Happy Tea Party New Year
Published December 31, 2009 | 
By Jed Babbin, Human Events, Dec. 31, 2009
Cartoon by Brett Noel
It’s not that 2009 hasn’t provided a wealth of material. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is a constant source of laughable chicanery, but Reid is beyond parody. He was perfectly serious in saying that opposition to the healthcare bill is tantamount to opposing the elimination of slavery. How can any parodist improve on that?
And what better joke to make about our wastrel president than to merely repeat his statement that we can’t continue to treat tax dollars as Monopoly money? That would be hilarious but for the fact that we are more in debt — by at least $2 trillion — than we were when he took office.
It’s not that our president is dumb: but he is what the good ol’ Soviets used to call “nekulturny”: uncultured in the sense of being willfully ignorant of too many things that make our country what it is. And hostile to those things he doesn’t appreciate.
There’s humor in a judicial nominee who proclaims herself a “wise Latina woman” and says her heritage affects the way she chooses facts on which to decide cases. But the fun part was over the moment she was sworn in as a Supreme Court associate justice.
Let’s face it: liberals aren’t humorous: they’re tendentious and dogmatic. And predictable. Anyone who was surprised that after dropping out of the race Dede Scozzafava then endorsed her Democratic opponent in New York’s 23rd district special election just doesn’t know liberals.
But liberals are also reckless. When Speaker Pelosi accused the CIA of lying about whether she had been briefed on the waterboarding of terrorist detainees — itself a lie that created the black cloud of distrust that still hangs over our intelligence community — she was unconcerned about damaging our national security. Defense Secretary Gates isn’t unconcerned about national security. Which makes his slash and burn approach to the defense weapons budget inexplicable, except in liberal political terms.
The Copenhagen global warming conference skidded to a close while Washington suffered a record December blizzard. No agreement was reached among the Copenhoaxers, despite President Obama glaring icily at the Chinese and Indian representatives. But it didn’t end before our president declared our willingness to provide some of the $100 billion in compensation developing nations demand in return for cooperating in limiting carbon emissions.
This year alone, thanks to President Obama’s spending spree, our deficit has expanded from 41% to 53% of the gross domestic product, from $5.8 to $7.6 trillion. And now, on Christmas Eve, the Senate has passed the healthcare “reform” bill which won’t cut the costs of healthcare but will increase taxes and limit Americans’ personal freedom.
President Obama’s insistence on nationalizing healthcare as a way to reduce costs and federal spending is just as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said: “It was a blind call to make history, even if meant making a historic mistake — which is exactly what this bill will be if it’s passed because in the end, this debate isn’t about differences between two parties, it’s about a $2.3 trillion dollar, 2,733-page health care reform bill that does not reform health care and, in fact, makes its price go up.”
2009 has been a year of failure, destructive of our national foundations. President Obama’s agenda has weakened our economy, causing a false recovery that is merely a prelude to a longer and deeper recession. Our enemies — especially Iran — have been emboldened, slapping away Obama’s “open hand” repeatedly with their clenched fist.
Our president has not led: he has, instead, pronounced one crisis after another, each to be “solved” by the expansion of government, the reduction of personal freedom and the reduction of America’s economic and military might. He has subcontracted the details to congress, willing to go along with whatever the liberals there propose to remedy the problem, real or imaginary. Mr. Obama is quite uncomfortable with our superpower standing in the world and has worked determinedly to end it.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not known for straight talk, admitted one of the greatest failures of the Obama presidency when she described the results of the “open-handed” diplomacy with Iran. Clinton said, “I don’t think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians.” Iran is stronger, and bolder, because of that failure.
2010 may be better, but the odds aren’t good. Whatever the results of the House-Senate conference on the healthcare bill, what isn’t passed this time will be added incrementally on whatever bills may be available. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is planning another illegal immigrant amnesty bill, which Democrats shouldn’t dare pass in an election year. But will they? Some are already telling Obama to back off the “cap and tax” scheme in 2010.
The lesson of 2009 is that the Democratic members of congress are more afraid of the wrath of Obama, Pelosi and Reid than they are of their constituents. No clearer a message could have been sent by the marvelous Tea Partyers in the August town hall meetings and the marches on Washington in September and December. But the Democrats chose to ignore them.
About a month ago, I met a gentleman from Iowa, one of the state’s top Republicans. He told me that men are angry but women are furious. That anger — throughout the nation — can be turned into constructive — i.e., conservative – political energy.
If Republicans adopt a national election strategy next year and reach out to the Tea Party independents, November 2010 can begin the reversal of our fortunes. The platform — and the slogan — are in three words: roll Obama back. Run against Obama in every state and district race. Promise to repeal his agenda: end it, don’t mend it.
But Republicans need to realize that such a strategy can only succeed only if it is pursued outside the Washington beltway. The Democrats know this, which is why they will keep congress in session endlessly, reducing the time Republicans can campaign.
