A New House

This new house is not like my old one. This new house is bigger than my old one. This new house is more prestigous than my old one. This new house is more, better, greater and finer than my old house. But it's not like the house I've been promised. The house I'm promised is with God. The house I'm promised is in a place where the imperfections have been replaced with perfection. The house I'm promised is not built of wood or stone. The house I'm promised is not of this world.

Dear God,
Let me remember that this house, the wood and the stone, will crumble and decay. Let me remember that I can have no vanity in the house of this world. Let me remember that I need to build up equity in the house that I will inherit when I leave this life. Let me remember that I have a place in your houses and an eternity in your courts and no earthly house or it's possessions can get in my way.

Erasing God

I just read a story yesterday about a public school's rendition of the Thanksgiving story. It's absurdity is shocking. In an effort to clean every mention of God or religion or prayer from a holiday established specifically for giving thanks to God the school has made the story almost unrecognizable. On one hand, the Thanksgiving distortion is being read to the students in spanish, so as not to neglect any culture but the religious nature of the holiday is being completely swept away. Is that deceitful ommission not discriminatory against Christians and those who wish to give thanks to God?

This goes well beyond separating church and state. This particular instance rewrites history. Have your children read George Washington's declaration of the holiday as it was originally established. And give thanks to God for all He has done for you.
If you don't believe in God... you're welcome to hold any opinion here in America... good for you. I will not force you to come to my church or to pray to my God. But let's not forget that it was God fearing men and women who established this country. It was God fearing men and women who wrote the documents that give you the freedom of (or from) religion and it was God fearing men and women who have consistently given their lives to ensure those freedoms. Don't belittle their sacrifices by denying their contributions. Don't celebrate Thanksgiving if it offends you.

In the world of political correctness will we forget that George Washington was a white man? Will we rewrite history so that some of founding fathers were women and minorities? Will we only remember the person who sewed the flag and forget Betsy Ross? Will we only remember the person who crossed the Delaware and forget George Washington?

A belief in God is woven into the fabric of this country. Freedom to worship God (or abstain from worshipping) as each person chooses to do so is granted so that this nation's government would not have the power to enforce one religion or the other. Forgetting that the men and women who were instrumental to her creation were also prayerful, religous, pious and godly would be bad history.

Insurgent's Publicist is Doing Great Work

There's a syndrome or an affliction of some sort known as "white man's guilt" that is best described as overcompensation in regards to all things racial. There seems to be a variation of this syndrome in America today in regards to all things Islamic.

A US Marine is shown by NBC shooting an Iraqi insurgent. Apparently, such an inconceivable atrocity (sarcasm, since it's in the midst of war) makes it newsworthy. This choice by NBC should be seen in contrast with their decisions not to air the multiple videos of Islamic terrorists beheading US and British civilians. This imbalance portrays the US Marines as cold blooded killers rampaging through the streets of Fallujah murdering any Iraqi man they encounter whereas the Iraqi insurgents (to call them insurgents is generous) are portrayed as freedom fighters, struggling to match forces with a vastly superior US military. That view of these current events is only possible when the complete context is ignored.

I can read a single sentence of any great book and you, faithful reader, will have difficulty identifying the author or the work. Let's not make that same mistake as we review these recent events in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein, with the help of his sons committed such gruesome acts against the people of Iraq that the memory of them and the videos of them make me physically sick. Let's recall the men being dropped off of three story buildings. Let's recall the arms being cut off with circular saws. Let's recall the tongues being cut out. Let's recall the hands and arms being broken with wooden poles. Let's recall the mass graves filled with men, women and children. Let's recall the poison gas victims lying burned and bloated in the streets where they fell. Let's recall the original Abu Ghraib prison, with it's rape rooms (built to hold women who were raped and then killed) and torture chambers where Iraqis were brutalized in whatever way a depraved Uday Hussein could invent. Let's recall the gold and marble of Hussein's many palaces as the children of Iraq starved to death. Let's recall the heroin, the pornography, the bundles of cash in those palaces as Iraqi children died because their water supply was contaminated and they couldn't get medicine for common diseases. Let's remember that the men who are videotaping themselves cutting the heads off of aid workers, contractors and civilians (working to make Iraq a better place) are Saddam's friends. These men, friends of Saddam want to make Iraq what it once was under Saddam Hussein, a royal paradise for them and a bloody, nightmarish hell for anyone that didn't agree with them.

