immigrants of the 1980s were in some sense killed by their powerful cultural belief in night spirits. It was not a simple process.

“It is my contention that in the context of severe and ongoing stress related to cultural disruption and national resettlement (exacerbated by intense feelings of powerlessness about existence in the United States), and from the perspective of a belief system in which evil spirits have the power to kill men who do not fulfill their religious obligations,” Adler writes, “the solitary Hmong man confronted by the numinous terror of the night-mare (and aware of its murderous intent) can die of SUNDS.”

Oh Canada! Calling Bullshit on the US Media

Out of Canada comes writer Rex Murphy, doing the job the US media should be doing, but refuses to. Seriously, this is a great read: “The Media’s Love Affair with a Disastrous President”. It’s a short piece and will only take a minute or two.

Much of the Obama coverage was orchestrated sycophancy. They glided past his pretensions — when did a presidential candidate before “address the world” from the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin? They ignored his arrogance — “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” And they averted their eyes from his every gaffe — such as the admission that he didn’t speak “Austrian.”

The media walked right past the decades-long association of Obama with the weird and racist pastor Jeremiah Wright. In the midst of the brief stormlet over the issue, one CNN host — inexplicably — decided that CNN was going to be a “Wright-free zone.” He could have hung out a sign: “No bad news about Obama here.”

The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency.

Obama: Incompetent or Malevolent?

 

I put my vote on BOTH. A person can be both ”a bungling amateur” and also deliberately nefarious. And I believe Obama certainly is both. Writer David Solway for Frontpage Magazine online agrees: “I have long argued that the most dangerous man in the world is not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il or Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, but Barack Hussein Obama.” Read it all.

On the one hand, Obama is demonstrably incompetent, overly dependent on his advisors and backers, far more preoccupied with the high life than with the life of ordinary Americans (e.g., his $50,000 a week vacation rental on Martha’s Vineyard) egregiously miseducated and with little grasp of world history (e.g., the Cairo speech where he managed to get his centuries wrong) or even of the standard usages of the English language (what, pray tell, is a “corpse-man”?)

…

Obama and his leftist administration are determined to bankrupt the nation as “a way to bind future generations to government dependency and to weaken ‘imperial’ America in the world at large.” Obama’s declared intention to pursue a program of “fundamentally transforming” a country that has no need of such an ideological mutation and his penchant for quite ruthlessly demonising his opponents reveals a peculiar streak of malevolence that few had initially suspected.

 

Pro-Choice and Vegetarian: A Study in Intellectual Inconsistency

Came across this article from the National Catholic Register and found it quite compelling. The writer, a former pro-choice vegetarian, gets to the bottom of the intellectual inconsistency in the Leftist view that abortion is a basic human right, while the killing of animals is barbaric. I have often wondered how the hell a person can hold such blatantly conflicting convictions. Thanks to this article by Jennifer Fulwiler, I understand it much better now.

The way I used to see it, all life is just chemical reactions, no one type of life any more inherently special than the next. In this view, the only reason that a human being would be considered more valuable than, say, a squirrel is because the human has higher levels of intelligence and consciousness than his furry friend.

On my spectrum of worthiness of life, adult humans were on the far right side; fetuses were on the left. Unborn humans were somewhere around shrimp and worms in terms of value, because they could not display any intelligence. And so it seemed unfair to ask women to turn their lives upside down for a lifeform that had all the value of a crustacean.

….

She goes on to explain how she began to feel more and more discomfort with her professors and classmates in university who expressed extreme far Left anti-Life ideas, such as euthanizing mentally disabled people. Yet, Jennifer was unable to properly debate these ideas because she realized her own view of what does and does not constitute value was also warped. It wasn’t until she began to explore Catholic teaching on the issue of dignity that she came to change her views.

 

Here is also a great blog post by another former pro-abortion advocate who took an intellectual and spiritual turn in the right direction. She also came to her conversion through an intellectual process while confronted by gruesome Leftist views in her unviversity classroom.