That, then is the 2010 challenge: can Republicans still fight Obama’s agenda in congress while spending the time at home they need to transform the voters’ anger at Obama into votes for them and against the liberals? If they can, 2010 will be a very Happy Tea Party New Year.
| Mr. Babbin is the editor of Human Events and HumanEvents.com. He served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush’s administration. He is the author of “In the Words of our Enemies“(Regnery,2007) and (with Edward Timperlake) of “Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States” (Regnery, 2006) and “Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think” (Regnery, 2004). E-mail him at jbabbin@eaglepub.com. |
Quin Hillyer’s Wish List for 2010
Published December 31, 2009 | By Quin Hillyer, American Spectator, December 31, 2009
• Republican leaders finally actually win a legislative battle important to conservatives, rather than merely finding ways to put up a supposedly noble but failed fight.
• Eric Holder resigns amidst disgrace and scandal. (Eric Holder is a disgrace and a scandal.)
• Members of the New Black Panther Party are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the laws, both civil and criminal, for voter intimidation in Philadelphia.
• Obamacare is defeated in an open vote in Congress. (See item one above.)
• Valerie Jarrett is finally taken to account for her sleazy background.
• Emanuel brothers Rahm and Ezekiel are both forced to leave the administration in disgrace. (Chicago politics and eugenics both deserve to take a fall.)
• Labor bosses lose all their major battles (while workers actually benefit).
• Eastern European nations finally get the missile defense, and the other support, that they need in order to lessen the Russian menace. The Poles, the Czechs, the Latvians, etcetera, represent the new vanguard of freedom, and merit American admiration and diplomatic support.
• Frank-enstein twins Al (Franken) and Barney (Frank) become increasingly the main public face of congressional liberals, in the process sounding so obnoxious and radical that the public reacts by self-identifying as conservatives by ever-larger margins.
• The Reid-Pelosi minions lose their congressional majorities in November, thus helping eliminate the threat they pose to our beloved republic.
• “Yes we can” becomes an ironic buzzword of the right as crowds chant “yes, we can” beat Obamacare, yes we can stop cap-and-trade, yes we can stop “card check” legislation, yes we can stop the climate-change cultists, yes we can protect private property and the Second Amendment, and yes we can most certainly keep the energy of the TEA Party movement and the town hall meetings just as strong as, or even stronger than, it was in 2009.
• Ben Bernanke, up until now a terrible Fed Chairman (as he was a terrible Fed board member), finally gets a clue and makes strengthening and stabilizing the dollar the Fed’s primary focus.
• Liberal “establishment media” outlets lose so much money that finally, out of desperation, a few of them actually stop editorializing within supposedly straight news, start giving conservatives fair shakes in headlines and story placement, and in general become honest organizations rather than knee-jerk mouthpieces for the political and especially cultural left.
• Ice fields in both Antarctica and the Arctic Circle grow so much, so undeniably, that Al Gore admits the inconvenient truth that he was wrong all along — especially when the snows of Kilimanjaro also cover every peak and slope of that mountain.
• Grassley gets his man back in. I mean U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who has been waging a heroic battle to right the wrong done to Gerald Walpin, the former inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service who was fired by the Obamites for the sin of actually doing his job of exposing the corruption and incompetence of Obama allies. Reinstatement of Mr. Walpin would be both a symbolic and a substantive victory for the cause of integrity in government.
• Heroic American servicemen (and women) see their efforts finally come to fruition as Iraq and Afghanistan both stabilize, both as firm American allies.
• The Saints go marching in. The New Orleans Saints, that is, all the way to victory in the Super Bowl. Even more than four years after Hurricane Katrina, a Saints title after 43 years of futility would be such a great “feel-good” story that the whole country (even the fans of whoever loses the Super Bowl, after getting over their disappointment) would applaud. Who dat say dere ain’t no happy endings?
• A whole lot of other items could be added to make a great wish list for 2010, but that will need to do for now. But the overall message of this column can be found, and spelled out, by using the first letter in each item above. Happy New Year!
Quin Hillyer is a senior editorial writer at the Washington Times and senior editor of The American Spectator. He can be reached at QHillyer@gmail.com.
Papal Message for January 1, the World Day of Peace
Published December 31, 2009 | Background: Papal Message for January 1, the World Day of Peace December 31, 2009
On January 1, 2010, the Church commemorates the 43rd World Day of Peace. “If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation” is the theme of Pope Benedict’s message for the day.
Babies are God’s MOST Precious Creation!
In his message for the 1st World Day of Peace, Pope Paul VI wrote, “We address Ourself to all men of good will to exhort them to celebrate ‘The Day of Peace,’ throughout the world, on the first day of the year, January 1, 1968. It is Our desire that then, every year, this commemoration be repeated as a hope and as a promise, at the beginning of the calendar which measures and outlines the path of human life in time, that Peace with its just and beneficent equilibrium may dominate the development of events to come.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church discusses Catholic teaching on peace and just war in its treatment of the Fifth Commandment. Between 1914 and 1968, five popes wrote 21 encyclicals on peace. Since 1968, papal teaching on peace has primarily been expressed in the messages for the World Day of Peace.
Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
Have You Heard of the ‘Lame’ Stream Media? Having Missed the Biggest Stories of the Year Is That Title Appropriate for the MSM?
Published December 31, 2009 | Nine Big Stories the Mainstream Media Missed in 2009
From radical advisers in the Obama White House to hacked e-mails showing questionable work by climate scientists, 2009 has seen its share of scandals. But if you only followed the mainstream media, you might have missed some of the biggest stories of the year.
Here’s a list of the top nine stories the mainstream media ignored in the past year.
Source: Foxnews
http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/politics/2009/12/31/big-stories-mainstream-media-missed
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?
Published December 31, 2009 | SPIRITUAL BULLETIN BOARD OF LOUISIANA
![[SBB.jpg]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bOeZVh7mPPM/SbkMUhVGr1I/AAAAAAAAAAs/Y_0rmPWOma4/s1600/SBB.jpg)
“HELPING TO NETWORK LOUISIANA’S ROMAN CATHOLICS TO EVANGELIZE THE NATION AND THE WORLD”
GO TO: http://www.spiritualbulletinboardoflouisiana.com/
Healthcare “Reform” in America Must Be Defeated!
Published December 31, 2009 | …..Healthcare “reform” is not about uninsured Americans — nor is it mere “socialism.” It is Communism, effectively putting the entire nation’s healthcare system under state control. It must be defeated just as past generations of Americans knew the threat of Communism and devoted the nation’s treasure and even their lives to defeat it….
Quote By Alan Caruba, Renew America, December 27, 2009
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/caruba/091227
It’s Not Socialism, It’s Communism
Published December 31, 2009 | 
By Alan Caruba, Renew America, December 27, 2009
If you felt a frisson of fear on news that the Senate had passed Obamacare the day before Christmas, then you now know what it was and is like to live in a dictatorship. The voice of the People was ignored in a demonstration of raw political power.
There was a time when Americans took Communism seriously. It challenged us in the form of the Soviet Union and we witnessed its takeover of China.
In Europe, uprisings against Soviet rule were crushed in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Poland in the 1980s, giving proof that only oppression can sustain this failed economic and political system. President Reagan gave voice to it when he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
The McCarthy hearings in the 1950s proved a setback for efforts to learn how thoroughly infiltrated the U.S. government had become by Communists, not because Sen. Joseph McCarthy was wrong, but because he proved a poor spokesperson for the cause. He was easily criticized for his bombast, but the declassification of the Venona papers, secret communications between Soviet spymasters and their agents, revealed he may well have underestimated the threat.
Later, the Russian Federation declassified former Soviet spy agency records that further confirmed that many Americans, dedicated Communists, were working to undermine our government.
The price America paid in part for the Great Depression of the 1930s was the undermining of faith in the Capitalist system among many Americans.
Unions arose, not just in response to worker grievances, but also because their leaders were frequently sympathetic to Communism. The FDR and subsequent administrations introduced Social Security and Medicare, tapping into the fears of those who had experienced the Depression with programs that vastly expanded the federal government, characterizing them as the ultimate “safety net.” Then Congress plundered the trusts that were supposed to fund both programs. Both programs are insolvent.
A recent study by Paul Hollander, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, was published by Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty & Prosperity. It is titled “Reflections on Communism: Twenty Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.”
The celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall earlier this year was attended by many world leaders, with the notable exception of President Barack Obama. For a man who has visited more foreign nations in his first year in office than any previous President, the decision to avoid this significant anniversary was taken as one more signal of his true political and economic agenda.
We know that he has been greatly influenced by Marxists or people who viewed Communism sympathetically, not the least of which were his grandparents, who introduced him to a mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party USA.
Obama wrote that he was drawn to Marxists among his teachers in college. He began his political career in the home of former Weatherman Bill Ayers. These days, he is praised by Communists in Cuba and Venezuela. He sided with a Leftist former president of Honduras who tried to illegally alter its constitution. The Hondurans had the courage to cast him out.
The specter of Communist subversion of the U.S. Constitution is staring us in the eye with the so-called healthcare “reform” of Medicare; it includes all manner of provisions that are unconstitutional and would expand federal government control over one-sixth of the nation’s economy. The bribery and thuggish pressures and threats against Democrat senators and representatives to pass the bill reveal a political leadership more devoted to ideology than the will of the People.
Specifically, President Obama’s drive for a single-payer system is the direct result of the influence of Dr. Quentin Young, a retired physician with a long history of commitment to Communism. In 1995, Dr. Young was among those who met in the Hyde Park home of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn to launch Obama’s political career.