Don't get misty eyed over these poor Iraqi insurgents. If they have their way Iraq will return to it's former "glory" and you can bet there are Iraqis who begged for a bullet in the head to end their misery in those "good old days." Don't be tricked into a new form of white man's guilt. We are doing good things for Iraq and for the world. Don't let (the media coverage of) one Marine's decision in the heat of battle make you believe that we are anything but the good guys in this world.

Welcome home. Thank you for your service, Marine

A US Marine is under investigation for the shooting of an unarmed Iraqi. A US reporter embedded with the Marines filmed the shooting of a wounded, possibly unarmed Iraqi. The video is available online, of course and has been shown, unedited by Al Jazeera. The usual voices are screaming about the US being no better than the Taliban, etc.

Give me a minute... oh yeah... the unarmed Iraqi was in a mosque (not saying his prayers) shooting RPGs and AK47s at the Marines. The Marine who is shown shooting the Iraqi was shot and wounded the day before the video was taken. The Iraqi was on the floor, leaning against the wall and was obviously wounded. The Marines had just lost one of their own when a hidden grenade exploded underneath a wounded Iraqi.

All the arguments about war crimes can go out the window. Frankly, I don't really care what the Geneva conventions say. The US is the only the country on this earth that even remotely follows the rules. In case you missed the last couple of wars, US soldiers who are captured are beaten, burned, tortured, denied food, denied medicine and publicly executed. Enemy combatants are usually (there are certainly exceptions) provided with first aid by US soldiers and flown away from the fighting in US helicopters and healed in US hospitals and given US medicine and fed US food and generally live better as POWs than they did before they began fighting the US. So, I don't have too much compassion for this dead Iraqi because I know what happens when the tables are turned. If this Iraqi had come upon our wounded Marine the Marine would be lucky to get a bullet in the head. So, don't lecture me about war crimes.

I don't want US soldiers losing the disciplines of trained soldiers. I don't want civilians to be raped, tortured and killed. I don't want to see US Marines beheading Iraqis who are chained and begging for their lives. I want our Marines to be better than our enemies. That's part of us being the good guys and them being the bad guys.

Now, what about this Marine? Pull him off the front line, remind of the rules that we choose to play by and then send him back into the fight. He could very well have saved his life and the lives of those around him had that wounded Iraqi been holding a grenade and just waiting for the Marines to get close enough. He could have saved his life and the lives of those around him if the wounded Iraqi had lived to fight another day.

These Iraqis are our enemies. They are trying their best to kill us. They will not hesitate to use a mosque as a gun turret, to use an infant as a shield or to use their last breath and a grenade to kill and maim Americans. They will proudly videotape themselves cutting off the heads of civilians, men and women who are working to bring running water, electricity and medicine to the Iraqi people.

The Marine in the videotape is in the midst of this life and death struggle. He understands war. It's brutal. It's ugly. People die in war. Today was not his day to die. Today it was the Iraqi's day to die. The Marine got one more minute, one more hour, one more day and maybe, he could come home to a wife who misses him and kids who cry for their daddy. He better find this country welcoming him home IF he gets home.

A couple of thoughts and I'm done... for today. The Marine commanders who lead these young men into battle have one ultimate measurement for a successful mission: NO DEAD MARINES. And finally a word from General Patton. "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

One legged man wins butt-kicking contest

The time to write has been extremely thin lately. I've been working on a couple of projects at the office that are high profile, high value initiatives and have the attention of my bosses. I've been working on completing the sale of our house and the purchase of another house and all the "administrivia" that goes with each. It's been hectic.

Now, the close on our sale is scheduled for Monday. The close on our buy is scheduled for Tuesday. Sometime next week the people who buy our house are surely going to want us to get out of it so they can move into it. I'm still not sure when or how that's going to happen.

The divine Mrs. L and I are planning to load most of the contents of our house onto a truck tomorrow and Sunday. It's the perfect (sarcasm) weekend for moving... all our friends are out of town and the weather is supposed to be just above freezing with a 50% chance of rain. Yee haw.

I need to find out about having a fence built for Maggie, our dog pound treasure... I need to call about the truck... I need to talk to the seller...

Gotta go.

Welcome to Jesusland

Red states are being ridiculed by blue states in the wake of G.W. Bush's second win. The shrill voices of the losers have gone into uncharted territory as they refer condescendingly to the red states as "Jesusland." They are claiming moral and intellectual superiority in order to anesthetize the stinging wounds of losing to a man they consider an idiot, no doubt voted into office by millions of people who are ignorant at best, imbecilic at worst. The blue states have gotten busy disparaging the red states for being rednecks, cowboys, Jesus freaks, simple minded, blissfully ignorant, haters, bigots and generally too stupid to understand the subtleties of the international community and the nuances of silver tongued politicians like John Kerry.