 

So I found myself in a state of cold shock and disbelief that I was reading of people — not just fringe crazies, but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and some Supreme Court Justices — casually speak about the inconvenience of the skulls and bone fragments of dismembered babies (“fetuses”) the same age as those babies in the NICU. The horrors continued when I read Gonzales v. Carhart [some excerpts here...warning: no photos, but the descriptions are extremely disturbing].It took my breath away to witness the level of evil that normal people can fall into supporting. They were talking about infanticide, but completely refused to label it as such. It was when I considered that these were educated, reasonable professionals who were probably not bad people that I realized that evil always works through lies. I also took a mental step back from the entire pro-choice movement. If this is what it meant to be “pro-choice,” I was not pro-choice.

 

 

 

 

The Rotted Unripened Fruit of the UK’s Socialist Agenda

London and other British cities are on fire as I write this. International media remain alternately “baffled” at the root cause or pinning the cause on any number of things besides the truth (such as the appalling “crimes of convenience” lie). What began as rioting over the supposed “suspicious” shooting of a black man by police has turned into all-out war in the streets, resulting in looting, a few deaths, and jail cells in London so packed to over-flowing that arrested rioters are being sent to lock-ups in neighboring towns. The majority of the rioters are said to be angry youth comprised of Blacks and Muslims. The big question remains WHY? How can a fruit become rotted before it has even ripened? It’s really not a complicated answer. It’s the same toxic filth that has created social un-rest, disaffected youth, and a fed-up citizenry everywhere on earth the poison takes root: Socialist policies and government-created dependency on welfare. Read about it here in this excellent article.

They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.

Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.

The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist.

Are We Ready for a New Kind of POTUS?

Truthfully, it’s been a long, long time since we had a President of these United States who was a bona fide intellectual thinker, with ideas genuinely outside of “politics as usual”. Ronald Reagan was probably the closest we’ve come, but I’m thinking of much farther back than Reagan. I urge you to read this article on Thaddeus McCotter, who recently announced his intention to run for POTUS 2012. This guy is a real thinker, someone who thinks OUTSIDE of mainstream politics, someone who may indeed be the man we need for a new “American Spring”, or an “American Renaissance”, as the article’s writer calls it. I don’t know much about McCotter but this article got my attention.

Drawing upon the wisdom of such champions of the Western intellectual tradition as Edmund Burke, Hilaire Belloc and Orestes Brownson, McCotter sees the central task of America’s statesmen as securing both order and freedom, and reconciling their competing claims in justice.

Because of the imperfections of human nature, order and freedom will never be perfectly balanced and perfect justice will forever elude us in this world: “Ideologues fit the world to their minds; conservatives fit their minds to the world.”

But if American statesmen do their duty, McCotter predicts, the world once again will benefit, as it has done so in the past: “America’s future does not lie in becoming a secular, cosmopolitan, socialist backwater. Our America is beautiful. She does not exist to emulate others; she exists to inspire the world.”

Talkin’ Blonde Hair Jihad Blues

I’m late to this but I have been following the saga of the blonde-haired Norwegian terrorist attack in Oslo, as well as the subsequent blame-game and character assassination of those in the anti-jihad movement. Specifically the media attacks on freedom warriors such as Pamela Geller (of blog Atlas Shrugs and anti-jihad organization SIOA), Robert Spencer (of blog Jihad Watch as well as author of numerous best-selling books on Islam and the jihad), and Bruce Bawer (author of “While Europe Slept”, which details the growing Islamization of Europe, including Norway where the Brievik massacre took place last week)). The media has been desperately trying to pin the Anders Brievik massacre on people like Geller, Spencer, Bawer, and folks like myself and my friends in the anti-jihad movement (see link at bottom of this post). So I take it personally when my friends, people I respect and admire, and myself are slandered and smeared.

We have never called for violence and we do not condone violence whether as a terror tactic or to implement our way of thinking. We abhor violence, especially against children and other innocent people. We have never called for violence, nor condoned any violence against Muslims (on the contrary, we want Muslims to be free, and so our fight is for them also). We only believe in the basic human right of self defense in cases of direct physical attack. We fight for our cause through intellectual discourse and information-sharing–never with guns and bombs.