As Prof. Hollander points out in his study, “Not only individual intellectuals but entire professional associations have expressed favorable attitudes toward communist systems,” citing the Latin American Studies Association that has “repeatedly taken positions supportive of Castro’s Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua.” In 1990, the Organization of American Historians defeated a motion that expressed regret that the organization “never protested the forced betrayal of the historian’s responsibility to truth imposed upon Soviet and East European historians by their political leaders.”
The recent Climate Change Conference of the UN refused to take notice of the revelations that the data on which the “global warming” theory is based was falsified by a handful of meteorologists and climatologists in an effort to impose a global governing system. The UN’s interim first Secretary General was Alger Hiss, an American and secret Soviet agent.
It did not escape notice that Venezuela’s communist dictator, Hugo Chavez, received a rousing ovation when he spoke at the Climate Change Conference, or that President Obama continues to repeat the lies surrounding the discredited “global warming” fraud.
Virtually the entire agenda of American environmental organizations has been focused on an attack on private property rights and denying Americans access to their vast reserves of energy in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas, thus undermining U.S. growth and prosperity.
Unlike Prof. Hollander, who escaped Hungary following the crushing of the 1956 revolution by Soviet forces, “Western intellectuals who remain attracted to communist ideals never had the disillusioning experience of living in an actual communist or socialist society.”
Among them we must number much of the nation’s media, which has been a party to political and environmental deceptions, and the Hollywood community, has produced many films to influence public opinion about the earlier efforts to address Communist activities and later Green issues with a very Red agenda.
The healthcare “reform” expands “socialism” in America, but it is an example of naked Communism at work. It is a bill put together behind closed doors and is so extensive its control of the lives of Americans literally determines who lives and who dies. It will wreck the best healthcare system in the world, albeit one that has its flaws.
It is authoritarianism at work, the kind we associate with regimes in Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and everywhere else Communism has been imposed on captive nations.
Healthcare “reform” is not about uninsured Americans — nor is it mere “socialism.” It is Communism, effectively putting the entire nation’s healthcare system under state control. It must be defeated just as past generations of Americans knew the threat of Communism and devoted the nation’s treasure and even their lives to defeat it.
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/caruba/091227
Catholic World News: US Postal Service Honors Mother Teresa With Stamp in 2010
Published December 31, 2009 | 
“With this stamp, the U.S. Postal Service recognizes Mother Teresa, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work,” according to a Postal Service press release. “Noted for her compassion toward the poor and suffering, Mother Teresa, a diminutive Roman Catholic nun and honorary U.S. citizen, served the sick and destitute of India and the world for nearly 50 years. Her humility and compassion, as well as her respect for the innate worth and dignity of humankind, inspired people of all ages and backgrounds to work on behalf of the world’s poorest populations.”
Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=5050
Nancy Pelosi, Her Archbishop, and Her Conscience: What Ever Happened to “Thou Shalt Not Kill?”
Published December 31, 2009 | By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, December 30, 2009
In an interview with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a sympathetic Eleanor Clift of Newsweek eventually gets around to the question of Catholicism:
Clift: Is it difficult for you to reconcile your faith with the role you have in public life?
Pelosi: You know, I have five children in six years. The day I brought my fifth baby home, that week my daughter turned 6. So I appreciate and value all that they want to talk about in terms of family and the rest.
Comment: The message here—delivered without much subtlety—is that since Pelosi had several children she must perforce be a good Catholic. When she speaks of “family and the rest,” that dismissive term (“the rest”) refers to human life, which is identified in the Declaration of Independence as an “unalienable right.” You remember Jefferson’s immortal phrase: “liberty, pursuit of happiness, and the rest.”
Pelosi (continuing): When I speak to my archbishop in San Francisco and his role is to try to change my mind on the subject, well then he is exercising his pastoral duty to me as one of his flock. When they call me on the phone here to talk about, or come to see me about an issue, that’s a different story. Then they are advocates, and I am a public official, and I have a different responsibility.
Fr. Roger J. Landry: The Solution, Not the Problem
Published December 31, 2009 |
Each year the joy of Christmas is contextualized by the remembrance of those whom Christian tradition has called the Holy Innocents, the male infants two years old and younger who were slaughtered by Herod’s henchmen as collateral damage in his pursuit to execute the one whom the Magi was calling the “new born king of the Jews.” Herod wanted to cling on to his power so much that he ignored elemental right and wrong. He sought to eliminate what he thought was his competition but who in reality was his savior.
These same Herodian tendencies have been on display recently with regard to two issues that have been capturing the public’s attention: health care reform in Washington and climate change in Copenhagen.
