Cross Can Stay – for now, anyway

Posted on April 1, 2013

Here’s a welcome bit of good news, that came just in time for Easter: WTC cross can stay in National September 11 Memorial & Museum: judge.
Story from the New York Post ~
 

A New York judge has tossed out a lawsuit seeking to stop the display of a cross-shaped steel beam found among the World Trade Center’s wreckage.
 
Federal judge Deborah Batts on Friday rejected the arguments of a national atheists’ group.
 
American Atheists had sued the National September 11 Memorial & Museum’s operators in 2011 on constitutional grounds.
 
The judge says the decision to include the artifact in the Sept. 11 museum did not advance religion impermissibly. She also says it does not create excessive entanglement between the state and religion. And she noted that the cross helps tell part of the history of Sept. 11.

 
Common sense prevails for a change. Thank-you Lord!

 

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Obama’s New Federal Policy on Illegals

Posted on April 1, 2013

Have you heard about President Obama’s just-released executive orders regarding “undocumented” aliens? ~
 

• The President of the United States shall have the power to expel from national territory any foreigner, according to the law and after a hearing. The law shall establish the administrative procedure for this purpose, as well as the place where the foreigner should be detained and the time for that.
 
• Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country.
 
• Only Americans by birth can perform all government employments, positions, or commissions in which the status of citizenship is indispensable.
 
• During peacetime, foreigners shall neither serve in the Army nor in the police bodies. During peacetime, only Americans by birth can serve in the military as well can perform any employment or commission within such corporations.
 
• The same condition applies to captains, pilots, skippers, ship engineers, flight engineers and, in general, to every crew member in a ship or an airplane carrying the American flag. In the same way, only Americans by birth can be port harbormasters, steersmen and airport superintendents.
 
• Americans shall have priority over foreigners, under equal circumstances, for all kind of concessions, employments, positions or commissions of the government in which the status of citizenship is not indispensable.”
 
• A new National Catalog of Foreigners will be established to track all outside tourists and foreign nationals. A new National Population Registry will track and verify the identity of every member of the population, who must carry a citizens identity card. Visitors who do not possess proper documents and identification will be subject to arrest at any time.
 
• Those seeking permanent residency or naturalization, must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain American citizenship must show a birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence, pass an exam and prove they can provide their own health care.

 

These are all MEXICO’S policies on foreigners.
 
As we all know, US policy on foreigners is “fair” …
to everyone but native-born Americans.
 
 
 

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Glorious Day

Posted on March 31, 2013

Casting Crowns: “Glorious Day (Living He Loved Me)” – Live

 

Alleluia!

 

Happy Easter!

 

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Saturday Shorts – 3-30-13

Posted on March 30, 2013

Random links of interest, concern or curiosity from the past week or so, that deserve at least a SHORT mention:

 
America on a Flatbed ~ Great analogy by Tim Slagle at Breitbart comparing Obama’s broken-down limousine to the country’s broken-down economy
 
Anatomy of the Bank Run ~ Interesting read from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in view of what’s going on in Cyprus these days.
 
Egyptian mosque turned into house of torture for Christians after Muslim Brotherhood protest ~ Barbarians running the asylum over there.

The latest crackdown is further confirmation that the Muslim Brotherhood’s most hard-line elements are consolidating control in Egypt, according to Shaul Gabbay, a professor of international studies at the University of Denver.
 
“It will only get worse,” said Gabbay. “This has been a longstanding conflict, but now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power, it is moving forward to implement its ideology – which is that Christians are supposed to become Muslims.
 
“There is no longer anything to hold them back,” he continued. “The floodgates are open.”

Good thing they got rid of that evil Mubarak huh?
Apparently the Obama administration thinks so…
Rewarding hate, intolerance, and broken promises – with taxpayer dollars ~

Egypt and the Palestinian Authority defy the U.S., beg for money (with the implicit threat that conditions will grow even worse if aid is withheld), then defy the U.S. again. That’s not an alliance; that’s a protection racket.

 
Police tear-gas anti-gay marriage protesters in Paris ~ Did you hear about the hundreds of thousands of French people who took to the streets last weekend to protest the legalization of same-sex marriage and adoption? No? It’s just one of those stories the msm refuses to report on – doesn’t fit the narrative. (They’d rather carry on with their relentless bullying.)
“We want the president to deal with the economy and leave the family alone,” Ms Tellenne (one of the protest organizers) said Sunday.
 