It is precisely because we hate war and violence that we are opposed to Islamic jihad and cultural Islamization, which brings only misery and slavery to humanity wherever it is implemented. You need only take a cursory glance at any international news outlet to see the havoc, pain, and suffering that is wreaked by Islam, by Islam’s jihad “warriors”, and by Muslims who are actively engaged in the implementation of Islamization and sharia law by uprooting non-Muslim cultures. This is what we oppose. The media is using Anders Brievik (and morbidly fixated on the fact that he is white, blonde, and tall), a certifiable lunatic and terrorist, to discredit the anti-jihad, pro-freedom movement. It is a disgusting, gutless tactic that no decent human being should fall for or be part of.

We will continue our fight to expose Islamic jihad and to demand answers from the political Left who appease and defend islamic violence while smearing and demonizing pro-freedom culture warriors such as my friends mentioned above. We will NOT allow the satanic acts of one blonde (!!!!) terrorist to silence us from talking about the MILLIONS of Muslim terrorists who rape, kill, and subjugate innocent people all over the world at every hour of every day. I continue to support my fellow defenders of civilization and I’m admiring them more now than ever.

Stay informed. Stay vigilant. Do not be silenced. Never give up.

My friend Mare of blog Zilla of the Resistance has started a support chain of bloggers called “Operation United Front” who want to voice their support and encouragement for Pam Geller and Robert Spencer. If you have a blog and want it added to the roll call, contact Mare through the link below. Otherwise, read the link anyway. Lots of great information there.

http://http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/07/operation-united-front.htmlzillablog.marezilla.com/2011/07/operation-united-front.html

Policing America for a Jihad That Doesn’t Exist

Pam Geller, of blog Atlas Shrugs, has written a compelling post on her experiences of this week’s Independence Day festivities in NYC, namely the police’s absurd and humiliating show of force. I encourage you to take a minute to read this important piece (below) on how we are being turned into a police state on account of a jihad that our government and its complicit media insists over and over “doesn’t exist”.

Lies, all lies. Some of what Pam describes as occurring frequently in NYC is also happening in Washington, DC, where I live. Just a week or so before I left for Japan I was in downtown DC and found myself in the midst of a small, peaceful, completely non-threatening protest by anti-Israel loons. There were a few counter-protesters but the entire group combining both sides probably didn’t make up 40 people total. It seemed quite impromptu and took place on the sidewalk outside of a government building that I can’t recall the name of (there are so many of them). In any case, the police where there with cars, motorcycles, and patrols on foot carrying assault rifles. It was ABSURD, but this sort of thing has been going on since Obama took the White House. I’ve lived in DC and/or its immediate surroundings for 20 years and I can assure you there were never foot patrol with assault rifles prior to Obama. Something has shifted under Obama. We are in the early stages of becoming a police state, and most of these so-called “safety measures” are just a bullshit excuse to harass and intimidate law-abiding citizens. There is a legitimate threat from jihad, but since the government insists there is no jihad, what are they policing us for? Either address the jihad or leave us alone.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/07/under-seige-and-have-a-nice-day-.html

Islam’s Contribution* to the World

*Yes, that’s a trick blog title. Islam has contributed NOTHING to the world (death, mayhem, and subjugation does not count as a “contribution” when you understand the literal meaning of the word from its Latin origin, which implies a giving which “brings together”, and as such can only have a positive or beneficial context), but this simple historical fact hasn’t stopped the US administration under B. Hussein Obama from forcing lies and propaganda down the throats of ignorant, gullible fools who believe anything Leftists and multiculturalists say on face value.

Thanks to Facebook friend Michael Himko for this excellent article which breaks down the propaganda and settles once and for all the mythical perception of Islam’s “contributions to civilization”. There simply are no contributions. Even the commonly held belief that Muslims gifted mathematics with the invention of the zero is a total lie. Read the whole article. It is a brilliant read, which not only shatters myths but also traces the embarrassing history of Islamic superstition and stupidity that has actually PREVENTED Muslims for centuries (right up to now) from making progress in various fields of learning and advancement, even when at times some tried and had the minds for it. Islam would not allow it. What a sad waste of humanity Islam has made.

Full text: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/38155

I Support Pam Geller (Live from Tokyo!)