In Washington, we continue to see the sad spectacle of a majority of legislators’ insisting that health care reform requires that our tax dollars be used to pay for others to kill their children in the womb. On December 8, the Senate voted 54-45 to reject the Nelson-Hatch-Casey Amendment, which would have banned government-appropriated funds from paying for abortion. Sixteen Catholic Senators, 15 of them Democrats, voted against the amendment, including Massachusetts Senators John Kerry and Paul Kirk. This was a vote in which there was no opportunity to dissimulate about “not imposing one’s morality on others,” “disobeying the Constitution,” “preserving the status quo” on abortion, or even “trying to preserve the hope of universal health care.” This was a vote as to whether our tax dollars and other federal funds should pay for — and therefore promote and cooperate in — abortion. These 16, with 38 others, rejected that amendment so that federal money would now go to underwrite elective abortions.
The fact that the defeat occurred on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception put their betrayal of Catholic principles into greater relief. We celebrate on this feast how from the first moment of her life, Mary was preserved free from all stain of original sin, which points to the reality that from the first moment of her life, she not only had a human soul (preserved free from all blemish of sin) but was in an intimate relationship with God, who already had in mind for her a great role in the salvation of the world. Every human being is made in God’s image and likeness and exists in relation to him. To destroy the image is in a sense to seek to destroy the exemplar. Why would Catholic Senators, many of whom have received a superb Catholic education, freely choose to subsidize the extermination of both image and exemplar? It appears that their consciences are more attuned to Emily’s List and the infernal influences of the pro-abortion lobby than to the voice of God. It appears that, like Herod, they account the slaughter of holy innocents a small price to pay in their pursuit of other ends.
We have also seen some Herodian paradigms leading up to and flowing out of the Copenhagen summit on climate change. There is obviously a need for the world to come together to protect our environment. Should global warming be scientifically verified — based on hard data rather than dubious computer models and the spin of certain scientists whose ethical violations have recently been exposed — we also need to act, individually and corporately, to seek to remedy and repair the damage. We must make sure, however, that in our hysteria to counteract the threat of global warming, we not repeat Herod’s fatal mistake, by seeking to eliminate the main solution to the problem of global warming, by falsely classifying him as the threat.
There are many neo-Malthusian environmentalists who are asserting that the principal menace to the environment is the human being. By this, they do not mean human beings who dump toxic waste into rivers, streams and ground-water supplies. They are not referring to factory owners in China who release pollutants through unfiltered smoke stacks. They are not describing those who carelessly unleash crude oil on the sea or do not prevent nuclear waste from escaping into the environs. They mean human beings who breathe. If you want to see a big polluter, they say, look in the mirror; or to see the worst environmental threats of all, visit a maternity ward.
That is what is behind a push at the Environmental Protection Agency to redefine carbon dioxide as a pollutant and then regulate it by the powers Congress has given the agency through the Clean Air Act. Once carbon dioxide, which human beings exhale, is classified as a pollutant, human beings become categorized as polluters just as much as coal-burning factories; then, just like such factories, human life can be regulated and even criminalized.
This thought probably seems outlandish to most readers, but they need to know that it does not seem outlandish to many environmentalists.
http://www.catholicpreaching.com/index.php?content=articles&articles=20091224anchor
Mao Tse-Tung’s (an Adolescent Narcissist) Greed for Mayhem
Published December 31, 2009 | 
- Avoiding work.
- Attaining power and privilege.
- Causing mayhem and destruction, largely to see what would happen.
John Zmirak is the author, most recently, of the graphic novel The Grand Inquisitor and is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. He writes weekly for InsideCatholic.com.
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7438&Itemid=48
FOUNDER’S QUOTE DAILY
Published December 31, 2009 | 
“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”
–James Madison, Federalist No. 46
TODAY’S GOSPEL
Published December 31, 2009 |
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.
2. He was with God in the beginning.
3. All things were made through Him, and nothing that was made was made without Him.
4. Life was in Him, and Life was the light of men.
5. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
6. There was a man sent by God, whose name was John.
7. He arrived as a witness to offer testimony about the Light, so that all would believe through him.
8. He was not the Light, but he was to offer testimony about the Light.
9. The true Light, which illuminates every man, was coming into this world.
10. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not recognize him.
11. He went to his own, and his own did not accept him.
12. Yet whoever did accept him, those who believed in his name, he gave them the power to become the sons of God.
13. These are born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14. And the Word became flesh, and he lived among us, and we saw his glory, glory like that of an only-begotten son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15. John offers testimony about him, and he cries out, saying: “This is the one about whom I said: ‘He who is to come after me, has been placed ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ ”
16. And from his fullness, we all have received, even grace for grace.
17. For the law was given though Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18. No one ever saw God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he himself has described him.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/utiles/myprint/print.php
ST. SYLVESTER, POPE
Published December 31, 2009 | Saint Sylvester was born in Rome. When he reached the age to dispose of his fortune, he took pleasure in giving hospitality to Christians passing through the city. He would take them with him, wash their feet, serve them at table, and in sum give them in the name of Christ, all the care that the most sincere charity inspired. One day Timothy of Antioch, an illustrious confessor of the Faith, arrived in Rome. No one dared receive him, but Sylvester considered it an honor. For a year Timothy, preaching Jesus Christ with unflagging zeal, received at Sylvester’s dwelling the most generous hospitality. When this heroic man had won the palm of martyrdom, Sylvester took up his precious remains and buried them during the night. But he himself was soon denounced to the prefect and accused of having hidden the martyr’s treasures. He replied, “Timothy left to me only the heritage of his faith and courage.” The governor threatened him with death and had him imprisoned, but Sylvester said to him, “Senseless one, this very night it is you who will render an account to God.” And the persecutor that evening swallowed a fish bone, and died in fact that night.