What a concept.
 
And by the way ~ Civil Rights Activist: ‘No Comparison’ Between Civil Rights, Gay Rights Movement
 
Republicans, Get Over the 2012 Loss—and Start Fighting Back ~ Some motivating thoughts from Liz Cheney ~

We are all that stands between this president’s policies and a damaged and diminished America…
…It is time to defend our values with vigor and courage.

Let’s not go down without a fight!
Listen to Mark Levin for more inspiration. “WE OWN THIS COUNTRY!”
 

Happy Easter!

 

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Good Friday ~ Sacrifice & Salvation

Posted on March 29, 2013

Christian performance art ~
This presentation really personalizes the Cross – and what it represents ~

…PAYING THE PRICE…

 

 

I caused Thy grief and sighing
By evils multipying
As countless as the sands.
I caused the woes unnumbered
With which Thy soul is cumbered,
Thy sorrows raised by wicked hands.
 
~ From hymn “Upon the Cross Extended”

 

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“Resist we much”

Posted on March 28, 2013

As if Detroit doesn’t have enough problems these days, race-baiter Al “Resist-we-much” Sharpton was in town today, NAN thugs in tow.
 

Al Sharpton flanked by Rev. Charles Williams III, president
of the Michigan Chapter of National Action Network (on left)

 
And what, you may be asking, brings Al to Motown on a lovely March morning? Well, to paraphrase the Rev., he’s here to offer support on the grounds of voting rights. Now, I don’t recall Detroiters going to the polls to vote for bankruptcy but to hear Al talk, that’s apparently what they did. And, “what Gov. Snyder has done is nullified(sic) the voters of this city.” 😯
 

Rather than give the city a chance to recover under the emergency manager that most Detroiters – including the mayor – seem to support, Sharpton and his NANites want to let the city council continue to drive the Motor City off the cliff.
 
Star Parker had a great post a couple days ago; Urban problem bigger than Detroit, talking about Sharpton and his ilk protesting those who are legitimately trying to solve the city’s financial woes ~

… they cry foul when adult supervision is sent in to take on the formidable rescue task.
 
The man Gov. Snyder has put in charge, Kevin Orr, is a high-powered Washington, D.C., black attorney who, according to USA Today, “has extensive experience in municipal finances, public infrastructure projects, public pension matters and litigation.”
 
Al Sharpton’s man in Detroit, Rev. Charles Williams III, has called Orr an “Uncle Tom.”
 
The travesty now taking place in Detroit should be carefully watched by all Americans. This is not a one off exception to the rule, but is just the latest case study of a pathology dragging down the whole nation. And it’s a pathology for which low-income minority Americans are paying the dearest price.
 
 

Economist Dr. Walter Williams has noted that the common denominator of the nation’s 10 poorest cities with populations over 250,000, of which Detroit is No. 1, is that they all have been controlled by liberal, Democratic mayors for decades, the majority of which have been black.
 
Detroit’s former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, son of former congresswoman and Congressional Black Caucus member Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, is now in jail awaiting sentencing after being convicted on 24 counts for running a criminal enterprise out of the mayor’s office.
 
The point is that we need to discern a rule of thumb here: the more that human lives are governed by compulsion and entitlement rather than freedom, choice and personal responsibility, the more that outcomes are uniformly undesirable.

 
If Sharpton actually cared about improving things in Detroit, he’d stop looking in all the wrong places to assign blame, and support people who are actually trying to get something positive done…
On the day that Michigan’s emergency manager and right-to-work laws took effect amid intensifying controversy, the city’s mortgage mogul makes it clear he’s doubling down on Detroit ~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 
While researching NAN (Sharpton’s organization) I was listening to Deneen Borelli who happened to be filling in for Sean Hannity today. Now here’s another black woman (like Star Parker) that I really wish more blacks had a chance to hear. This afternoon she was speaking with the great Col. Allen West. They were discussing a new website that Borelli is involved with called Empower.org. It’s a FreedomWorks Outreach Program aimed at getting black Americans to hear the conservative message – before it’s distorted by race hustlers like Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Sounds really promising.
 

Related:
Look to Detroit & You’ll See Where Obama’s Policies Will Take Us
 
EM protesters leave Detroit City Hall, say unrest will continue Apparently, Sharpton and his NANites are just getting started. Sounds like he’s planning on busing in a bunch of rent-a-protesters. Can’t wait.
 