Okay, so I’m spending the summer in Japan, currently in Tokyo. It’s around 10:00 pm on Monday night, US Independence Day, in fact. God Bless America! And so anyway, I’ve been keeping up with news (mainly through Facebook) as much as time (and WiFi connection for my Blackberry) allows. Seems I totally missed a hot story in the Conservative blogosphere regarding Pamela Geller of blog Atlas Shrugs (and SIOA), in relation to some comments she made about the English Defense League (who I wholeheartedly support) being infiltrated by racists and anti-Semites (which I do NOT support). In response, so I’ve been able to glean, Conservatives are going apeshit, with prominent anti-jihad bloggers all over banding together to lay Pam out in lavender. Thing is, Pam was fucking RIGHT, as later proven by statements made by EDL’s founder, the great Tommy Robinson.

I still don’t have all the details, for reasons stated in my opening, but thanks to my good friend Mare of blog Zilla of the Resistance, I was able to get somewhat updated to this story (see Mare’s link below), and to thus be given the opportunity to use my humble (and not updated enough) blog to weigh in with my support for Pam. So that’s what this is. This is why I stopped in the middle of my dinner to immediately get this written and posted. I support the EDL and I support Pam Geller.

To the fucktards who want to play cult of celebrity and pretend that EDL is stocked full of angels who descended to earth from on high, and thus feel justified to smear one of our best warriors for liberty by bringing an internet campaign against her in a show of technological thuggery: Guess what, fuckers? Two can play at this game.

Live from Tokyo: Happy Independence Day, America!

- Keiko

http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/07/this-blogger-stands-with-geller.html

The John Jay Study on Priest Sex Abuse

The Left is in a feeding frenzy over the findings in the John Jay study, an official study commissioned by the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on sexual abuse among Catholic clergy in the US.

In the aftermath of the media blitz in 2002 exposing sexual abuse by Catholic priests, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) commissioned researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to study what happened. In 2004, the first studied the nature and scope of the problem, covering the years 1950-2002. Its latest study addresses the causes and context of abuse.

The Left is the enemy of truth. Every single time. They’ve gone off in an insane, irrational mockery of the study and its legitimate findings, which point to a cesspool of hedonism and inculturation of sexual deviancy coming out of the 1960′s so-called “sexual revolution”, specifically in the area of homosexuality. The Left just can’t stand what the study’s findings led to. Here are some examples of the media’s “professional commentary” in response to the study:

• Tony Auth labels his cartoon “It Was The Sixties, Man”

• A Boston Globe writer titles her piece, “Blame it on the ’60s, Man”

• Jon Carroll brands his article, “The ’60s Made Them Do It”

• A Canadian writer says, “Church Study Blames Swinging Sixties”

• ReligionDispatches indicts the Church for “Blame the Sixties” rationale

• Church-basher Marci Hamilton says the Church is guilty of “blaming the Sixties”

• Rabbi Shmuley Boteach says the Church blames “the 1960s”

• Mark Silk says the Church invokes the “Woodstock” excuse

• Sally Quinn’s brother, Wilson, slams the Church for “Blame the Hippies” excuse

• Kevin Osborne of Citybeat.com says the Church blames “dirty hippies”

• New Haven writer Doug Daniels says the Church blames “hippies”

• A Minnesota writer says the Church blames Jefferson Airplane

• A Florida writer argues the Church blames Janis Joplin

It’s all just a big joke to them. Because a radical Leftist sexual agenda helped create and nourish the very environment that led to sexual abuse of children by (homosexual) Catholic priests. Which is what Catholics such as myself have been saying for years. It’s not about Catholics making excuses. It’s about taking an honest look at the culture and societal dysfunction that bred and harbored these deviant priests. Bill Donohue, Director of the Catholic League, comments on the John Jay study and pinpoints some of its weaknesses:

“Interestingly,” the report says, “an increase in the number of male victims occurred during the peak years of the abuse crisis. From my perspective, it would have made more sense to say, “Unsurprisingly” than “Interestingly.”

Here’s why. Four related events emerged at the peak of the crisis that account for what happened:

— There was an exodus of heterosexual priests after Vatican II, a large percentage of whom got married.

— The effect of this exodus was to leave behind a greater proportion of homosexual priests.

— A tolerance for sexual expression in the seminaries was evident at this time, leading many previously celibate homosexual priests to act out.