Fear of heavenly chastisements softened the guardians, and the brave young man was set at liberty. Sylvester’s courageous acts became known to Saint Melchiad, Pope, who elevated him to the diaconate. He was a young priest when persecution of the Christians grew worse under the tyrant Diocletian. Idols were erected at the street corners, in the market-places, and over the public fountains, so that it was scarcely possible for a Christian to go abroad without being put to the test of offering sacrifice, with the alternative of apostasy or death. During this fiery trial, Sylvester strengthened the confessors and martyrs, and God preserved his life from many dangers. It was indeed he who was destined to succeed the Pope who had recognized his virtues.
His long pontificate of twenty-one years, famous for several reasons, is remembered in particular for the Council of Nicea, the Baptism of Constantine, and the triumph of the Church. Some authors would place Constantine’s Baptism later, but there are numerous and serious testimonies which fix the emperor’s reception into the Church under the reign of Saint Sylvester, and the Roman Breviary confirms that opinion. Constantine, while still pagan and little concerned for the Christians, whose doctrine was entirely unknown to him, was attacked by a kind of leprosy which soon covered his entire body. One night Saint Peter and Saint Paul, shining with light, appeared to him and commanded him to call for Pope Sylvester, who would cure him by giving him Baptism. In effect, the Pope instructed the royal neophyte and baptized him. Thus began the social reign of Jesus Christ: Constantine’s conversion, culminating in the Edict of Milan in 313, had as its happy consequence that of the known world.
What is the Future of the Catholic Church?
Published December 30, 2009 | 
“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices that she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will be normally provided in this fashion. Alongside this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship”.
– Josef Ratzinger in his book “Faith and the Future” (Pope Benedict XVI)
http://www.sthelenacctx.org/Prod/c352d2e234fa472ba285eda40e561b1f/St-Helena-Home.aspx
Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2009
Published December 30, 2009 | –SOURCE: The Anchoress, First Things, December 29, 2009
Judicial Watch,Washington, DCPresident Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration “lowlights” from year one: Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s scheme to sell the President’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder. (Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and slumlord Valerie Jarrett, both from Chicago, are also tangled up in the Blagojevich scandal.) Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability. President Obama boldly proclaimed that “transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade “artists” to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of “czars” in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President’s bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control — through fiat and threats — large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: “The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.” Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors – this is Obama’s “ethics” record — and we haven’t even gotten through the first year of his presidency……CONTINUE to read who else is on the 10 most corrupt politicians in the United States Continue reading
Look at What Obama Quietly Did While You Drank Eggnog!
Published December 30, 2009 | “The New Housing Bubble?”, By Ed Morrissey, December 29, 2009
Over the weekend, I noted the late-Christmas Eve announcement that the Obama administration had lifted the bailout caps on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, attempting to sneak it past Americans while they focused on family, friends, and religious observance. The obvious conclusion was that Barack Obama wants to use the collapsed GSAs for even more social engineering through the lending markets, and wants an unlimited supply of cash from Treasury to force taxpayers to subsidize the next failure.
The Washington Examiner has
reached the same conclusion:
Obama’s decision is particularly disturbing for two reasons. First, taxpayers have already sunk $111 billion into the Fannie-Freddie bailout in just the last few months. The removal of the $400 billion cap suggests that things are about to worsen considerably. Second, it was precisely such government guarantees that caused the housing bubble and economic collapse in the first place.
In 1999, when Fannie Mae initially began securitizing subprime mortgages in a pilot program, American Enterprise Institute’s Peter Wallison predicted in the pages of the New York Times that a massive bailout would eventually be necessary. Wallison’s warning was ignored by President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress, which together allowed the pilot program to expand year after year. The process continued under President George W. Bush, with loan standards being steadily lowered by Fannie and Freddie in their effort to give 55 percent of their mortgages to families at or below the median income level. The economic carnage of politically motivated mortgages surrounds us now.
Today, Wallison points out that nearly two-thirds of the nation’s subprime and otherwise bad loans were created, securitized, backed by, and/or required by various programs within the United States government, including Fannie and Freddie, the Federal Housing Administration, Ginnie Mae, and the Community Reinvestment Act. Ten million of these 17 million dicey mortgages — or about 40 percent of the nation’s subprime and otherwise low-grade mortgages — were either owned or securitized by Fannie and Freddie when they collapsed last year.
