If they had, they'd have seen Peter Gibbons (played by Ron Livingston) tell the "efficiency experts" looking to cut a bunch of jobs at his company this little gem:
"My only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
The RNC should know that fear is a card played by liberals, not conservatives, but they don't. What's worse, these idiots played the fear card when they were winning elections...and they wonder why donations to the RNC dropped like a stone. Fear only really works when there is something to fear, and even then it's impact is limited in a "boy cries wolf once too often and no one comes while he gets devoured" kind of way. When you get frontrunners in each political party (Clinton or Obama vs. John McCain) who are so close on so many issues (illegal immigration, glow-bull warming, class warfare, opposing tax cuts) as to be virtually indistinguishable, then fear is utterly powerless. Leaving aside all that I just mentioned, anyone with any self-respect, any sense of pride, any courage of their convictions whatsoever will not and should not allow their votes or their lives to be governed by fear. Since I can't say it better than Mychal Massie at World Net Daily (Hat Tip: Emperor Misha), I will let he who says it best say it loud. Read the whole thing.
"Fear Doesn't Control My Vote"
By Mychal Massie
"It seems to matter little where I go or who I am with, the question I am repeatedly asked many times with breathless anticipation is: "What do we do if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and/or who can beat Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?"
Those of you with whom I correspond already know my feelings, but for those who do not, let me make my position unequivocally clear. I don't care who wins the Democrat presidential nomination, and I don't care, as such, if Obama or Clinton win the Holy Grail of politics. I care that the Republican Party doesn't have a candidate I can support as a true conservative left in the race.
I am a conservative, but I'm not an ideologue – nor is my vote governed by fear. That is to say, I will not vote for a Republican nominee to whose positions I am vehemently opposed and/or whom I do not trust, just to keep Obama or, more likely, Clinton out of the White House.
Fear is a powerful motivator that can be used to coerce well-intentioned persons, groups or even the entire nation into making incredibly poor decisions – and the Republican National Committee is not above using same. The idea that I must abandon my moral compass and vote for a candidate I could not find more objectionable – in order to shut out a liberal candidate who bears little or no substantive difference to the one I voted for – is offensive to me.
Some have told me they will vote for whomever the Republican candidate is, for fear of those whom a Democrat president will appoint to the Supreme Court – to which I respond: Who was the president that appointed Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor? Who was the president that appointed David Souter, and who appointed John Paul Stevens? Here's a hint – they weren't Democrats.
Under which president has the federal government grown exponentially? Which president thumbed his nose at the voters and arrogantly pledged his support for an amnesty bill for illegal aliens? Which presidents supported abortion, race-based preferences and race-based affirmative action? Which president signed McCain-Feingold? Which president's attorney general vigorously opposed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative? Which president's attorney general dropped the ball in Lawrence vs. Texas, which opened the door to homosexual marriage and the undermining of the family? Which president campaigned vigorously for Arlen Specter when, in fact, Pat Toomey was the true conservative? Which president had his Justice Department undermine a lower-court ruling in the District of Columbia pursuant to the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment? Want a hint? Once again, they weren't Democrats.
Voting, in my opinion, is one of the most important acts of citizenship an American can perform. The value of that act should not be taken lightly or under duress.
As my grandmother used to say, "No good is no good," to which I add, my voting for one "no good" over another "no good" doesn't make same less "no good." Thus, as I have been forthright in stating from the beginning, I plan to write in the name of my choice, devil be damned, if Democrats win in the meantime. I survived Carter and Clinton. I can endure whomever and whatever they come up with this time, including the certainty of their punitive tax increases.
Former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie is to be credited, in part, for the calcification of my position. While still RNC chairman, Gillespie, referencing a possible Giuliani-Clinton New York senatorial contest, dismissed conservative concerns pursuant to Giuliani by insisting the conservative base would support Giuliani just to keep Clinton out, even though he favored all that we opposed. I found his arrogance indefensible then, as I do the same mindset that embodies the party today.
I am well aware that many will disagree with me for an avalanche of reasons – that said, so be it. The battle lines must be drawn somewhere. I believe the future of our party depends on it. The party cannot continue in the state of decline it now experiences. Where are the substantive differences that set us apart during the Reagan years? How offensive it is to his memory and to the movement he set in place when we hear liberal Republicans and/or Republican charades claim to be in the image of Ronald Reagan.
I agree with Thomas Sowell and others calling for a revolution to reclaim the Party of Lincoln. Obviously, the RNC has not taken the lessons of 2006 to heart. Perhaps a few more defeats will jar them into listening to us."
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Now Running for the GOP Presidential Nomination, Juan McCain Edwards-Clinton
I can't believe I missed this in the January 5 debate, but earlier tonight in the GOP debate in California, Senator McCain said, and I quote, "I led the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy, not for profit but for patriotism." That's twice now in two debates in the same month that he has thrown around tired class warfare rhetoric that would make John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama crowds erupt into spontaneous, orgasmic applause. Not only is it increasingly clear which country Senator McCain believes he is running for President to represent (Hint: It is due south of the U.S. and rhymes with Texaco), now it appears we can clearly see the political party from whom he seeks the nomination (Hint #2: Its members include Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, et al. ad nauseam).
Senator McCain, in light of the foregoing, I now dub thee: Juan McCain Edwards-Clinton.
Senator McCain, in light of the foregoing, I now dub thee: Juan McCain Edwards-Clinton.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Very Easy Armed Civilian-Related Math
I know it's a lot to ask, but even the most dense of the gun-fearing ninny crowd should be able to do this math. Courtesy of Double Tapper, over thirty dead at Virginia Tech compared to zero dead and two wounded at a high school in Israel when Islamic terrorists who attacked a class full of students were killed by counselors who drew their own personal handguns and mowed down the cowardly practitioners of the "Religion of Peace". Lest anyone accuse me of assuming that just because a school of Israeli children were attacked that it was a bunch of Islamofascists that did it, the bozos of Fatah's Al-Aksa Brigades helpfully announced and claimed credit for the attacks. I'm not really sure how much bragging these apes should be doing, given that two (allegedly) highly trained killers were mowed down by school counselors without inflicting a single casualty before going to meet their 72 Virginians in the afterlife.
More to the point of the post...even one teacher with a concealed carry permit could have saved the lives of thirty people from the maniac Virginia Tech killer. Thanks to gun-fearing, nanny statists who wouldn't recognize the Second Amendment if it jumped out of the Constitution and slapped them, over two dozen people are dead...and everyone complicit in disarming law-abiding citzens on college campuses may consider themselves co-conspirators to murder. That is all.
More to the point of the post...even one teacher with a concealed carry permit could have saved the lives of thirty people from the maniac Virginia Tech killer. Thanks to gun-fearing, nanny statists who wouldn't recognize the Second Amendment if it jumped out of the Constitution and slapped them, over two dozen people are dead...and everyone complicit in disarming law-abiding citzens on college campuses may consider themselves co-conspirators to murder. That is all.