— And there was a surge of homosexuals into the seminaries.

It was the interaction of these four factors, I would argue, that accounts for the increase in male victims at the height of the sexual abuse crisis.

Unfortunately, the writers of the study–Donohue points out correctly–failed to apply the proper weight to the issue of homosexuality in the priest abuse cases. Elephant in the room:

So if the abusers weren’t pedophiles, and the victims were mostly adolescent males, wouldn’t that make the victimizers homosexuals?

What else could we possibly be talking about if not homosexuality?

“What is not well understood,” we learn from the study, “is that it is possible for a person to participate in a same-sex act without assuming or recognizing an identity as a homosexual.”

Yes, it is entirely possible for a homosexual not to recognize that he is a homosexual. So what? Isn’t it behavior — not self-perception — that objectively defines one’s sexual orientation?

Kudos to Donohue for bringing down the hammer on this faulty logic.

The authors gathered clinical data from treatment centers, places where troubled priests were assigned. What they found was that “three quarters of the priests whom we have data had sexual relations with an adult and/or minor after ordination.”

Given that the minors were mostly male, and beyond puberty, is this not clearly an issue of homosexuality?

The study is not all bad. It simply contains some weak points, but I believe rational people can easily identify the truth. The study is ripe with food for thought on the issue of how society and culture form the psyche of those human beings living within it. Culture can make or break a person, make or break families, make or break a nation. We have to decide what kind of culture we want for America. A culture built on deviancy and rebellion, or a culture built on sound Judeo-Christian values. The John Jay study is only one of the many pieces of evidence available to us to help point us in the right direction.

 

Democrats: The Smut Meisters of America

Yes, I said it. At this point the Democrat party has become synonymous with SMUT. And I won’t take it back, so don’t bother lecturing me about how you have a Democrat friend who volunteers in Mother Teresa’s orphanage or some such thing. I don’t care.

The Left has single-handedly introduced some of the most sick and twisted language and behavior into the consciousness of every-day Americans, and I for one have had it up to here with it. It doesn’t help that some Conservatives keep this filth rotating on over-drive with never-ending references, jokes, and innuendos every time one of the Left’s deviants makes the headlines for perverted behavior. Sure, some jokes are funny. And sometimes I laugh my ass off, such as in this case. But that’s not vulgarity, that’s calling out the Dems for being meisters of smut. It’s different. But really, enough.

A new headline featuring language that is extremely offensive to me as a woman, coming out of Conservative giant Big Government, is what set me off this morning. I’m not saying these things shouldn’t be reported. I’m not saying the writers or publishers of BG are wrong. I’m not saying this at all. I’m saying I’m sick to death of smut. I don’t have any solution except to vote these cretins out of office and start holding our politicians to a higher moral standard. Politicians don’t have to be perfect. But do they have to be vile? Is there no middle road? I just want the extreme vulgarity to stop–the operative word here being extreme.

I don’t live under a rock. I’m not clueless and naive. But neither do I want to be visually and verbally assaulted with a constant barrage of filth and degeneracy every time I log into my Facebook and Twitter accounts, turn on the news, open a newspaper, switch on a radio show, or see a magazine in the check-out line. Do you?? Does this really enhance anyone’s life? How does America look as a nation when we laugh ourselves silly over the most salacious details of perversion–just because the offender is on the other side of the political aisle? What does it say about our leadership…and those who elect these perverts and deviants? We need a change in government, this is undeniable. The Democrats are, by and large, morally unhinged. But we also need a change in moral character. Certain behavior shouldn’t be tolerated. What happened to decency?

This whole media obsession with sex scandals is devolving into pure gutter trash. We’ve devolved way past a little wink and a nudge. It seems that I have to learn about or be exposed to the most vile and vulgar verbage thanks in large part to the Democrats. Look, I don’t use pornography. I’m vehemently morally opposed to pornography in all its forms. It’s bad for the user, bad for the subject of the material, bad for society, bad for the human psyche (which is more fragile than you know, just ask Ted Bundy). So why should I have to be exposed to pornographic material just by reading legitimate news? I could live the remainder of my years happily without the gross description of what Bill Clinton did with a cigar. I could live a fulfilling life having never known what “fisting” is (as in Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar”, Kevin Jennings) and why the term “teabaggers” used by Obama and other Democrats to refer to Tea Partiers is so offensive. I could be perfectly at peace in the world without ever seeing headlines featuring words like “p*ssy” (as in the BG link above) or jokes about Anthony Weiner and his erection (and shame on those who distastefully re-publish the photos). Really, the Left is so degenerate, shameful, and an embarassment to humanity. But do the rest of us need to laugh so hard?