That Obama would now give these two companies a blank check is incomprehensible. Taxpayers got another thumb in the eye when Fannie and Freddie chose the same Christmas news dump to announce $42 million in bonuses for 12 top executives — obviously for their excellent work last year as they drove the ship into the iceberg. Keep that one in mind the next time you hear Obama feign outrage over Wall Street bonuses.
Obama’s decision is particularly disturbing for two reasons. First, taxpayers have already sunk $111 billion into the Fannie-Freddie bailout in just the last few months. The removal of the $400 billion cap suggests that things are about to worsen considerably. Second, it was precisely such government guarantees that caused the housing bubble and economic collapse in the first place.
In 1999, when Fannie Mae initially began securitizing subprime mortgages in a pilot program, American Enterprise Institute’s Peter Wallison predicted in the pages of the New York Times that a massive bailout would eventually be necessary. Wallison’s warning was ignored by President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress, which together allowed the pilot program to expand year after year. The process continued under President George W. Bush, with loan standards being steadily lowered by Fannie and Freddie in their effort to give 55 percent of their mortgages to families at or below the median income level. The economic carnage of politically motivated mortgages surrounds us now.
Today, Wallison points out that nearly two-thirds of the nation’s subprime and otherwise bad loans were created, securitized, backed by, and/or required by various programs within the United States government, including Fannie and Freddie, the Federal Housing Administration, Ginnie Mae, and the Community Reinvestment Act. Ten million of these 17 million dicey mortgages — or about 40 percent of the nation’s subprime and otherwise low-grade mortgages — were either owned or securitized by Fannie and Freddie when they collapsed last year.
That Obama would now give these two companies a blank check is incomprehensible. Taxpayers got another thumb in the eye when Fannie and Freddie chose the same Christmas news dump to announce $42 million in bonuses for 12 top executives — obviously for their excellent work last year as they drove the ship into the iceberg. Keep that one in mind the next time you hear Obama feign outrage over Wall Street bonuses.
The question that everyone should be asking is why the untapped $289 billion in the credit line isn’t enough. That represents more than three times the amount spent already, when the crisis hit its peak. At this point, we should be seeing improvement rather than an escalation of crisis in the housing market, or at least some stabilization, if this strategy was correct in the first place.
Instead, Obama now wants no cap at all, which means that he has plans to spend a lot more money on inflating a housing bubble that still needs deflating. That will once again start the cycle of price escalation, speculation, and eventually another collapse of the bubble. The pattern is utterly predictable, as is the damage it will inflict on the economy.
We need to demand some answers from this administration from its attempt to aggrandize its power in the dark of night.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/29/the-new-housing-bubble/
Mark Twain
Published December 30, 2009 | If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”
— Mark Twain
Thanks Sen. Dodd for the Mismanagement of the People’s Money and for Making America Less Safe!
Published December 30, 2009 | “Sen. Dodd, D-Conn., Slashed Aviation Security Funding for Pet Constituency”
By: Mark Hemingway, The Wasington Examiner, Commentary Staff Writer, 12/28/09
 |
| Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2009, for a series of votes. |
Now that our attention is focused on airline security measures thanks to the failed airline attack on Christmas Day, it’s worth mentioning that one senator took money away from aviation security to line the pockets of a constituency that supported his presidential campaign in a big way.
Back in July, Senator Chris Dodd, D-Conn., proposed an amendment reducing aviation security appropriations by $4.5 million in favor of firefighter grants — a notoriously inneffective program. In fact, the money was specifically “for screening operations and the amount for explosives detection systems.” The amendment was also sponsored by Sen. Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Carper, D-Del., but Dodd deserves to be singled out here because the firefighters union is a pet constituency of his. In 2007 he campaigned all through Iowa with the firefighters union. It was one of the few distinguishable features of Dodd’s ill-fated presidential bid.
The text of the amendment is below:
(Purpose: To provide additional funds for FIRE grants under section 33 of the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974)
On page 77, between lines 16 and 17, insert the following:
SEC. X (a) The amount appropriated under the heading “firefighter assistance grants” under the heading “Federal Emergency Management Agency” under by title III for necessary expenses for programs authorized by the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 is increased by $10,000,000 for necessary expenses to carry out the programs authorized under section 33 of that Act (15 U.S.C. 2229).
(b) The total amount of appropriations under the heading “Aviation Security” under the heading “Transportation Security Administration” under title II, the amount for screening operations and the amount for explosives detection systems under the first proviso under that heading, and the amount for the purchase and installation of explosives detection systems under the second proviso under that heading are reduced by $4,500,000.
(c) From the unobligated balances of amounts appropriated before the date of enactment of this Act for the appropriations account under the heading “state and local programs” under the heading “Federal Emergency Management Agency” for “Trucking Industry Security Grants”, $5,500,000 are rescinded.
Thank Your Military
Published December 30, 2009 | We want the military to know we appreciate their service and sacrifice!
