Swiss Vote to Ban Minarets.

In a referendum held this past Sunday, the Swiss have voted to add the following sentence to their Constitution:
"The construction of minarets is forbidden."
Many in the Swiss government were taken by surprise with the result.
An article in the 10/13/2009 issue of Spiegel Online reported that in a recent survey only 35 percent of the Swiss supported the ban. The ban won with 57.5 percent of the votes.

In a Speigel Online opinion piece, Mathieu von Rohr believes the European Court of Human Rights will step in and declare the ban to be "a violation of freedom of religion and a clear-cut case of discrimination."

Clearly, there are people who are finally coming to the realization that the Islamization of Europe is a real danger. If given a chance to vote, it's likely the Germans would ban minarets as well.

Banning minarets is not the answer, however. If anything, the ban will simply give a false sense of security to those who, rightly, fear Islam.
In Switzerland, Islam will be less visible but the dangers will still be there.

#159,963

As I write this, 164,043 individuals have signed the "Manhattan Declaration". I was signer #159,963.

The signers of this declaration call on all Americans to join in defending certain fundamental truths regarding justice and the common good. These fundamental truths are listed as -
1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Naturally, some in the so-called "gay community" are unhappy with this document.
A blog in the Village Voice says the declaration "calls for staunch opposition to things like abortion, gay marriage, and other satatanic [sic] liberal agendas."
I'm not quite sure what the "other satatanic liberal agendas" are that the blogger is referring to.

Surprisingly, some Evangelicals do not support the declaration on the grounds that the Gospels are not mentioned often enough in the document.

Not being a U.S. Congressman, I read the declaration before signing it. I would ask Christians and Atheists alike to read the document and explain to me what is in the Manhattan Declaration that any rational person would object to.
You can read and download the document here.

You can sign the Manhattan Declaration by going here.

Happy Thanksgiving !!

Remember this photo when you're enjoying your pumpkin pie.

Photo swiped from LarryD.


Happy Thanksgiving.

Sarah Palin's Turkey in the Interview Video Redux.

Sarah Palin is in the news now thanks to the tremendous response to her book, Going Rogue.
Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I thought it would be appropriate to post the Sarah Palin Turkey getting slaughtered video from last year. Going to Youtube, I found the uncensored version.

Enjoy.

Answering Oleuanna.

Over the weekend, I received quite a few emails from blogcatalog that this or that blogger had invited me to become "friends"........ OK, sure, why not?

Naturally, then, a portion of the weekend was spent looking at the work of these bloggers. As it turned out, being adventurous, I looked at a few blogs belonging to folks who had visited the ones I was reading.

That was how I came across a blogger called Oleuanna and her blog of the same name. In her profile, she lists Scotland as her home. In describing herself, she writes, "There really isn't enough boxes..." [sic]
Her interests include "Laughing,shouting,politics,poetry,art,revolucion,Sancerre,human rights,no ism,or ist,in sight!,anti politics,anti religion,damn veggie,lover of the Gaia".

I read a few of her posts, but the one that caught my interest was the one entitled Make your deities case here !!
At the beginning of that post, she writes,"As I can’t write a serious piece on anyones god and lacking one myself, I thought it would be easier to throw it out for discussion".
Most of that post deals with her disdain for Catholicism stemming from her first hand experiences with the Church and Her teachings.

I'm not going to address her opinion of the Catholic Church. Most of her comments on the Church come from her personal life; I have no way of knowing what actually happened to her in childhood.

I am willing, however, to address the last bit of that post- where she asks;
"So just out of curiosity if you do or don’t support a deity I still would be interested in your opinion. What is a God?"
She goes on to list eight attributes that God might possess [ Omnipotent - Omnibenevolent -Omniscient - The Creator - The Sustainer - Perfectly Free - Eternally Existing - A Personal God ] and asks that we "choose one or more and describe why you think this."

I found the idea of placing my thoughts on the subject in a comment box too limiting. I need the space of my own blog to answer her.