Monday, January 28, 2008
John McCain is Ricky Vaughn from "Major League"
Remember the old movie "Major League", where Charlie Sheen played Ricky Vaughn, a fireballing right-handed pitcher with a checkered past and control problems? His coach said, "We better teach this kid some control before he kills someone." In the movie, during his first major league start, Vaughn walks the first three batters on twelve pitches. The commentator quipped, "Ball four, ball eight, ball twelve, and Vaughn has walked the bases loaded." That's how quickly John "Karma Conservative Chameleon" McCain is racking up strikes with the conservative base of the GOP.
In the movie, Vaughn eventually calms down, learns some control, becomes the ace of the staff, and leads the Indians to the playoffs. John McCain is 71 years old, and I've got news for you folks...there's no "Major League"-type change on the horizon for this doddering old fool.
As if all the other nonsense he has pulled over his many atrocious years in public "service" isn't enough (his Navy and POW record notwithstanding, of course), the strikes just keep on coming. Now he's getting honors from La Raza?!! Doesn't this pendejo understand that means "The Race" in Spanish? Doesn't he care that the man who honored him for this award back in 1999 is now Senator Hillary Clinton's National Hispanic Outreach director? For extra added fun, try the thought of having someone with a nasty temper and a bad habit of cursing his opponents with his finger on the nuclear trigger. That's to say nothing of his outright fabrication of an accusation that Mitt Romney supported a withdrawal and retreat from Iraq, or of his national campaign finance co-chair, Jerrold Perenchio. Seems as though old Jerrold has a penchant for multiculturalism, a history of fighting against English as a first language, ties to numerous environmentalist wackos, and a history of funding the election campaigns of the worst of the worst of the Dem-Cong. Jerrold, like Senator "Straight Talk", plays both sides according to the polls and his own financial interests. No wonder Bill and Hillary Clinton love this clown so much.
Between his particular brand of faux conservatism (which is really just socialism-lite) and George Bush's compassionate conservatism (which just says that the criminal gang known as the GOP knows better how to confiscate and spend your money for you than the Democrats do), the Reagan coalition and small government conservatism really may be on the endangered species list. I can't decide which is worse...being a flip-flopper who changes positions like most of us change clothes (see John Kerry, circa 2004), or to be as badly wrong on so many important issues as Senator McCain is, and worse yet, to not even know it.
God help us all if this moron makes it to the White House.
In the movie, Vaughn eventually calms down, learns some control, becomes the ace of the staff, and leads the Indians to the playoffs. John McCain is 71 years old, and I've got news for you folks...there's no "Major League"-type change on the horizon for this doddering old fool.
As if all the other nonsense he has pulled over his many atrocious years in public "service" isn't enough (his Navy and POW record notwithstanding, of course), the strikes just keep on coming. Now he's getting honors from La Raza?!! Doesn't this pendejo understand that means "The Race" in Spanish? Doesn't he care that the man who honored him for this award back in 1999 is now Senator Hillary Clinton's National Hispanic Outreach director? For extra added fun, try the thought of having someone with a nasty temper and a bad habit of cursing his opponents with his finger on the nuclear trigger. That's to say nothing of his outright fabrication of an accusation that Mitt Romney supported a withdrawal and retreat from Iraq, or of his national campaign finance co-chair, Jerrold Perenchio. Seems as though old Jerrold has a penchant for multiculturalism, a history of fighting against English as a first language, ties to numerous environmentalist wackos, and a history of funding the election campaigns of the worst of the worst of the Dem-Cong. Jerrold, like Senator "Straight Talk", plays both sides according to the polls and his own financial interests. No wonder Bill and Hillary Clinton love this clown so much.
Between his particular brand of faux conservatism (which is really just socialism-lite) and George Bush's compassionate conservatism (which just says that the criminal gang known as the GOP knows better how to confiscate and spend your money for you than the Democrats do), the Reagan coalition and small government conservatism really may be on the endangered species list. I can't decide which is worse...being a flip-flopper who changes positions like most of us change clothes (see John Kerry, circa 2004), or to be as badly wrong on so many important issues as Senator McCain is, and worse yet, to not even know it.
God help us all if this moron makes it to the White House.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
One of the Saddest, Most Evil Stories You Will Ever Read
I can't even fathom how someone can get to this point. Be sure to read the portion of the story I put in bold about the suicide note. Most such notes are apologizing, begging people to care, praying that someone notices your pain...but this, blaming a father for your suicide and the murder of his son...which you committed. Chutzpah doesn't even begin to cover it. I guess this pathetic excuse for a woman, this cancer in the body of life, didn't bother to read what the Bible says about the fate awaiting those who do harm to innocent little ones. When her judgment is done and God's wrath is finished, I am fairly confident there's an extra special toasty place right next to the hottest furnaces of hell in the company of the most vile demons of the underworld awaiting this witch. Seriously, if you have problems, talk to a friend, go to a counselor, get in church...do something, but don't murder your child and kill yourself. May God comfort this man's tortured soul and help him find peace, and may He welcome the soul of this innocent two year old boy, Ryan, into the company of the angels in Heaven. Read the whole thing.
Coach Endures Unthinkable Loss One Second at a Time
Jan. 9, 2008
By Gary Parrish
THATCHER, Ariz. -- Tim Parmeter pulled into the driveway and clicked and clicked and clicked his garage door opener, probably pushed the thing four or five times, best he can remember. But the door never opened. So he shook his head.
He just thought his estranged wife had changed the code like she had changed the locks, because that's the kind of stuff people do when they're going through a divorce. And it was a messy divorce.
There were arguments and fights, countless phone conversations resulting in hang-ups. There were threats, both silly and serious. But the bad moments always seemed to pass with time. And so even though Tim had argued with Paula the previous afternoon and didn't hear from her the rest of that Friday, he didn't really think much of it and, at the time, he figured he'd just stop by the house Saturday morning to see his 2-year-old son, Ryan.
"I was kinda surprised she didn't call that Friday night," Tim said. "But in some ways I was just relieved to not be arguing on the phone."
But now it was Saturday morning and Tim was in the driveway and his clicker still wouldn't work and he was starting to worry. He dialed the home phone. Nobody answered. He dialed Paula's cell phone. Nobody answered. So he finally called Bryana Flynn, the family babysitter, and asked for help entering the home.
She told him the spare key was in the back. He grabbed it from inside a toy chest.
He unlocked the door. He walked inside.
"And I was still on the phone with Bryana as I was going through the house, and it was a mess," Tim said. "I checked Paula's office. Checked the bedrooms. Nothing. Ryan's stuff was scattered all over the house and I was asking Bryana 'Where did they go?'"
That's when Tim opened the door that leads to the garage.
He immediately saw Paula in the backseat of the car, slumped over to the side.
She was dead.
"He was just yelling into the phone," Bryana recalled. "He was yelling, 'Oh my God! Where's my f---ing baby?'"