I mean, I have enough smut exposure just dealing with the topic of Islamic barbarism and sadism. I expect more decency from the folks leading our country, writing our laws, and making decisions about how to spend our money.

Join Me At Forbidden Territories

Pierre Rehov, another of the West’s warriors for freedom, has created a great new social networking site for information-sharing on middle east topics. Since the media lies out of its collective ass (when it’s bothering to report on real issues at all), it’s up to the common citizenry to be the voice of truth. Join me at Forbidden Territories, where you can create a blog, post pictures and videos,  join a network of like-minded people, and still connect through Facebook and Twitter.

Be sure to friend me up when you get there!

What “Earth Day” Means to Me

Not a damn thing. And here’s why: Because I don’t need it. (Plus, it’s a total scam.)

The Leftist-manufactured so-called “Earth Day” falls this year on April 22, the same day observed by Christians worldwide as Good Friday–the day Jesus Christ offered his life and blood to complete the work of Redemption. The Earth is a blessing and a miracle. Even though I detest the Left and all its nefarious ideology, I never let this deter me from honest, responsible care of my environment and precious resources.  I grew up this way and it wasn’t because of the Left or the government. It was because my father worked his ass off to provide for his family so my mom wouldn’t have to work and could raise their children.

As a result of growing up in a single-income household we never had much by way of extras, but we had all of the basic needs. I grew up understanding the value of a dollar, and saw in my father’s commitment to his job and his family the sweat and toil that it takes to earn that dollar. I saw it when my mother poured over the monthly food and utility bills to make every dollar stretch to its maximum worth. It would have been an insult to my family, and irresponsible as a citizen of my country, to waste utilities. It would have been ungrateful to live wastefully, knowing that so many in America and around the world did not have even the barest necessities that allowed me to live in health and comfort.

We were forever turning off lights and other things that consumed electricity, and we never wasted water. While we were not impoverished, we did without certain luxuries that simply were not necessary. We didn’t own a dishwasher, a microwave, a toaster oven, or air condition. In the spring and summer we preferred to hang out our laundry rather than using the dryer, and growing up in the countryside of the great American south, there’s nothing more delicious than the smell and feel of sun-dried clothes plucked right off the clothesline. We washed aluminum foil, ziplock bags, and anything else that could be cleaned and reused again.  We grew our own gardens with just about every vegetable you can imagine on the large tract of land my father bought himself after 35 years of self-employment. We had flowers, strawberries, and all types of melons, too. No pesticides, no chemicals, all organic. My mother was so good at canning and freezing that we rarely had to buy vegetables throughout the winters. We didn’t hire a plumber when the toilet was stopped up, nor go to a mechanic when the car needed a repair, nor to the carwash when our vehicles got dirty. When my mother decided she wanted a full back porch, my father didn’t call a carpenter. He built it himself. When my mother decided she wanted an old-fashioned front-porch swing, my father built that too. Same goes for when clothing needed to be mended, a floor needed to be re-tiled, a tub needed to be re-grouted, or walls needed to be painted. My parents took care of all the needs of our home, land, and family. And I certainly had a full load of chores–indoors and outdoors–every day of every week, for my contribution. We lived the real American dream: taking care of ourselves with no help from the government, no Lefty propaganda, no incentives. We were God-fearing Reagan conservatives all the way.

This is why Earth Day means zip, zero, nada to me. I don’t need Earth Day or other such Leftist manufactured controls, threats, and guilt trips to be thrifty or responsible. I continue to live the same way I was raised. Sure, here and there I’ve picked up a few luxuries in my adult life that I didn’t have growing up. But I earn them. Nobody hands them to me.