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Deconstructing Marriage – Part II

Posted on March 28, 2013

While I was working on my last post, Daniel Greenfield (aka – Sultan Knish) was blogging on the same topic over at his site: The Deconstruction of Marriage. And while great minds may think alike (ha!) – he writes much better than I ever will ~

The deconstruction of marriage is not a mere matter of front page photos of men kissing. It began with the deconstruction of the family. Gay marriage is only one small stop on a tour that includes rising divorce rates, falling childbirth rates and the abandonment of responsibility by twenty and even thirty-somethings.
 
Each step on the tour takes apart the definition and structure of marriage until there is nothing left. Gay marriage is not inclusive, it is yet another attempt at eliminating marriage as a social institution by deconstructing it until it no longer exists.

 
It’s all part of the Progressive push to render everything meaningless.

You can abolish democracy by banning the vote or you can do it by letting people vote as many times as they want, by letting small children and foreigners vote, until no one sees the point in counting the votes or taking the process seriously. The same goes for marriage or any other institution. You can destroy it by outlawing it or by eliminating its meaningfulness until it becomes so open that it is absurd.
 

As Orwell understood in 1984, tyranny is essentially about definitions. It is hard to fight for freedom if you lack the word. It is hard to maintain a marriage if the idea no longer exists. Orwell’s Oceania made basic human ideas into contradictory things. The left’s deconstruction of social values does the same thing to such essential institutions as marriage; which becomes an impermanent thing of no fixed nature or value.
 
That is what is at stake here. This is not a struggle about the right of equality, but the right of definition. It is not about whether men can get married, but whether marriage will mean anything at all. It is about preserving the shapes and structures of basic social concepts that define our identities in order to preserve those very concepts, rather than accepting their deconstruction into nullification.

 
The gay marriage bulldozer rumbling through America is really just cleaning up the detritus still remaining from the institution of marriage. I’m afraid those of us in its path (standing up to the real bullies) – holding up a stop sign – better be prepared to get flattened.
 
Read Greenfield’s whole excellent article. It’s depressing – but true.
 
Related:
Gay Tea Party activist denounces gay marriage (video): “Regressive legislation.”
Same-sex marriage will not redefine marriage, it will UNdefine it, and unravel it, and in so doing will UNdefine children.
Too rational for the Left?
 

Posted in Good vs.Evil, Timeless Principles | 1 Comment

Deconstructing Marriage

Posted on March 27, 2013

It’s not about fairness. It’s not about equality. It’s not even about love. No, the manic push for “same-sex marriage” has a much darker aim…
 
 

The homosexual activists are intelligent enough (and frankly, devious enough) to know what will happen when they get what they’re demanding. When the institution of marriage is no longer defined as “one man & one woman” then anything and everything goes.
 
As Matt Barber at Life Site News puts it ~

Once the government pretends that some vague combination of “love” and “consent” are all that a “marriage” requires, then other “arbitrary” and “discriminatory” parameters beyond a binary male-female prerequisite must also go poof.
 
That is to say, if the Court magically divines some constitutional right to “same-sex marriage,” then full “marriage equality” necessarily demands that polygamous, incestuous and any other equally aberrant nuptial cocktail be likewise permitted.

 
The radical gay lobby knows all that. In fact, “all that” is actually their real goal.
 

J. Richard Pearcey at The Pearcey Report talks about the activists’ deceit and their real “endgame” in “The Revolt of Intelligence Against ‘Marriage Equality'” ~

Because the “equality” of “marriage equality” functions as a code word for relativism, the impact of the movement for homosexual “marriage” as a civil right is the opposite of what it is portrayed to be. The endgame is not to make marriage equally available to all, but to make it equally unavailable to all.
 
Masha Gessen, a lesbian and a journalist, spoke frankly about this at a conference in Sydney, Australia, last summer. “It’s a no-brainer that we should have the right to marry,” she said. “But I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.”
 
This admission “causes my brain some trouble,” Gessen says, “and part of why it causes me trouble is that fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie…”
 

… “Marriage equality” becomes “marriage elasticity,” with the ultimate goal of “marriage extinction.”

 
Here’s the bottom line, from Barber; Homosexual activists don’t want the white picket fence. They want to burn down the white picket fence. The endgame is not to achieve so-called “marriage equality,” but, rather, to render marriage reality meaningless.

 

Related:

The Revolt of Intelligence Against “Marriage Equality” J.Richard Pearcey at the Pearcey Report

Deconstructing Families & Motherhood ~ The radicals hate traditional families too.