When Tim got closer to the car he looked inside.
Ryan was lying in the back floorboard.
He was wrapped in a blue blanket.
"I remember yelling into the phone," Tim said. "I just remember yelling, just screaming, 'She killed herself and she killed my baby!'"
• • •
The college basketball schedule is loaded Wednesday night and highlighted by a pair of Top 25 matchups.
North Carolina is playing, as are Duke and Pittsburgh and Xavier and Vanderbilt. And then there's a Pac-10 showdown between Arizona and Arizona State in Tempe that will dominate local headlines as Kevin O'Neill tries to get a road win that could push the Wildcats back into the national rankings.
With less hype, Tim Parmeter will be coaching too.
He'll be 153 miles away from Arizona-Arizona State, 153 miles away at Eastern Arizona, a junior college in the shadows of Mount Graham here in the Gila River Valley. His opponent will be Arizona Western, a league rival coached by a close friend.
And if Tim makes it through the game without breaking down it'll be the upset of all upsets, given how at halftime he'll formally announce a scholarship in the name of his son, Ryan Wrigley Parmeter, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning Dec. 29, 2006, in what police ruled was a murder-suicide initiated by Tim's estranged wife and Ryan's mother, Paula.
"The game is going to be emotional," Tim said as he sat in his office two weekends ago, exactly one year to the day after he found Paula's and Ryan's bodies in the backseat of the family's black Volvo.
"I'm just happy I'll be coaching against a friend," Tim added with a half-hearted smile. "Maybe he'll be messed up, too."
A coach's son from Indiana, Tim followed his father into the profession after playing at Truman State. He worked at Central College in Iowa, then at Iowa State for Tim Floyd before landing at Scottsdale Community College, where he fielded a competitive team -- despite not having the luxury of scholarships or dorms -- and even found time to take in Trivia Night at a local establishment every once in a while.
That's where he met his wife, an Arizona State graduate.
"She was with a big group and I was with a big group and we met over Cubs trivia," Tim said. "The question was about Hack Wilson's record for RBI in a season and we both shouted the answer from opposite sides of the room. And then it was like, 'How'd you know that?'"
Turns out, Paula was from Chicago, a Cubs fan just like Tim. That led to a conversation about WGN, which led to a conversation about Bozo the Clown which led to a first date and a second date and a wedding date in 2000. Two years later, Tim got the head coaching job at Eastern Arizona, where he had a real campus and real dorms and a career heading upward.
Meantime, Paula got pregnant. The baby was born Aug. 31, 2004. They named him Ryan Wrigley Parmeter.
Wrigley was for Wrigley Field. Ryan was ...
"Just a name we both liked," Tim said.
The rest was supposed to be the picture-perfect life with family vacations and holidays spent together. Alas, too few unions go that route these days. In September 2006, Tim filed for divorce, which sent Paula into a state of despair. She sought professional help and was placed on medication.
"I considered Paula a friend, as well as my boss, and she was a nice person," Bryana said. "But she just couldn't handle going through the divorce."
Tim moved from the family's home shortly before Christmas 2006 and stayed in Arizona while Paula and Ryan visited her family for the holiday. Tim picked them up at Tucson International Airport late on Dec. 27 and drove them home. He put Ryan to bed and was planning to leave when he said Paula asked him to stay the night so they could enjoy a present-opening session the following morning.
"I wasn't going to stay, but then she looked at me and said, 'I'm so over you. Don't worry about it,'" Tim recalled. "So I just stayed and then we woke up the next day, had Christmas and had lunch. And then I was going to get out of there because I knew once she laid Ryan down for a nap she'd want to talk."
So Tim got out of there. But Paula called as soon as Ryan fell asleep.
"She was sitting in my closet, which was empty, crying and asking why I took all my clothes," Tim said. "I told her it was because I moved out, that we had talked about this. So that went on for a while and she finally said, 'I can't go on any more. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. Please take care of Ryan.' And then she just hung up."
Worried, Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. Then Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. And this went on for hours on into the night until Tim said Paula finally calmed down. But when Tim woke up the next morning he was still bothered by the tone and decided to call Paula's counselor to "just tell him all the stuff that had happened since she had been home from Chicago," Tim said. "I was like, 'Somebody is going to die. I don't know who. But somebody is going to die.'"
The counselor immediately called Paula, who immediately called Tim and "that conversation digressed into the nastiest, most vile conversation I've ever had with anybody," Tim recalled. "I was just listening, not really saying anything. And she said, 'I bet you want to go, don't you?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Are you sick of this?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Then why don't you just hang up?' And I said, 'Because you'll just call back. So I'll just wait and let you get it all out.' And then she goes, 'Well, I'm done. I'm not calling you back.' And I said 'OK.' And she said, 'I'm not calling you back. You'll really never hear from me again.' And that was at about 1 p.m. on Dec. 29th."
That was Tim's final conversation with Paula.
What he later learned from police is after she hung up, she wrote six suicide letters addressed to six different people and mailed them all to her brother. Afterward, she placed Ryan in the backseat of the car with six stuffed animals, some toys, a few books, a sippy cup filled with milk and some chocolate candy. She crammed towels in every crack of the garage door and unplugged it, which is why Tim's opener wouldn't work. Then she rolled the windows down in the car and opened the sunroof before starting the engine and beginning the process that would kill herself and her son.
"He was just sitting in the backseat with Mom, reading books and playing," Tim said. "He was just having a good time. What did he know?"
Paula also left a digital camera in the car. When Tim uploaded the pictures there was a final image of Ryan.
"There he is in the car," Tim said as he pulled the picture up on his computer. "See how his lips look swollen? The police said that's from the carbon monoxide."
By the time Ryan was buried the police had all six suicide letters. One was addressed to Tim. It was given to him after the memorial service. He sat at a table with two officers. Before reading it he asked a question.
"I asked them, 'Is this going to piss me off?' And one of them just said he had never seen anything like it. He said it was pure evil."
The letter was three pages hand-written.
It reads, in part: Don't ever try to convince yourself otherwise -- this event is absolutely, completely your fault. You created it. You could have prevented it. You encouraged it. You found our pain funny. ... If I have the opportunity to haunt you, I will. ... I pray you will see our faces in your mind's eye and wonder what Ryan could have been and what we could have had if you had only chosen love.
"There is no remorse," Tim said. "It's the opposite of remorseful."
The note is signed Paula.
Beside her name is some scribbling. It's clear she also had Ryan sign the letter.
To the side she wrote, "That's Ryan saying bye-bye, Dada."
"That's the part that really gets me," Tim said, his voice cracking as he placed the letter back into his bag. "That part still gets me to this day."
• • •
Coaches spend much of every season talking about taking it one game at a time in an attempt to win it all. That's why this story is different, because it's about a man taking it one second at a time, about a man having trouble focusing on winning anything because he's still trying to come to terms with everything he's lost.
It's a slow process.
