Rosh Hashanna Sermon

Read the whole thing - and know why some are yelling into the blogosphere.  We who are expressing our concern are trying to prevent a wholesale slaughter.


Those who want a "two-state solution" are either liars, or the most foolish of fools; if that is imposed on Israel, Jews will be annihilated.  They will be murdered, with the sanction of the pro-Palestinian fools.  I call them "fools", because relatively few understand the depth of the Jew-hatred - NOT "anti-Zionism" - it's JEW-hatred felt by the Islamists of the Middle East, and now, Europe and the US.

We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people. We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.

"War"?  Against all Muslim people?


No.

I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.

Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeera condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.

Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil. 

I'm Catholic; I understand about sins of omission.  Failing to act, when your action could save a life, is being an accomplice to murder.


I'm old enough to have known survivors of the concentration camps.  You only once have to see that blue tattoo with the diamond to imprint the horror on your mind - think of "bar codes" for the people who have been reduced to "things".  I will NOT acquiesce in the killing of Jews, even at the cost of war.


Never again.


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Status of the Political Races

I've been following the unfolding political process, and have concluded:

This is likely to be an interesting year for watching politics

About 40 races around the country, both Congressional and Gubernatorial, are in the competitive category.  The outcome may well determine how the leadership of the Senate and House changes, or stays the same.

Spratt, of SC, is one of them.  The York region, District 5, is one of the few in SC that are reliably Democratic.  Spratt has served for many years, without serious opposition.

This year, he faces a tough race against Mick Mulvaney, a state Senator.  Why is that so crucial?

Spratt is the chair of the House Budget Committee.  If he leaves, whether the leadership of the House changes, it will be a new ball game.

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Urgent - Phone Calls Needed

Please, please - call one of these legislators re:  The DREAM Act.  It needs to be stopped.

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This is Scary - And Just in Time for Halloween

Forget the vampires, witches, and ghosts - I'm reading Cruel & Usual Punishment - The Terrifying Implications of Islamic Law.  Talk about scary!

It was written in 2009, long before the Ground Zero Mosque controversy.  Here's what she has to say about mosque-building in non-Muslim countries:

Land acquisition for the purpose of building Islamic institutions is a major priority of the Muslim agenda in the West.  When majority non-Muslims start asking questions and becoming skeptical about the calls for jihad and jihadists using the mosques as a base for their activities, Muslim leadership starts claiming discrimination, racism, and misunderstood religion, suggesting that the host country needs an education in what true Islam and its Sharia mean

Gee, I dunno, that sounds VERY much like the noise being voiced by the Pro-mosque, anti-all-the-rest-of-America.

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Immigration Legislation is Like Vampires - You Have to Use a Silver Stake in the Heart to Kill Them

You know, I'm really getting tired of these CongressCritters re-introducing legislation that the American people have told them, again and again, is NOT in our best interest.


It's almost like they think they have to over-rule the desires of the Dumb, Unwashed, Illiterate Electorate.  So our "Betters" can give us the government we're too stupid to know is good for us.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he will add the DREAM Act, a controversial immigration measure, to a defense policy bill the Senate will take up next week.

The decision means the defense bill, which often passes with bipartisan support, will be home to two major, thorny political issues – the other being the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Let's 'splain it again to you, Harry - we DON'T want illegal aliens to get an education (at discount, state resident prices) in public colleges; that education is subsidized by taxes imposed for the benefit of Legal Americans.


Those high school graduates, however high their rank in the class, got it FREE - which they did NOT qualify for.  Then, having sucked up public money for their K-12 education, they want a discounted education - as a RIGHT, not a privilege.


I don' thin' so.


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"A People of Life"

From a sermon at a 9/11 victim's funeral (Barbara Olson):

A handful of terrorists commandeered four planes, crashing three of them, including Flight 77, into symbolic buildings, killing in the process thousands of real flesh-and-blood people with families. These terrorists gave their lives, and took so the lives of so many others, with no hesitation at all. Have Satan and death won?

What did Americans do when they heard the shocking news and saw the devastation? Did they take to the streets with signs and placards, marching with fists upraised, saying, “Death to terrorists!” No, they did not.