I wish to remind those arrogant losers that without the Jesus freaks this country wouldn't exist. I wish to remind those arrogant losers that without the rednecks and the cowboys this country wouldn't exist. I wish remind those arrogant losers that if it weren't for the simple minded conviction that this country's needs must outweigh the needs of the international community then this nation would long ago have slipped into the impotence and irrelevance of the UN. I would remind those arrogant losers that the men and women in the desert of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan usually fall into the red state category.

If the blue states have their way, today or tomorrow or 10 years from now, they will make America in their image and it will not be a place I want to live because I believe in Jesus and I believe that the our nation is superior to any other and I believe that cowboys made this nation great. Oh yeah... I cannot understand the "nuance" of John Kerry, either. Where I come from, we refer to Kerry's "nuance" as bald-faced lies.

Democrats... hello?!

I've read two articles in the past couple of days that confirm my fears for my friends who profess to be Democrats.

First, I read Paul Krugman's article about Bush. He says that President Bush is a radical leader of a movement that hates America. He says Bush wants to tear down the division between church and state and got the evangelical votes to do it. He says Bush wants to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare. He says Bush didn't win in a landslide and that if it weren't for terrorists attacking our country on 9/11 Bush wouldn't have had a chance. He goes on to say that Democrats just didn't do a very good job of mobilizing their base. He suggests that Bush won because the gay marriage initiatives brought out the religious right. (Yes, this trash was printed in the New York Times.) The long and the short of the article is this: Democrats, do not stop what you're doing. Keep going down the path you've chosen. Don't change a thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman

Second, I read Jane Smiley's article in Slate. It's called "The Unteachable Ignorance of Red States." The subtitle is "Why Americans Hate Democrats." It doesn't get any better. She says that essentially, Republicans have their brains sucked out and replaced by religious dogma. Once the critical thinking skills are given over to religious zeal then the big corporations can have their way with the zombie like remnants of thinking human beings. She then included bloodlust in her indictment of Republicans citing a recent example from 1856. Powerful work from Ms. Smiley. http://slate.msn.com/id/2109218/

I had hoped that the Democratic party would look long and hard at the situation in which they find themselves, having lost 5 of the last 7 presidential elections and continuing to slide into smaller and smaller numbers in governorships and Senate and House seats. These might be considered signs of dwindling relevance or of a failure to connect with the voting populace. Either way, it's not healthy. I hoped they would remind themselves of their core beliefs and see where it was that they strayed from the American public. But now, after a spanking of an election cycle, they choose to continue to push ahead toward gay marriage, abortion on demand, entitlement programs for everyone, subjection to the UN and a large scale redistribution of wealth.

Bush got 59 million votes and Kerry got 55 million. It clearly doesn't mean Bush got handed a mandate to do whatever he chooses. He's still going to have to work with Democrats and Republicans to make the best decisions possible for our country. My concern is that if the Democrat party keeps going the way they're going now, they will not be viable in the next election cycle and the 55 million people who believed that Kerry was a better candidate will not have any better choices. After all, as a Republican I believe strongly in a free marketplace and the laws of supply and demand, even in the marketplace of ideas. The vitriolic and condescending tone of the two Democrats above is not going to win any elections and does not serve the populace. Try again.

Osama, you lose

I hope that Osama Bin Laden and his thugs hear the message loud and clear. George Bush didn't just defeat John Kerry yesterday. The American freedoms that we know and love defeated fear and cowardice.

Osama made his videotaped threats just before the election in hopes that the American people would react like the Spanish did. He hoped that we would consider John Kerry to be a less risky President than Bush as far as our security and safety were concerned.

The American people have given George Bush four more years of the presidency in what can only be described as a tidal wave of voter turnout. More people voted than ever in our history. More people cast votes for Bush than for any presidential candidate in history, including the Reagan landslides. More Republican governors won their races. More Senate and House seats went to Republicans.

Osama, we don't want to die at the hands of Islamic murderers like you and your friends. We don't want to see anymore of our soldiers die in a foreign country. Because of this you thought that we would back down. You thought that we would choose the path of least resistance. You thought that we would let go of our ideals in favor of our comfort. You were wrong. America chooses to bring the war to you. America chooses the right way, not the easy way. Ultimately, you will die in a cave, stewing in your own hatred and America will remain the shining city on a hill proclaiming freedom for all.

You've taken several thousand American lives. There are at least 58 million more of us who will not rest until you are only a sad, brief paragraph in the history of the world.