A year to the day after finding the bodies, Tim Parmeter parked in the same garage and sat in the same house, a place where not much has changed.
Ryan's room is still mostly as it was, replete with baby blue walls, a diagram of Wrigley Field and a stand holding his three favorite books, Goodnight Moon, The Going to Bed Book and Pajama Time!. Beside that is a red chair, the same red chair Tim used to sit in while reading to Ryan. He still sits there sometimes, still reads those books. There's a box of Kleenex on the floor next to the chair. It never moves. It just stays there until it's empty. Then another box replaces it.
In the den, Elmo still sits next to the TV.
In Tim's room, Cookie Monster still sits on the bed.
In the kitchen, the high-chair still sits next to the table.
And the obvious question is why, why remain in this house where an unthinkable act tore a life to pieces?
"People ask that all the time," Tim said. "They say, 'I can't believe you're still here. How could you still live here?' But this is where my son lived. So I have a harder time imagining not being here, a harder time imagining moving out of here because though I have one bad memory here, my mind mostly floods with good memories."
Which is not to suggest his mind doesn't slip. It does. Bad times come without warning and can be triggered by anything.
Sometimes it's things as obvious as pictures, which decorate the walls of his home and office. Other times it's less obvious things -- like cows (Ryan loved cows) or Subway (Ryan would get bread from there to feed the ducks at a nearby pond) or the No. 1 (Ryan, for reasons Tim still doesn't understand, refused to say the No. 1 when counting) or that Rodney Atkins song Watching You (it's about a father and son) or even something as simple as a Pop-Tart.
"I got a Pop-Tart the other day," Tim said. "I took one bite and cried because it reminded me of Ryan."
Breakfast, in general, reminds Tim of Ryan.
"A perfect example is when my family and I all went and stayed with Tim after it happened, and we got up one morning to fix breakfast," said Arizona Western coach Kelly Green. "So I went to the store and got a bunch of stuff and fixed breakfast, and then when Tim got up I told him to join us. But he couldn't do it. He just went outside and sat. So I went out there and talked to him and asked what was wrong, and he said he just couldn't do it because that's one thing Ryan and him used to do together. He used to get up and fix Ryan breakfast and then they'd just sit there together. So now breakfast is difficult."
"It's crazy what he's been through," added Kris Dunn, a college teammate of Tim's. "But what I'm proud of most is that Tim has never really melted."
He has had moments, though. It took a month before he could even go back in his garage, and moving the black Volvo for the first time (Tim ultimately sold it) nearly caused a panic attack. One time he was watching film of an old game and saw Paula and Ryan in the crowd. That was rough because he wasn't prepared to see them.
But in low times he pulls Paula's suicide letter out from that bag and reads it because, in some warped way, it makes him stronger and helps move him along.
"That letter makes me realize that giving up in whatever sense that I would give up would be letting her win," Tim said. "If I killed myself or quit coaching, then I think I would be letting her win because that's what she wanted. She obviously wanted to hurt me. And she did. But I'm gonna try to keep going. I'm just gonna try to keep doing the best I can."
One of the things Tim remembers about the day he discovered the bodies is that it was 11:12 a.m. when he walked into the garage. So on Dec. 30, 2007 -- one year to the day -- he scheduled practice for 11 a.m., and it was easy to figure out the motivation.
"Practice gave him something to do, something to help get through that time," said Eastern Arizona assistant Anthony Owens. "It was important for him to be here at that time."
So Tim was there at that time -- standing in black pants, a gray shirt and white shoes while his players sat in a circle at midcourt, stretching, grabbing their toes and counting: 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9 ... 10 ... clap ... clap ... clap.
When 11:12 came, Tim was leaning against a brick wall, no expression, no words. He just stared at the clock above and watched the seconds slowly tick away, each as hard as the one that preceded it.
Coach Endures Unthinkable Loss One Second at a Time
Jan. 9, 2008
By Gary Parrish
THATCHER, Ariz. -- Tim Parmeter pulled into the driveway and clicked and clicked and clicked his garage door opener, probably pushed the thing four or five times, best he can remember. But the door never opened. So he shook his head.
He just thought his estranged wife had changed the code like she had changed the locks, because that's the kind of stuff people do when they're going through a divorce. And it was a messy divorce.
There were arguments and fights, countless phone conversations resulting in hang-ups. There were threats, both silly and serious. But the bad moments always seemed to pass with time. And so even though Tim had argued with Paula the previous afternoon and didn't hear from her the rest of that Friday, he didn't really think much of it and, at the time, he figured he'd just stop by the house Saturday morning to see his 2-year-old son, Ryan.
"I was kinda surprised she didn't call that Friday night," Tim said. "But in some ways I was just relieved to not be arguing on the phone."
But now it was Saturday morning and Tim was in the driveway and his clicker still wouldn't work and he was starting to worry. He dialed the home phone. Nobody answered. He dialed Paula's cell phone. Nobody answered. So he finally called Bryana Flynn, the family babysitter, and asked for help entering the home.
She told him the spare key was in the back. He grabbed it from inside a toy chest.
He unlocked the door. He walked inside.
"And I was still on the phone with Bryana as I was going through the house, and it was a mess," Tim said. "I checked Paula's office. Checked the bedrooms. Nothing. Ryan's stuff was scattered all over the house and I was asking Bryana 'Where did they go?'"
That's when Tim opened the door that leads to the garage.
He immediately saw Paula in the backseat of the car, slumped over to the side.
She was dead.
"He was just yelling into the phone," Bryana recalled. "He was yelling, 'Oh my God! Where's my f---ing baby?'"
When Tim got closer to the car he looked inside.
Ryan was lying in the back floorboard.
He was wrapped in a blue blanket.
"I remember yelling into the phone," Tim said. "I just remember yelling, just screaming, 'She killed herself and she killed my baby!'"
• • •
The college basketball schedule is loaded Wednesday night and highlighted by a pair of Top 25 matchups.
North Carolina is playing, as are Duke and Pittsburgh and Xavier and Vanderbilt. And then there's a Pac-10 showdown between Arizona and Arizona State in Tempe that will dominate local headlines as Kevin O'Neill tries to get a road win that could push the Wildcats back into the national rankings.
With less hype, Tim Parmeter will be coaching too.
He'll be 153 miles away from Arizona-Arizona State, 153 miles away at Eastern Arizona, a junior college in the shadows of Mount Graham here in the Gila River Valley. His opponent will be Arizona Western, a league rival coached by a close friend.
And if Tim makes it through the game without breaking down it'll be the upset of all upsets, given how at halftime he'll formally announce a scholarship in the name of his son, Ryan Wrigley Parmeter, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning Dec. 29, 2006, in what police ruled was a murder-suicide initiated by Tim's estranged wife and Ryan's mother, Paula.
"The game is going to be emotional," Tim said as he sat in his office two weekends ago, exactly one year to the day after he found Paula's and Ryan's bodies in the backseat of the family's black Volvo.