So, “Earth Day” will be like any other day for me. Good Friday, however, will remain in my mind and heart throughout the day as I reflect upon the glorious mystery that is a true gift of Love to the whole Earth: the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. “For the Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” (Psalm 24:1)

The H$llyw$$d Fat Cats Who Hate Capitalism

Ever notice how filthy rich Hollywood fat cats, who have made a fortune off the American public, are always the loudest to complain about capitalism?

Ever notice that the biggest Lefties accusing Americans of greed and imperialism are the ones with the most private jets, multi-million dollar homes around the world, first-class vacations, and designer wardrobes that alone are worth enough money to wipe out poverty in any inner city in America?

Ever notice that the actors, writers, directors, producers, and singers who rely on cash flow from you and me, are the most vocal supporters of Barack Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around”…wealth created and generated by Americans who are paying bills and raising families on moderate incomes?

What the fuck is it with these people and why are they allowed to blather on, endlessly insulting working-class Americans, with nary a peep of complaint from the public? Consider the post below the next time you get ready to spend your hard-earned cash on a ticket to a movie, or a CD, or a concert featuring one of these ungrateful, hypocritical, money-grubbing creeps. Money that will line their pockets while they continue to live in the lap of indescribable luxury, plotting how to further the cause of Socialism/Communism in America. And when it happens, they won’t suffer. You and I will.

Susan Sarandon:  :  “It’s a great opportunity this idiot Walker has given us…to remember our strength, and remember that we are the many and they are the few.  And even though they have the wealth, we have something that is as important if not more important.” Net Worth, $50 million

Michael Moore:    “We’ve allowed a vast majority of cash to be concentrated in the hands of just a few people. … They’re sitting on the money, they’re using it for their own — they’re putting it someplace else with no interest in helping you with your life, with that money. We’ve allowed them to take that. That’s not theirs, that’s a national resource, that’s ours. We all have this — we all benefit from this or we all suffer as a result of not having it. And I think we need to go back to taxing these people at the proper rates.”  Net Worth, $50 million

Janeane Garofalo:    “Our country is founded on a sham: our forefathers were slave-owning rich white guys who wanted it their way. So when I see the American flag, I go, ‘Oh my God, you’re insulting me.’”  Net Worth, $10 million

Whoopi Goldberg:  “I don’t really view communism as a bad thing.”  Net Worth, $45 million

Sean Penn:  “I was brought up in a country that relished fear-based religion, corrupt government and an entire white population living on stolen property that they murdered for and that is passed on from generation to generation.”  Net Worth, $150 million

 And please, there’s more. Read it all.

John Cleese Notices London Ain’t All Tea and Crumpets Anymore

Another Lefty lives to suck on the rotten fruit of his own failed ideology. You wanted less stuffy? You got it! British actor John Cleese wonders WTF happened to the London of his youth.

He said: “There were disadvantages to the old culture, it was a bit stuffy and it was more sexist and more racist. But it was an educated and middle-class culture. Now it’s a yob culture. The values are so strange.”

He added that he preferred living in Bath to London because the capital no longer felt “English”.

“London is no longer an English city which is why I love Bath,” he said. “That’s how they sold it for the Olympics, not as the capital of England but as the cosmopolitan city. I love being down in Bath because it feels like the England that I grew up in.”  

It’s called “multiculturalism”, John, which you and every other European/western Lefty has worshipped at the altar of for decades. So don’t pretend to be confused by the results. That foul image you see plaguing the streets of a once-glorious European capital? That’s called Islamization.

How the Judeo-Christian Ethos Invented Morality

From Dennis Prager comes a brilliant piece of work on how the Judeo-Christian value system essentially invented morality, and created the boundaries that separate correct sexual behavior from deviancy. An essential must-read.

The Hebrew Bible, in particular the Torah (The Five Books of Moses), has done more to civilize the world than any other book or idea in history. It is the Hebrew Bible that gave humanity such ideas as a universal, moral, loving God; ethical obligations to this God; the need for history to move forward to moral and spiritual redemption; the belief that history has meaning; and the notion that human freedom and social justice are the divinely desired states for all people. It gave the world the Ten Commandments, ethical monotheism, and the concept of holiness (the goal of raising human beings from the animal-like to the God-like). Therefore, when this Bible makes strong moral proclamations, I listen with great respect. And regarding male homosexuality — female homosexuality is not mentioned — this Bible speaks in such clear and direct language that one does not have to be a religious fundamentalist in order to be influenced by its views. All that is necessary is to consider oneself a serious Jew or Christian.