I would say that God does indeed possess the eight attributes she listed; but God is much, much more than these eight. I could go on and list eight or eighty more - however, in doing so, I could not begin to give an accurate and full description of God.

God is beyond our comprehension. Our words can only limit the glory that God is.

All of us seek God.....and God has provided means for us to reach Him. The problem is on our end. We are incapable of understanding fully what He is trying to say to us. There are more than a few religions that are useful in our struggle. From my perspective, none do this better than the Roman Catholic Church.
It is only within the Church that we can received God's most precious gift to us - the body and blood of Christ present in the Eucharist.
Also within the Church are countless elements that can help us to follow the way God has provided. A few examples of these elements include (but are not limited to) Confession, Lent, the Rosary and daily prayer.

Still, many religions contain some elements of salvation embedded in their teachings and as someone once said to me, "Being a something is better than being a nothing".

From what I've read on her blog, I doubt that I could ever change Oleuanna's view of God. As she put it, she "graduated and went on to have a great life afterwards, mainly involving that of higher education, drinking sex and drugs a plenty."
No, this isn't an attempt to change her mind. She asked for other opinions and this is mine.

Shut the @#$%$#@ Up.

Meet Rev. Will Bowen. He's the "lead minister" of the One Community Spiritual Center in Kansas City, MO.

I know it isn't right to judge a book by it's cover, but I'd say, from the photo, Rev. Bowen seems to be a likable, easy-going sort. From what I gather, the good Reverend has only two complaints.
The first one being, he's all too often mistaken for Gavin MacLeod of Love Boat fame;
and secondly, he thinks you all gripe and whine and complain too much.

That's right.....you heard me; all you want to do is sit around and grouse, bellyache, moan and grumble.

Reverend Bowen became so dissatisfied with so much dissatisfaction that he developed a program and website called Shut your bleedin' pie-hole dot org to promote his views on positive thinking.

OK, I made up the part about the name....it's really a complaint free world .org

He idea involves wearing this purple Complaint Free bracelet - which you can get free from his website - . Whenever you get a bit miffed and start complaining, then golly gee willikers, you remove the purple bracelet from one wrist and put it on the other.

The theory is, that it takes 21 days to form a new habit and moving this bracelet back and forth for 21 days will get you looking at things in a whole new way.

Will it work?

According to the website, "the average person who really gives this their best effort usually takes 4-10 months to go 21 consecutive days without complaining."

Bowen claims to have given away more than six million purple bracelets; as a matter of fact, he claims that Maya Angelou received the 6 millionth one.

One of the oddest things I discovered about all of this is that acomplaintfreeworld.biz has a complaint department of sorts.

Any item purchased from them is eligible for a refund if you aren't satisfied.
If it's taken longer than 4 weeks to get your item, just send them an email and complain about it.
And the bracelets are made of silicone rubber - no latex is used in the manufacturing process.....so you'll have no complaints about that if you happen to be allergic.

So, go ahead. Get your purple bracelet and shut your bleedin' pie-hole.

Latma Video on Ft. Hood Massacre.

When it comes to biting satire - particularly when it pertains to the problem of Muslim terrorism - no one bites harder than Caroline Glick and her Hebrew language website, www.latma.co.il.

Recently, the website took a jab at the "politically correct" response to Palestinian terrorist Malik Nadal Hasan's horrible rampage at Fort Hood.
The video is in Hebrew with English subtitles.

Pre-K in our Future.

J.P. will start pre-k next Fall. We went to the open house at the Catholic school in our little town.

Of course, my wife and I really want our son (and any future children) to attend a parochial school. I dread the thought of him spending time in public school.

On more than one occasion, I've heard a representative of the school tell us before Mass that, with the help available from the Archdiocese, no child will be denied admission to the school because the parents can't afford the tuition.

I filled out and mailed the application this morning to enroll him there in Fall 2010.
We'll see what happens.

Obama Rules !!!

There is Obama toilet paper in Japan...