"I'm just happy I'll be coaching against a friend," Tim added with a half-hearted smile. "Maybe he'll be messed up, too."
A coach's son from Indiana, Tim followed his father into the profession after playing at Truman State. He worked at Central College in Iowa, then at Iowa State for Tim Floyd before landing at Scottsdale Community College, where he fielded a competitive team -- despite not having the luxury of scholarships or dorms -- and even found time to take in Trivia Night at a local establishment every once in a while.
That's where he met his wife, an Arizona State graduate.
"She was with a big group and I was with a big group and we met over Cubs trivia," Tim said. "The question was about Hack Wilson's record for RBI in a season and we both shouted the answer from opposite sides of the room. And then it was like, 'How'd you know that?'"
Turns out, Paula was from Chicago, a Cubs fan just like Tim. That led to a conversation about WGN, which led to a conversation about Bozo the Clown which led to a first date and a second date and a wedding date in 2000. Two years later, Tim got the head coaching job at Eastern Arizona, where he had a real campus and real dorms and a career heading upward.
Meantime, Paula got pregnant. The baby was born Aug. 31, 2004. They named him Ryan Wrigley Parmeter.
Wrigley was for Wrigley Field. Ryan was ...
"Just a name we both liked," Tim said.
The rest was supposed to be the picture-perfect life with family vacations and holidays spent together. Alas, too few unions go that route these days. In September 2006, Tim filed for divorce, which sent Paula into a state of despair. She sought professional help and was placed on medication.
"I considered Paula a friend, as well as my boss, and she was a nice person," Bryana said. "But she just couldn't handle going through the divorce."
Tim moved from the family's home shortly before Christmas 2006 and stayed in Arizona while Paula and Ryan visited her family for the holiday. Tim picked them up at Tucson International Airport late on Dec. 27 and drove them home. He put Ryan to bed and was planning to leave when he said Paula asked him to stay the night so they could enjoy a present-opening session the following morning.
"I wasn't going to stay, but then she looked at me and said, 'I'm so over you. Don't worry about it,'" Tim recalled. "So I just stayed and then we woke up the next day, had Christmas and had lunch. And then I was going to get out of there because I knew once she laid Ryan down for a nap she'd want to talk."
So Tim got out of there. But Paula called as soon as Ryan fell asleep.
"She was sitting in my closet, which was empty, crying and asking why I took all my clothes," Tim said. "I told her it was because I moved out, that we had talked about this. So that went on for a while and she finally said, 'I can't go on any more. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. Please take care of Ryan.' And then she just hung up."
Worried, Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. Then Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. And this went on for hours on into the night until Tim said Paula finally calmed down. But when Tim woke up the next morning he was still bothered by the tone and decided to call Paula's counselor to "just tell him all the stuff that had happened since she had been home from Chicago," Tim said. "I was like, 'Somebody is going to die. I don't know who. But somebody is going to die.'"
The counselor immediately called Paula, who immediately called Tim and "that conversation digressed into the nastiest, most vile conversation I've ever had with anybody," Tim recalled. "I was just listening, not really saying anything. And she said, 'I bet you want to go, don't you?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Are you sick of this?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Then why don't you just hang up?' And I said, 'Because you'll just call back. So I'll just wait and let you get it all out.' And then she goes, 'Well, I'm done. I'm not calling you back.' And I said 'OK.' And she said, 'I'm not calling you back. You'll really never hear from me again.' And that was at about 1 p.m. on Dec. 29th."
That was Tim's final conversation with Paula.
What he later learned from police is after she hung up, she wrote six suicide letters addressed to six different people and mailed them all to her brother. Afterward, she placed Ryan in the backseat of the car with six stuffed animals, some toys, a few books, a sippy cup filled with milk and some chocolate candy. She crammed towels in every crack of the garage door and unplugged it, which is why Tim's opener wouldn't work. Then she rolled the windows down in the car and opened the sunroof before starting the engine and beginning the process that would kill herself and her son.
"He was just sitting in the backseat with Mom, reading books and playing," Tim said. "He was just having a good time. What did he know?"
Paula also left a digital camera in the car. When Tim uploaded the pictures there was a final image of Ryan.
"There he is in the car," Tim said as he pulled the picture up on his computer. "See how his lips look swollen? The police said that's from the carbon monoxide."
By the time Ryan was buried the police had all six suicide letters. One was addressed to Tim. It was given to him after the memorial service. He sat at a table with two officers. Before reading it he asked a question.
"I asked them, 'Is this going to piss me off?' And one of them just said he had never seen anything like it. He said it was pure evil."
The letter was three pages hand-written.
It reads, in part: Don't ever try to convince yourself otherwise -- this event is absolutely, completely your fault. You created it. You could have prevented it. You encouraged it. You found our pain funny. ... If I have the opportunity to haunt you, I will. ... I pray you will see our faces in your mind's eye and wonder what Ryan could have been and what we could have had if you had only chosen love.
"There is no remorse," Tim said. "It's the opposite of remorseful."
The note is signed Paula.
Beside her name is some scribbling. It's clear she also had Ryan sign the letter.
To the side she wrote, "That's Ryan saying bye-bye, Dada."
"That's the part that really gets me," Tim said, his voice cracking as he placed the letter back into his bag. "That part still gets me to this day."
• • •
Coaches spend much of every season talking about taking it one game at a time in an attempt to win it all. That's why this story is different, because it's about a man taking it one second at a time, about a man having trouble focusing on winning anything because he's still trying to come to terms with everything he's lost.
It's a slow process.
A year to the day after finding the bodies, Tim Parmeter parked in the same garage and sat in the same house, a place where not much has changed.
Ryan's room is still mostly as it was, replete with baby blue walls, a diagram of Wrigley Field and a stand holding his three favorite books, Goodnight Moon, The Going to Bed Book and Pajama Time!. Beside that is a red chair, the same red chair Tim used to sit in while reading to Ryan. He still sits there sometimes, still reads those books. There's a box of Kleenex on the floor next to the chair. It never moves. It just stays there until it's empty. Then another box replaces it.
In the den, Elmo still sits next to the TV.
In Tim's room, Cookie Monster still sits on the bed.
In the kitchen, the high-chair still sits next to the table.
And the obvious question is why, why remain in this house where an unthinkable act tore a life to pieces?
"People ask that all the time," Tim said. "They say, 'I can't believe you're still here. How could you still live here?' But this is where my son lived. So I have a harder time imagining not being here, a harder time imagining moving out of here because though I have one bad memory here, my mind mostly floods with good memories."
Which is not to suggest his mind doesn't slip. It does. Bad times come without warning and can be triggered by anything.
Sometimes it's things as obvious as pictures, which decorate the walls of his home and office. Other times it's less obvious things -- like cows (Ryan loved cows) or Subway (Ryan would get bread from there to feed the ducks at a nearby pond) or the No. 1 (Ryan, for reasons Tim still doesn't understand, refused to say the No. 1 when counting) or that Rodney Atkins song Watching You (it's about a father and son) or even something as simple as a Pop-Tart.