What did they do? They took to the streets–in search of places to give blood. In fact, in some places so many of them that there was a seven-hour wait to give blood. They took to the streets to bring food to those who were rescuing people. They took to the streets to go to church, to hold candlelight vigils, to pray.

We are people of life. And no terrorist, no matter how powerful, can take that away.

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Listen, Learn, and Spread the Word

From Eternity Road:



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BEFORE Any Mosque is Considered....

...the church that was St. Nicholas, that was destroyed in the 9/11 attack, must rise.  It's only fair - they actually HAD a church there (Greek Orthodox), and they have been trying to get permissions to re-build.  Unsuccessfully.

Permissions that have been fast-tracked for the proposed Ground Zero mosque.

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Respect? I'll Show You Respect!

The following incidents are just some of the LESS lethal stories I could find:

Worldwide incidents of vandalism and anti-Christian bigotry.

In Portugal.

But...but...but...what about all the Muslims that are targets?

Well, as long as they have a GOOD reason.

This incident is NOT clear as to who was responsible.  The phrase used is also used by leftist groups that ally with Palestinian groups.  So, I can't definitely say that the perps were Muslim.

The lack of respect for graves, based on the deceased's religion is troubling.  That's critical to understanding the opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.  We're touchy, as a nation, about showing respect for the dead.

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Parental Blessings

I'm a parent and grandparent.  When I pray, I always include my children and grandchildren.  I pray for their health, emotional well-being, job prospects, safety - and I always pray for the state of their soul.  Every parent does, if they are a believer.

It's said to be every parent's nightmare, the fear that wakes them from a sound sleep in the night - the fear that their child will precede them in death.  We had a glimpse of this a few years ago, when one of ours had an episode of cancer.  He is fine now, and re-building his life and career.

So, the pain of this man strikes home.

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Ding! Ding! Ding!

I hear alarm bells ringing:

we’re making it easier for workers to save for retirement, with new ways of saving their tax refunds and a simpler system for enrolling in retirement plans like 401(k)s.

"New ways of saving their tax refunds"?  Is this an original way of saying that workers are not longer going to be able to get their own money back?

It's worse than that - Obama plans to have workers get funny money US savings bonds - and we all know that their value will NEVER go down, don't we, kiddies?

Today, if you have a retirement account, you can have your refund deposited directly into your account. With this change, we'll make it easier for those without retirement plans to save their refunds as well. You'll be able to check a box on your tax return to receive your refund as a savings bond.

No messy retirement plan, that leaves the money in private hands.  No, we'll put EVEN MORE of your retirement money in the government's hands - JUST like Social Security.

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More Ignorance From the White House

Again, more from the President's weekly address:

The steps we have taken to date have stopped the bleeding: investments in roads and bridges and high-speed railroads that will lead to hundreds of thousands of jobs in the private sector; emergency steps to prevent the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and firefighters and police officers; and tax cuts and loans for small business owners who create most of the jobs in America.

Where to start?  Roads and bridges are short-term employment, and too often used to pay back the states whose legislators carry the White House message - i.e., political payback.  Unlike the 1950s and 1960s, when the roads made possible growth in new suburbs and cities, today's roads are just repair jobs, and lead to NO long-term job creation.

Repair of bridges, while often desperately needed, often closes down major business access to markets, further depressing the economy, while employing only a fraction of the workers who lose their jobs.

While I'm generally in favor of teachers, firefighters, and police officers, it's Constitutionally wrong to use federal money for the purpose of keeping them employed.  Further, the teachers who are being laid off are generally K-8 - many of the teachers who were laid off from K-3 jobs were originally employed to keep class sizes low, often in the 15-18 student range.  Now that class sizes are increasing, it's often to the 20-25 student range.  Not that different.

Where the impact on class size is huge is the middle and high school populations.  Class sizes of 30-40 are not unusual.  With reasonably cooperative students, not impossible.  With unruly, undisciplined, or poorly educated students, it's a nightmare.

How about firefighters and policemen?  I'd hate to see either go; but by paying for their salaries, cities are able to keep from tossing out occupants of the many bloated city hall offices.  They could try eliminating many jobs, reducing the number of workers, and out-sourcing the jobs, if necessary.  All of those solutions to the budget crunch keep the safety workers employed.