H/T to Al

Maafa 21.

Someone left a comment on yesterday's post [Planned Parenthood unhappy with Abortion on Gag Order.] about a documentary detailing the history of contraception and legal access to abortion in the United States as that pertains to Planned Parenthood and the organization's ties to the eugenics movement.
The documentary is entitled Maafa 21. The wikipedia article says the title comes from the Swahili term "Maafa", which means "tragedy" or "disaster", and is used to describe the centuries of oppression and diaspora resulting from slavery. "21" refers to the 'maafa' of the 21st century which is abortion.

The website, http://www.maafa21.com/ writes that Maafa 21 is exposing the hidden and bitter realities of Black Genocide in modern America particularly as it involves Planned Parenthood.
There is a trailer for the documentary that can be found on the website as well as Youtube. To make things easier, I've posted the trailer here.

Those of you who believe that Planned Parenthood works for the good of people and families need to wake up to that fact that the organization is evil at it's very core.

Planned Parenthood unhappy with Abortion on Gag Order.

Soon after Abby Johnson quit her job at Planned Parenthood - sighting a conversion and change of heart towards abortion - her former employer hired lawyers to file for a gag order against Johnson from speaking about Planned Parenthood.

Now, it's been reported that Bryan-College Station Eagle, District Judge J.D. Langley has performed an abortion on Planned Parenthood's request for the restraining order.

According to reports, Planned Parenthood does not approve of this particular abortion.....the only time in it's history that the organization has seen an abortion of which it did not approve .


News sources:
Planned Parenthood Loses Bid to Silence Former Clinic Director Turned Pro-Life
Judge prevents Planned Parenthood from keeping Abby Johnson quiet
Order lifted for ex-Planned Parenthood director
Planned Parenthood seeks silence, fails

Veterans Day 2009.

Today is Veterans Day.
The photo on the left is one taken of my dad in 1949.

He enlisted in the Army during the Second World War; he was stationed in Alaska during the Korean War.

He and my mother met while he was stationed at Fort Benning, near Columbus GA.
He was there long enough for me to be born at the base hospital and baptized in the base chapel.

Happy Veterans Day.

Reality Check.

We should have known that it would not be long after Abby Johnson's conversion that Liberal supporters of abortion would attack her. For those who do not know, Abby Johnson is the former director of a Texas Planned Parenthood abortion clinic who recently renounced abortion, quit her job with Planned Parenthood and joined the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life - a pro-life group that recently moved its headquarters several hundred feet away from the clinic.

RH Reality Check Managing Editor, Amie Newman writes Planned Parenthood Director's Holes in Story Revealed In Recent Radio Interview.

As if the article was not bizarre enough, the comments by some of the pro abortion readers show how totally out of it those folks really are.

Rather than accept Johnson's change of heart, quite a few of RH Reality Checks readers believe Johnson was, perhaps, blackmailed into leaving Planned Parenthood as this comment by someone going by the name arwenivy77 reveals:

"After all I have read about this, I am starting to wonder if perhaps Abby Johnson was intimidated, or as others have suggested, blackmailed into leaving by Coalition for Life. And, perhaps, also blackmailed into telling her sudden new story. The choice to align herself with Coalition for Life, after all the negative things she had to say about them before, seems to suggest other factors at work...I hope with time we'll learn the truth. Perhaps she is trying to protect the well-being of herself and her family. I know this is kind of an out-there, conspiracy-theory-wingnut thing to say, but perhaps the Coalition has taken her as a ideological hostage of sorts, in exchange for, as an example, not harming her or her loved ones? Just a theory."

Another commenter named ack believes Johnson's isn't believeable because she joined an organization and did not start her own:

"I think that I would have a lot more respect for her conversion if she started her own organization. Her experience at the clinic apparently showed her that the tactics used by the CFL were at best ineffective and at worst a form of terrorism (through the death threats, stalking, and harassment). Assuming that she hasn't also suddenly become anti-contraception, why not work on that issue to truly reduce the need for abortion? Why not organize people to lobby for increased support for pregnant women who want to continue the pregnancy, and for mothers in general? There just seems to be a hundred ways she could have changed her stance on abortion but avoid aligning herself with that particular group, which she repeatedly denigrated."