"I got a Pop-Tart the other day," Tim said. "I took one bite and cried because it reminded me of Ryan."
Breakfast, in general, reminds Tim of Ryan.
"A perfect example is when my family and I all went and stayed with Tim after it happened, and we got up one morning to fix breakfast," said Arizona Western coach Kelly Green. "So I went to the store and got a bunch of stuff and fixed breakfast, and then when Tim got up I told him to join us. But he couldn't do it. He just went outside and sat. So I went out there and talked to him and asked what was wrong, and he said he just couldn't do it because that's one thing Ryan and him used to do together. He used to get up and fix Ryan breakfast and then they'd just sit there together. So now breakfast is difficult."
"It's crazy what he's been through," added Kris Dunn, a college teammate of Tim's. "But what I'm proud of most is that Tim has never really melted."
He has had moments, though. It took a month before he could even go back in his garage, and moving the black Volvo for the first time (Tim ultimately sold it) nearly caused a panic attack. One time he was watching film of an old game and saw Paula and Ryan in the crowd. That was rough because he wasn't prepared to see them.
But in low times he pulls Paula's suicide letter out from that bag and reads it because, in some warped way, it makes him stronger and helps move him along.
"That letter makes me realize that giving up in whatever sense that I would give up would be letting her win," Tim said. "If I killed myself or quit coaching, then I think I would be letting her win because that's what she wanted. She obviously wanted to hurt me. And she did. But I'm gonna try to keep going. I'm just gonna try to keep doing the best I can."
One of the things Tim remembers about the day he discovered the bodies is that it was 11:12 a.m. when he walked into the garage. So on Dec. 30, 2007 -- one year to the day -- he scheduled practice for 11 a.m., and it was easy to figure out the motivation.
"Practice gave him something to do, something to help get through that time," said Eastern Arizona assistant Anthony Owens. "It was important for him to be here at that time."
So Tim was there at that time -- standing in black pants, a gray shirt and white shoes while his players sat in a circle at midcourt, stretching, grabbing their toes and counting: 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9 ... 10 ... clap ... clap ... clap.
When 11:12 came, Tim was leaning against a brick wall, no expression, no words. He just stared at the clock above and watched the seconds slowly tick away, each as hard as the one that preceded it.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
A Good Post-Mortem of Fred '08
For the upcoming issue of The Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson pens a very fair and accurate portrait of some of the reasons that former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson's campaign for President never really took off in the beginning and ended in an early demise. Incidentally, and not coincidentally, they happen to be some of the biggest problems inherent in what politics has become today. As they say, read the whole thing.
"The Failure of Normality : The Unhappy Lessons of the Thompson Campaign"
by Andrew Ferguson
"In his recent memoir, Alan Greenspan says he's been pushing a constitutional amendment of his own devising. It reads: "Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office." If the Greenspan amendment is ever enacted, it will at last clear the field for Fred Thompson, who might then become president. But not until then.
Thompson withdrew from the presidential race last week. He ended his campaign as he had conducted it, with a minimum of fuss and no wasted words. He released a withdrawal statement over the Internet. It was three sentences long, and he hasn't been heard from since. My guess is we'll be missing him dreadfully by spring.
The charge against Thompson, who entered the campaign last September when polls showed him a favorite among Republican voters, was repeated so often it became a cliché. Like most clichés it tells us more about the people who used it than about the state of affairs it was supposed to describe. His campaign lacked "energy." He didn't get out enough on the campaign trail, and, when he did, he didn't hold enough events. His speaking style was too low-key, and his speeches were too long, and more often than not his "performance" in televised debates was lackluster. He just didn't have the fire in the belly.
Fire in the belly: For those of us who suffer from acid reflux, this is a phrase full of meaning. In the world of politics, however, the meaning is vaguer. William Safire's New Political Dictionary defines "fire in the belly" as "an unquenchable thirst for power or glory; the burning drive to win a race or achieve a goal." It's bad, apparently, not having fire in the belly. The premise seems to be that vein-popping ambition, unrestrained avidity, is a necessary if not sufficient quality for someone who wants to hold the highest political position in a democratic country. Thompson himself seemed puzzled by the phrase and the premise underlying it. He was asked about it at a town hall meeting in Burlington, Iowa, in late December.
"Nowadays, it's all about fire in the belly," he said, with a touch of sarcasm. "I'm not sure in the world we live in today it's a terribly good thing that a president has too much fire in his belly."
He pointed out that he'd made financial sacrifices to run for president--he quit his various high-paying jobs and went without income for nearly a year--which should, he said, demonstrate his earnestness about the task before him.
And yet: "I'm not consumed by this process. I'm not consumed with the notion of being president. I'm simply saying I'm willing to do what's necessary to achieve it, if I'm in synch with the people and if the people want me or somebody like me. . . . I'm only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them."
Thompson didn't give off the usual political vibe: the gnawing need to please, the craving for the public's love. A few voters and journalists found this refreshing, many more found it insulting. Some just found it fascinating, in a clinical sort of way: What kind of politician isn't consumed by politics--and what kind of campaign would such a politician run? Well, now we know. If Thompson could plausibly avoid an overnight campaign trip, he did, preferring to return home to his wife and children in suburban Virginia. He spent an inordinate amount of time with his briefing books. And his response to the chore of raising money--the chief occupation of every office-seeker in this era of campaign finance reform, which was intended to reduce the role of money in politics--seemed nearly pathological. Fundraising events scheduled to last two or three hours often guttered out when the candidate departed after twenty minutes. High-end donors complained of being uncourted, unpampered, unloved--even unphoned. At one party in a private home last year, Thompson made the rounds of money-shakers, delivered brief remarks, and then slipped into a bedroom to watch a basketball game on TV by himself.
Having become famous as an actor in TV and movies, Thompson might have been expected to be a showman. But he was resolutely prosaic. Only with the greatest reluctance did he agree to a photograph with the Iowa State Fair's "Butter Cow," and when a fireman in Waverly asked him to wear a helmet, he said he didn't wear "silly hats." As the critics charged, his public speeches really were unusually long, even at drop-bys along the trail, because he insisted on mentioning details of his plans to recalibrate the benefit formulas for Social Security, inject private incentives into Medicare, and develop an optional, two-tiered flat tax. So nobody should have been surprised that when it came time to film his final pitch to voters before the Iowa caucuses, the broadcast speech ended up being 17 minutes long--Homeric by the standards of political ads. Crowds did not go wild.
Now, you can overstate the intellectual heft of a campaign that was launched by the candidate during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was a different kind of candidate but not an incompetent one. Indeed, his finest moment came in a debate before the Iowa caucuses, when the moderator asked the assembled candidates for a show of hands if they believed human activity caused climate change.