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Before the Recession/Depression

On the White House site, I found a copy of the weekly address from the President - this one, celebrating the Working Man/Woman, in honor of Labor Day today.  As I read the first paragraph, one thing caught my attention - Obama talked about:

working Americans, who were fighting harder and harder just to stay afloat – often borrowing against inflated home values to pay their bills

I don't want to burst his bubble more than declining prices sank the housing market, but he is wrong - and that worries me, that he could be so ill-informed about the way that home equity mortgages were used.

Both from observations of friends, neighbors, and relatives, and reading the business sections of news, I've seen that home equity loans were seldom taken on to meet daily bills.  Rather, having sunk oneself into a morass of consumer debt, many used them as a "rob Peter to pay Paul" scheme.  And, since they were Peter, it seemed more a matter of shuffling around their own cash from one pocket to another.

But, then came the bursting of the housing bubble.  [For those who aren't familiar with the term, a bubble is an inflated market, that has little or no relation to the underlying value of the goods.  It is vulnerable to sudden collapse, rather like the soap bubbles for which they are named]

Housing prices fell - to a truer estimation of the houses' worth.

And, millions of home-owners found themselves "under water" - owing more than the house could be sold for.  That's where the lenders started getting nervous - whereas, they SHOULD have been concerned about the vast sums of money they had been loaning out.

In some states, you can walk away and stick the bank for the money owed, if sale of the house is not sufficient to cover the mortgage.  From Mortgagereliefformula.com:

These are all the mortgage walkaway trustee sale states, meaning they are non-judicial foreclosure states.

In those states, generally, when they foreclose on you, they cannot pursue you for their financial losses.

Alaska 

Arizona 

Arkansas 

California 

Colorado 

District of Columbia (Washington DC) 

Georgia 

Hawaii 

Idaho 

Mississippi 

Missouri 

Montana (as long as non-judicial foreclosure is used)

Nevada - note that the lender CAN get a deficiency judgment (See below)

New Hampshire 

Oregon 

Tennessee 

Texas (but even in a non-judicial foreclosure, the lender can pursue a deficiency judgment)

Virginia 

Washington 

West Virginia

These are states that also allow non-judicial foreclosure, and/or where non-judicial foreclosure is more common and deficiency judgments can be obtained more easily: 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

North Carolina

Rhode Island 

South Dakota 

Utah

Wyoming 

In all of the above states, the working man/woman DIDN'T lose out - they were able to use the inflated value of the home to live large, then walk away once the cookie crumbled.  They could hand over the keys, take all other possessions, and live in a rental for a while.  If they owned another home prior to the foreclosure, they could move in there, and go on with their lives.

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Why We Need to Eliminate the "Lame-Duck" Congress

Reading about all of the possible awful things that Congress could be up to in that time between the election and the installation of the new Congressmen, it suddenly occurred to me:

Why does this continue?

Why can't the new members take their seats by 2 weeks after the election?  We have air travel, hotels aplenty, and other means of getting them in place without delay.

Failing that, how about letting them participate in votes via an Internet hook-up?  Virtual Congress, 1.0.  That would give the outgoing Congressmen time to pack up, say their good-byes, sell their houses, move their belongings, and get the kids enrolled in the new schools.

Having a lame-duck Congress is one of those artifacts of US government that needs to be re-thought.

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What's Legal, VS. What's Right

Here are some examples (I'm sure you can find some of your own):

A grown man in bed with a 12 year old boy who is the neighbor's son. Nothing illegal happened, mind you. Do we need a law written to explicitly say that this is bad behavior? Do we have to have photographic evidence of the 12 year old boy? Oh, the man was wearing shorts? That's better then. 

Parents bring a 5 year old to a violent, Rated R movie at 11 pm on a school night. Again. Not illegal. Perfectly legal. 

The neighbors shine a light from their property that blasts into another neighbor's window. It's their property. Why should anyone be bothered?

A hugely pregnant woman gets on the subway where a fit teenage boy sits in an easily accessible seat. He doesn't move. He was there first. It's his seat. He's not breaking any rules.

Here's the last example:

There is a terrorist action against a specific location.  Body parts are still being found.  It is a mass graveyard.  A religion wants to build a "healing place" on the site (not directly at the center, but clearly part of the grounds).