Posted in Good vs.Evil, Timeless Principles | 1 Comment

Canada’s Cue-Jumpers

Posted on March 26, 2013

Looks like our neighbors to the north have the same “illegal” problem we have here in the states; law-breakers seem to get “fairer” treatment than law-abiding citizens.

“It’s important to remember that illegal immigrants cost law-abiding Canadian taxpayers tens of millions of dollars per year, and it costs our constituents thousands of jobs.”
~ Canadian Public Safety Minister Vic Toews

 

The following video deals with a new Canadian documentary series that focuses on border security (on NatGeo this Thursday, March 28th). Not surprisingly, Canada’s lefties – cut from the same cloth as our American variety – find the show “controversial.” The video’s narrator, Jerry Agar, speaking from his perspective as a naturalized citizen, vehemently disagrees;
“Illegal immigration is to immigration what shoplifting is to shopping.”
 

Video via Five Feet of Fury
 

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Chag Pesach Same’ach (חג פסח שמח)

Posted on March 25, 2013

~ Happy Passover to all children of the one true King ~

 
 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 
Related:
Passover on the Battlefields ~ Short article at the Jerusalem Connection, via the Jerusalem Post, about Passover observances during the American Civil War; some very interesting pieces of American history.
 

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Solitude

Posted on March 24, 2013

Whenever I dream of getting away from it all (which, quite frankly, occurs much more frequently since last November) I envision someplace like this…
 

St Govan’s Chapel ~ Dyfed, Wales

 

St Govan’s Point is the most southerly point on the Pembrokeshire coast.

A flight of worn stone steps leads up to the tiny chapel where St Govan (or Gawain) had his cell.
 
Most of (the structure) dates from the thirteenth century, but parts of it – the altar and a seat cut in the rock – may be much earlier, possibly even as early as the sixth century, when the saint reputedly established a hermitage here after miraculously escaping pursuit by pirates. The rock itself, so the story goes, opened and closed around him, keeping him hidden until his pursuers had gone.
 
Another story connects no lesser person than Sir Gawain – Arthur’s nephew, with the site. According to local legend, he is buried here, having retired to live out his days as a hermit after Arthur’s death. This conflicts with other stories which place Gawain’s death before the final battle in which Arthur met his end. There is a further conflict in that no one can decide whether Govan is a corruption of Gawain – in which case the saint is probably fictitious – or the reverse, so that one would assume that Gawain’s name became attached to the place some time after the end of the Arthurian era.

Source: King Arthur’s Knights
 

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Saturday Shorts – 3-23-13

Posted on March 23, 2013

Random links of interest, concern or curiosity from the past week or so, that deserve at least a SHORT mention:

 
Matthews: ‘I Think Ethnicity’s A Factor’ in Bachmann’s Criticism of Obama ~ I think brain damage may be a factor in Chris Matthew’s irrational blathering.
 
More deep thoughts from contemporary beat philosopher John Kerry ~ Our new secretary of state is going all cerebral on us already.

 
“Child of the ocean”
 
 
 

Wind farms are net carbon dioxide emitters ~ Turns out that a majority of the locales for windmills in the UK are peat land, that is, areas rich in peat soil. Now peat happens to be very carbon-rich. And when it’s disturbed, in the construction of wind farms for instance, it emits large amounts of… carbon.

Peat retains its carbon only when kept in its natural damp, boggy condition. But the development that goes along with big energy projects, from roads and rails to the windmills themselves, damages the peat and disrupts the flow of water, causing massive carbon dioxide release.

More well-intentioned Greeniac folly.
 
Muslim Brotherhood Sets Up Militia to Enforce Rule ~ Islamists quash pro-democracy proponents in Egypt and the Obama administration looks the other way ~

The White House was almost entirely silent in 2009 when millions of Iranians protested the regime. Today, thousands of Egyptians are challenging the Muslim Brotherhood and the similar silence is prompting the opposition to accuse the U.S. of siding with the Islamists.

 
Why is it that Barack Hussein Obama always seems to be on the wrong side of true freedom and democracy? And what exactly was he trying to accomplish in Israel this week? ~ Obama’s mysterious visit [Excellent article by Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post]
 
Inspector General Report on Racialist Dysfunction inside DOJ ~ Failure to prosecute the New Black Panthers for 2008 voter intimidation clearly not an anomaly.
 

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