"Well, do you want to give me a minute to answer that?" Thompson said. When the moderator said she didn't, he said: "Well, then I'm not going to answer it. You want a show of hands, and I'm not going to give it to you."
The moderator looked as though Thompson had suddenly sprouted daffodils from his ears. So did his fellow candidates. After a stunned silence, they all courageously announced their refusal to show hands, too. They looked like the Little Rascals, hitching up their britches and flexing their biceps after Alfalfa clocked the neighborhood bully.
It's telling that his most notable moments were negative--marked by his refusal to follow some custom of the modern campaign. (From another debate: "Should government step in and help Chrysler and the other auto makers?" Thompson: "No.") Asked about education reform, he said: "It would be easy enough for someone running for president to say: I have a several-point plan to fix our education problem. It's not going to happen. And it shouldn't happen from the Oval Office." When journalists and candidates, with their typically childlike enthusiasm, suddenly began gumming the word "change" after the Iowa caucuses, Thompson pointed out the obvious: "Change has been part of every election since the dawn of elections, if you weren't an incumbent." He noted how easy it was "to demagogue" the issue of federal spending by dwelling on relatively insignificant earmarks: "All these programs that we talk about in the news every day are a thimbleful in the ocean compared to the entitlement tsunami that's coming to hit us."
Views like these might have earned another candidate a reputation for "straight talk"--maybe even the title of "maverick." But Thompson was more subversive than that; he was an existential maverick, and his campaign was an implicit rebuke to the system in its entirety. He was a man out of his time. With its reduced metabolism and procedural modesty, his campaign still might have served as an illustration of what politics once was like and--if we have the audacity to hope--might be again. After all, by the standards of a century ago, Thompson was a whirligig.
Political campaigns have always been boisterous affairs, but candidates themselves rarely took center stage till well into the 20th century. The first presidential candidate even to make an appearance on his own behalf was William Henry Harrison in 1840. When he showed up in Columbus, Ohio, to give a speech extolling his (exceedingly thin) record, the political world was scandalized. An opposition paper, the Democratic Globe, counted his uses of the pronoun "I"--there were 81 of them in his text--and pronounced the speech "a prodigy of garrulous egotism." The Cleveland Adviser, a nonpartisan paper, asked: "When was there ever before such a spectacle as a candidate for the Presidency, traversing the country advocating his own claims for that high and responsible station? Never!"
"The precedent thus set by Harrison," concluded the Adviser's editorialist, "appears to us a bad one."
But it wasn't much of a precedent. Active campaigning didn't catch on for another half century or more. (The exception was Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, the only one of the four presidential candidates that year to leave town to deliver a speech.) Candidates stayed home, receiving visitors and maintaining a quiet dignity while occasionally uncorking a speech in the neighborhood so the newspapers had something to report. Meanwhile surrogates scattered around the country, leading parades, holding rallies, and telling lies for which the candidates themselves couldn't be held responsible. Even the appalling Theodore Roosevelt, who would smooch babies at a train wreck if he thought it would get him votes, managed to contain himself and keep off the hustings when he ran for reelection in 1904. Eventually barnstorming became marginally acceptable, but only as the last recourse of candidates who, like Harry Truman in 1948, were so far behind they could risk looking desperate and undignified.
As late as the 1970s, the constant motion that modern presidential candidates subject themselves to was still of recent enough vintage that Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, in their great book Presidential Elections, felt the need to account for it. "Everybody does it because it is the fashion," they wrote, "and the spectacle of seeing one's opponent run around the country at a furious pace without following suit is too nerve-wracking [for a candidate] to contemplate. It is beside the point that no one knows whether all this does any good."
The traditional restraint of old-time presidential candidates wasn't arrogance or sanctimoniousness, the twin accusations that wised-up politicos made against Thompson during the campaign. There was a philosophical component to it too: By not seeming overeager--no matter how eager they were--candidates paid tribute to the democratic idea that political power is best sought, taken on, and used reluctantly. It was also a matter of seemliness, and Thompson, alone among recent candidates, felt its pull. In his stump speech he often mentioned George Washington, once a staple of political rhetoric for his willingness to walk away from the power that was thrust upon him. Today Washington's restraint seems nothing more than an archaism. And by extolling it Thompson sounded merely odd.
"If people really want in their president a super type-A personality," Thompson said at that Iowa town hall meeting, "someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night thinking for years about how they could achieve the presidency of the United States, someone who could look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning--I ain't that guy."
But does "super type-A personality" really describe the kind of person who runs for president nowadays? It's not pleasant to think of the life they lead, these Americans who would be president, from the first hints of dawn to well past midnight, this life of endless demands, this succession of superficial sociability, in which you smile and smile and pop your eyes wide open in delighted wonder at the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of faces and places that circles before you, and you haven't the time or leisure to settle on a single one. Charming countryside, pretty little towns, sprawling centers of commerce and industry fly by and you haven't a moment to enjoy them or learn their tales. You rush to meet hundreds of people a day and never have a meaningful exchange of words with any of them.
From the backseats of freezing cars and vans you're hustled into overheated coffee shops and those packed school gymnasiums with the stink rising to the rafters and then the oppressive hush of corporate meeting rooms, where your nose starts to run and a film of sweat forms under your wool pullover, and you press the outstretched hands that carry every bacterial pathogen known to epidemiology. You open your mouth and you release the same cloud of words you recited yesterday and the day before. And in the Q&A, when you stop to listen, you hear the same questions and complaints from yesterday, the same mewling and blame-shifting, all imploring you to do the impossible and through some undefined action make the lives of these unhappy citizens somehow edifying, uplifting, and worth living. And you always promise you will do that; you have no choice but to tell this kind of lie.
There's no rest, because there's not a moment to waste: The handful of minutes away from the kaleidoscope are spent chatting with the scorpions of the press, the ill-dressed, ill-mannered reporters from the prints and the pretty, preening peacocks of TV, each of them either a know-it-all or a cynic or a dope, take your pick, and each of whom, for professional and other reasons, will deploy all his energies and cleverness to the task of trapping you into a misstatement or ungenerous remark or expression of irritation so he can convey to his editors and the world that--at last!--you've made a gaffe; and if you won't make a gaffe then he will convey to his editors and the world how "scripted" and "over rehearsed" you sound; kind of slick, almost robotic, inauthentic.
When the scorpions are dismissed, in the seconds before you pass from the freezing van to the overheated gym or boardroom, a sycophant whose name you can't remember hands you a cell phone that connects you to a rich man whose face you dimly recall from another boardroom last summer and you beg him to give you money, or more often--considering the grinding pressure you feel for cash, always for cash--you beg him to assemble a circle of other rich men that he can beg on your behalf, and when you sign off you don't have time to be grateful. There will be more calls before dinner and after dinner, and dinner is a cold thigh of chicken in a sump of clotted gravy served from a steam table in a freezing cinder block banquet room at the Lions Club, and a hundred pairs of eyes fix themselves on you--a celebrity, someone they've seen on TV--as you dribble the gravy on your shirtfront. And after you release the same words and hear the same complaints you go to bed in a Hampton Suites for five hours of sleep on starchy sheets with dimly visible stains whose origins are impossible to discern, and from the corner the digital display on the microwave flashes 12:00 12:00 12:00 . . .