1. Occupy anyway, despite impassioned protests by those related to the dead.  After all, it's your RIGHT.
2. Leave the site, and locate somewhere else in the neighborhood.  You may have the RIGHT, but you are also CULTURALLY SENSITIVE to the feelings of the relations about how to honor their dead.

Option 1)  The Ground Zero mosque backers and their liberal allies.
Option 2)  The Carmelite nuns at Auschwitz.


No, THAT group of Muslims didn't personally smash a plane into the Towers, but the iman leans too close to alliance to the ones that did:

Way back on September 30, 2001, Feisal Abdul Rauf was interviewed on 60 Minutes by host Ed Bradley.  Their verbatim  dialogue from this CBS News transcript concluded:

BRADLEY: Are — are — are you in any way suggesting that we in the United States deserved what happened?

Imam ABDUL RAUF: I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

No nuance.  Just over-the-top, in-your-face, sympathy for the devil.


So, no, I don't want to see him build his mosque on the site that airplane parts hit.

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Really FUNNY Parody - Israel Edition

I found this news parody on the site below. Y'all gotta see it; it shows the current situation in Israel, where the Jews are desperately trying to act tolerantly to people who are trying to wipe their country off the map.

Caroline Glick :: Home

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What Is Our Most Important National Security Threat?

You definitely will NOT guess.

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Evelyn Wood for Congress

No, I'm not in favor of electing some person named Evelyn Wood, I'm suggesting that we change our conservative bias in favor of cutting government spending to sign up Congress - all 535 of them (I'm including the Senate) - for the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamic course.


Let's give them the full treatment - the complete multimedia edition - for only $699.95 each.  That's a total of $374,473.25 for the entire group.


True, if we vote them out, we'll have to train the new guy - maybe we'll require that they leave behind the training materials when they exit.


Won't it be nice to have managed to find a way for our annointed elected officials to do their FREAKING JOBS actually read legislation BEFORE they pass it?

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"Building Bridges"

There is a marvelous movie that sometimes is shown on cable "The Bridge On the River Kwai".  In the film, the British POW leader, Col. Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness) has arrived at the camp, refuses to participate in the work of building the bridge - officers, under the rules of war, may not be forced to work, and is punished severely.  He holds out, and he, and his officers are allowed to stand aloof from participation in manual labor.

Meanwhile, some of the Allied troops have been working to slow down the progress of the bridge.  When Nicholson is released from punishment, he is horrified at the shoddy work, and decides to actually build a proper bridge.  Shears (played by William Holden), a prisoner who had escaped the camp, is blackmailed into going back to blow up the bridge.

In the end, Nicholson comes to his senses, and, as the last person standing on the Allied side near the detonator, pushes the button as he dies.

Now, how does this figure into the Ground Zero mosque story?

There are bridges that should NOT be built.  There are bridges with EVIL purposes.  There are bridges that people of conscience should work to keep unbuilt.

Mosques built on the sites of Muslim victories, the short list.

On October 18, 1009, the Muslim Fatimid caliph Abu 'Ali Mansur Tariqu'l-Hakim destroyed, down to the bedrock, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Christian church venerated by most Christians as Golgotha, the Hill of Calvary, where tradition says that Jesus was crucified. Gravestones were also destroyed. Muslim forces tried to dig up all the graves and wipe out all traces of their existence. The site is now within the walled, Old City of Jerusalem.

Bridges Video - the embedding has been disabled, so you'll need to click the link.

Update:  here's another site where the Muslims are deliberately desecrating graves in their mosque-building activities - in India.

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Their Peaceful Nature is Irrelevant

I was sent this link from my brother-in-law, Mike by email.

'We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority', the 'silent majority', is cowed and extraneous.

Read the rest.

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Iman A Slumlord and a Tax Cheat?

The Fox News early show is on right now, and they just showed a story about the Ground Zero iman's slum properties in NJ.  Not just one, and not a recent event - this has been going on for years.  His properties have been blighted, and he has been on the verge of foreclosures.

Not only that, but his New York 1 bedroom apartment apparently has "tax-free" status - he claims that 500 people use it as a worship space.

Man, he has to rank as a real entertainer!  BTW, why does he need 13 stories - if he plans a congregation of 2,000, why doesn't he just get 4 or 5 2-bedroom apartments?  Sounds as though he knows how to "pack them in"!

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