And that site is called RH Reality Check.......a true misnomer, if ever there was one.

Barack Obama - War Criminal.

I am not a fan of war. Like nearly everyone else, I would love to wake up one day soon to a world where war is no longer an option. However, I am realistic enough to know that as long as the world remains as it is and humans remain as we are, we will never be able - on our own - to achieve world peace.

I am realistic enough to understand that sometimes war is, unfortunately, necessary.
Evidently, President Obama feels the same; he doesn't oppose all wars, he's been quoted as saying - he's opposed to dumb ones.

One more than on occasion, Obama has said that the war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity.

In his now famous Berlin speech, candidate Obama said,
"This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets.
No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done.
America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now."

Again and again, Obama has said that we need to fight the good fight in Afghanistan. Obviously then, if we need to fight this war, common sense tells us we need to win. Why would any rational person engage in a war that he has no intentions of winning?

Obama is not a military strategist. He has never served in any armed service; he did not study military strategy and tactics in college. If he wants to win this war, he is obliged to follow the military advice of his commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, who has requested between 30,000 and 40,000 more troops.

Obama has not seen fit to send the troops McChrystal needs.

Keeping the troops in Afghanistan - to kill or be killed - without putting forth an all out effort to win, is nothing less than a war crime. To uselessly prolong this war, to sit on the side lines while more people (both military and civilian) die, is unconscionable.

It is ironic beyond words that the President has been awarded a Noble Peace Prize while people die uselessly in Afghanistan because of his indecision.

If this war is a war of necessity, as he as said, it is criminal to fight without fighting to win.
If this war is not a war of necessity, it is criminal to leave the troops there one day longer.

Village of the Damned.

From bighollywood.breitbart.com

ELEMENTARY EPIDEMIC: 11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama.

Big Hollywood has already posted a couple disturbing videos of young school children singing/speaking praises to President Obama, but when eleven more dropped in our email box it came as quite a shock. What seemed like an aberration now appears to be a troubling pattern.

Maybe “epidemic” is a better word.

Each one of the videos below is creepier than the last because the further down you go, the younger the children — brace yourself for kindergartners – except for the last and most disturbing video, which you have to see to believe.

Young captive minds, easily influenced, eager for direction, enlisted into a cult of personality focused on an individual who, other than being the first black president, has yet to accomplish anything of significance.

But Obama’s skin color has nothing to do with this. Does anyone interested in retaining their merit badge for intellectual honesty really want to argue that Condi Rice or J.C. Watts would’ve spawned a dozen-and-counting tribute videos?

This is about brainwashing our children into Leftist identity politics. Sure, the schools can argue that they had some kind of parental permission — which, if true, is somehow even more disturbing — but who even considers doing something like this with young minds? That’s a rhetorical question.

There was some guesswork, but to the best of our ability the videos run from oldest to youngest, starting with high schoolers. We list the name of the school and the date the video was posted. From there, if it could be found (or a confident guess made), you’ll find the schools’ website, followed by the original title given to the video and any notes added by whoever uploaded to YouTube.

Each video has also been transcribed so you can follow the bouncing ball…


To see the videos, click here.

Halloween Costume Update.

As I mentioned last week [Halloween Costume] some clever costume maker had come up with an "illegal alien" costume which was soon made "unavailable" because some "immigrants" had objected to it.

Being the politically incorrect person that I am, I felt I had to create my own to wear at a Halloween-slash-birthday party Saturday.
The orange jumpsuit was given to me by my friend Lowell (seen in the photo below wearing the clown costume) and the mask was something I picked up at Kmart....I added the antennae.

My home-made costume was a lot cheaper to make than the $39.99 (plus shipping) it would have cost if it had still been available online.