Dick Cheney: Obama ‘Trying to Pretend’ America Is Not At War
Published December 30, 2009 | ….“Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? . . . It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation-the restructuring of American society.” . . . Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.”….
By Mike Allen, Politico, December 30, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of “trying to pretend we are not at war” with terrorists, pointing to the White House response to the attempted sky bombing as reflecting a pattern that includes banishing the term “war on terror” and attempting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
“[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe,” Cheney said in a statement to POLITICO. “Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation-the restructuring of American society.”
Cheney was joining a chorus of Republicans who have criticized Obama following the Christmas Day attack, in which a Nigerian suspect is accused of trying to blow up a loaded airliner with a bomb stitched into his underwear.
A senior Democrat said in response: “It’s telling that in attacking the president and the administration, that Vice President Cheney did not condemn the attack against our nation on Christmas Day.”
Foreshadowing the party’s strategy for next year’s midterm congressional elections, GOP officeholders have eschewed the customary partisan restraint following a terrorist incident, and have baldly portrayed Democrats as weak on security.
Rep. Peter King of New York, ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and a member of the Intelligence committee, said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show: “I think that the administration has made a mistake by treating this terrorist as a common criminal, by putting him into the criminal-justice system. I wish they had put him into a military tribunal so we could get as much intelligence and information out of him as we could.”
Here is Cheney’s full statement:
“As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.
“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation-the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.” ….. continued….
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31054.html
Ten New Reasons Why Obamacare Can Still Be Killed
Published December 30, 2009 | 
America Needs a Good Old-Fashioned President Not a King!
Published December 30, 2009 |
…..I suspect that what Obama wanted was to be the King, not the President. The King’s role is largely ceremonial. In time of national tragedy the King goes before the camera and says, “this is very sad.” If he can assign blame on a perceived enemy he does so, and then he steps aside and retires to his amusements while those actually in charge clean up the mess and determine how to prevent future messes. Everyone loves the King, defers to the King, rushes to do for the King, but the King -who tends to get bored and distracted by the dry business of actually governing- is responsible for very little, and most are just as glad of it.
If a King is on vacation and his country encounters an critical issue, he knows there is no need to come jetting back to the palace, because the Prime Minister is taking care of reality. All the King needs to do is -in a day or three- show up at a microphone in casual dress and do the PR work of expressing concern over the issue and confidence in the government. The King can command instant coverage, even if there is only time for audio.
A King does not worry, so much, about representative governance, since it is irrelevent to his standing.
Sadly, though, America is not in need of his Kingship.
America needs a good old-fashioned President:
I miss old-fashioned American presidents; flawed men who had no allusions that they were perfect. Men who (in Clinton’s case) needed to be loved too much and (in Bush’s case) didn’t need it enough, but who still, for all the personal and political mistakes, were simply trying to lead America, not to rule it, or “remake” it or “save” it from its stiff-necked, fussy, independent, generous, vulgar, valiant, dreaming, energetic, creative, preening, heroic, world-leading, free and glorious self.
Bring back the flawed human president who we were free to love or hate without reserve, fear or condemnation, because the target was strong enough to take it. The president who could sometimes be petty but sometimes be pretty damned gracious, too. The president who could make a mistake at a doorway and laugh about it, and whom the press did not have to protect from the passing mockery such a mistake would bring.
Don Surber shows a wonderful picture of President Bush, helping Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd walk as they gather to confer a congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee airmen who served in World War II.I miss having an American President who could describe himself – as Clinton once did – as “a punching clown; you punch me and I’m bounce right back up and into your face;” or a president who could, with ironic self awareness describe himself as “misunderestimated.” America needs a guy who can laugh at himself and take the nation’s chaffing with a shrug, instead of a godling of the press’ needy creation, one “too perfect to be mocked”.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/12/29/obama-and-doing-vs-being/
Nancy Pelosi to Bishops on Abortion: “I Practically Mourn This Difference of Opinion”
Published December 30, 2009 | House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was interviewed in a recent edition of Newsweek, in which she had the opportunity to set the bishops straight on the participation of Catholics in public life.
- I think you have had some brushes with [church] hierarchy.
I have some concerns about the church’s position respecting a woman’s right to choose. I have some concerns about the church’s position on gay rights. I am a practicing Catholic, although they’re probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith. I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that is that we are all endowed with a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.
- Is it difficult for you to reconcile your faith with the role you have in public life?
You know, I had five children in six years. The day I brought my fifth baby home, that week my daughter turned 6. So I appreciate and value all that they want to talk about in terms of family and the rest. When I speak to my archbishop in San Francisco and his role is to try to change my mind on the subject, well then he is exercising his pastoral duty to me as one of his flock. When they call me on the phone here to talk about, or come to see me about an issue, that’s a different story. Then they are advocates, and I am a public official, and I have a different responsibility.
When in the Course of human events…..
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.