What Evangelicals Owe Catholics: An Appreciation

We finally gets some props from a Protestant brethren.

I was nine years old when I first saw the new Pope—John Paul II—on television. Since this was the man who would be ushering in Armageddon, I figured I’d better get to know the enemy. I watched as he stood in front of thousands of Catholics, waving and smiling, and noticed that something wasn’t quite right. His wasn’t the charming smile of “The Beast” that Brother Bob had warned his flock against. It was more of a sly grin. In fact, this new John Paul seemed like a nice guy; he might even pass for a Christian. Surely, I thought, he couldn’t be the Antichrist. After all, he was Polish. The Beast could be Russian or German, but not Polish. Even as a nine-year-old I knew that Poles couldn’t be scary.

This was the beginning of the end for my Jack Chick-style anti-Catholic bias, an inclination that was regrettably prevalent in many parts of rural Texas during my childhood. I became more intrigued by John Paul II, the Catholic Church, and the Catholic girls at my school. Over the years, I’ve engaged more directly with Catholics and the teachings of the Catholic Church, and my admiration and appreciation continues to grow.

Indeed, I’m often amazed when I consider how much of my thinking is shaped by papist scholars’ writing about such issues as bioethics, social thought, natural law theory, and the Just War tradition. Although I do not always find myself in complete agreement with it, the Catholic perspective has caused me to rethink my views on such matters as contraception, in-vitro fertilization, just wages, and the death penalty.

As deeply and irrevocably attached as I am to my own theological traditions (Reformed, Baptist, evangelical) there are many issues where they have historically come up short. In fact, I would argue that there are dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of areas in which we evangelicals should acknowledge a debt owed to our Catholic brothers and sisters.

Consider, for instance, three areas in which our fellow Christians within the Catholic faith have led the way: 

Read it all here. It’s a great piece.

The Beatification of Pope John Paul II: May 1, 2011

It’s nice to take a break from the craziness and evil of the world to hear some good news. Most people outside of committed Catholics who follow Catholic news might not realize that the Church will officially beatify Pope John Paul II on May 1, 2011. His official title will be Blessed John Paul II. As such, he gets a feast day assigned to him: it is October 22. However, this is not yet a universal feast day–that only comes with full canonization (the final proclamation of sainthood). This feast will be celebrated in the diocese of Rome and in all the dioceses of John Paul’s native Poland.

“From the day of his death on April 2, 2005, the people of God began proclaiming his holiness,” and hundreds, if not thousands, visit his tomb each day, the cardinal said. A further sign is the number of biographies published about him and the number of his writings that are translated and re-published.

“In the course of a beatification cause, there is the vox populi,” he said, which must be “accompanied by the vox dei (voice of God) — the miracles — and the vox ecclesiae (voice of the church),” which is the official judgment issued after interviewing eyewitnesses and consulting with historians, physicians, theologians and church leaders to verify the candidate’s holiness.

Beatification and canonization are not recognitions of someone’s superior understanding of theology, nor of the great works he or she accomplished, he said. Declaring someone a saint, the church attests to the fact that he or she lived the Christian virtues in a truly extraordinary way and is a model to be imitated by others, the cardinal said.

The candidate, he said, must be perceived “as an image of Christ.

Beatification is the 3rd step in the process to full canonization. The first step come with the opening of the “cause”. At this point, the person is titled “Servant of God”. The second step comes with the title “Venerable”. The entire process is long and laborious, and can take decades (or even centuries) in many cases. It’s during this time that the well-known “Devil’s Advocate” is employed by the Church. The job of the Devil’s Advocate is to dig up every piece of dirt they can possibly find to disprove the subject’s holiness and thus, prevent the subject’s cause from proceeding.

To learn more about the canonization process, go here. To learn more about the cause of Pope John Paul II, go here. To learn more about his amazing life and accomplishments, go here.