And you do all this so you can wake up the next morning and do it again. Because you like it.
The man or woman who seeks out such a life and enjoys its discomforts is not normal. Not crazy necessarily, but not normal, and probably, when the chips are down, not to be trusted, especially when the purpose of it all is to acquire power over other people (also called, in the delicate language of contemporary politics, "public service" or "getting things done on behalf of the American people"). The case is made, in defense of the contemporary campaign, that this is an efficient if unlovely way to choose leaders: It winnows out those who lack the stamina and discipline necessary to lead a rich, large, powerful, and complicated country. By this argument, Thompson failed because he deserved to.
But the opposite case is easier to make--that the modern campaign excludes anyone who lacks the narcissism, cold-bloodedness, and unreflective nature that the process requires and rewards. In his memoir -Greenspan remarks that of the seven presidents he has known well, the only one who was "close to normal" was Jerry Ford. And, as Greenspan points out, Ford was never elected.
Fred Thompson probably feels terrible at the moment, but he should be honored to be in Ford's company."
"The Failure of Normality : The Unhappy Lessons of the Thompson Campaign"
by Andrew Ferguson
"In his recent memoir, Alan Greenspan says he's been pushing a constitutional amendment of his own devising. It reads: "Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office." If the Greenspan amendment is ever enacted, it will at last clear the field for Fred Thompson, who might then become president. But not until then.
Thompson withdrew from the presidential race last week. He ended his campaign as he had conducted it, with a minimum of fuss and no wasted words. He released a withdrawal statement over the Internet. It was three sentences long, and he hasn't been heard from since. My guess is we'll be missing him dreadfully by spring.
The charge against Thompson, who entered the campaign last September when polls showed him a favorite among Republican voters, was repeated so often it became a cliché. Like most clichés it tells us more about the people who used it than about the state of affairs it was supposed to describe. His campaign lacked "energy." He didn't get out enough on the campaign trail, and, when he did, he didn't hold enough events. His speaking style was too low-key, and his speeches were too long, and more often than not his "performance" in televised debates was lackluster. He just didn't have the fire in the belly.
Fire in the belly: For those of us who suffer from acid reflux, this is a phrase full of meaning. In the world of politics, however, the meaning is vaguer. William Safire's New Political Dictionary defines "fire in the belly" as "an unquenchable thirst for power or glory; the burning drive to win a race or achieve a goal." It's bad, apparently, not having fire in the belly. The premise seems to be that vein-popping ambition, unrestrained avidity, is a necessary if not sufficient quality for someone who wants to hold the highest political position in a democratic country. Thompson himself seemed puzzled by the phrase and the premise underlying it. He was asked about it at a town hall meeting in Burlington, Iowa, in late December.
"Nowadays, it's all about fire in the belly," he said, with a touch of sarcasm. "I'm not sure in the world we live in today it's a terribly good thing that a president has too much fire in his belly."
He pointed out that he'd made financial sacrifices to run for president--he quit his various high-paying jobs and went without income for nearly a year--which should, he said, demonstrate his earnestness about the task before him.
And yet: "I'm not consumed by this process. I'm not consumed with the notion of being president. I'm simply saying I'm willing to do what's necessary to achieve it, if I'm in synch with the people and if the people want me or somebody like me. . . . I'm only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them."
Thompson didn't give off the usual political vibe: the gnawing need to please, the craving for the public's love. A few voters and journalists found this refreshing, many more found it insulting. Some just found it fascinating, in a clinical sort of way: What kind of politician isn't consumed by politics--and what kind of campaign would such a politician run? Well, now we know. If Thompson could plausibly avoid an overnight campaign trip, he did, preferring to return home to his wife and children in suburban Virginia. He spent an inordinate amount of time with his briefing books. And his response to the chore of raising money--the chief occupation of every office-seeker in this era of campaign finance reform, which was intended to reduce the role of money in politics--seemed nearly pathological. Fundraising events scheduled to last two or three hours often guttered out when the candidate departed after twenty minutes. High-end donors complained of being uncourted, unpampered, unloved--even unphoned. At one party in a private home last year, Thompson made the rounds of money-shakers, delivered brief remarks, and then slipped into a bedroom to watch a basketball game on TV by himself.
Having become famous as an actor in TV and movies, Thompson might have been expected to be a showman. But he was resolutely prosaic. Only with the greatest reluctance did he agree to a photograph with the Iowa State Fair's "Butter Cow," and when a fireman in Waverly asked him to wear a helmet, he said he didn't wear "silly hats." As the critics charged, his public speeches really were unusually long, even at drop-bys along the trail, because he insisted on mentioning details of his plans to recalibrate the benefit formulas for Social Security, inject private incentives into Medicare, and develop an optional, two-tiered flat tax. So nobody should have been surprised that when it came time to film his final pitch to voters before the Iowa caucuses, the broadcast speech ended up being 17 minutes long--Homeric by the standards of political ads. Crowds did not go wild.
Now, you can overstate the intellectual heft of a campaign that was launched by the candidate during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was a different kind of candidate but not an incompetent one. Indeed, his finest moment came in a debate before the Iowa caucuses, when the moderator asked the assembled candidates for a show of hands if they believed human activity caused climate change.
"Well, do you want to give me a minute to answer that?" Thompson said. When the moderator said she didn't, he said: "Well, then I'm not going to answer it. You want a show of hands, and I'm not going to give it to you."
The moderator looked as though Thompson had suddenly sprouted daffodils from his ears. So did his fellow candidates. After a stunned silence, they all courageously announced their refusal to show hands, too. They looked like the Little Rascals, hitching up their britches and flexing their biceps after Alfalfa clocked the neighborhood bully.
It's telling that his most notable moments were negative--marked by his refusal to follow some custom of the modern campaign. (From another debate: "Should government step in and help Chrysler and the other auto makers?" Thompson: "No.") Asked about education reform, he said: "It would be easy enough for someone running for president to say: I have a several-point plan to fix our education problem. It's not going to happen. And it shouldn't happen from the Oval Office." When journalists and candidates, with their typically childlike enthusiasm, suddenly began gumming the word "change" after the Iowa caucuses, Thompson pointed out the obvious: "Change has been part of every election since the dawn of elections, if you weren't an incumbent." He noted how easy it was "to demagogue" the issue of federal spending by dwelling on relatively insignificant earmarks: "All these programs that we talk about in the news every day are a thimbleful in the ocean compared to the entitlement tsunami that's coming to hit us."
Views like these might have earned another candidate a reputation for "straight talk"--maybe even the title of "maverick." But Thompson was more subversive than that; he was an existential maverick, and his campaign was an implicit rebuke to the system in its entirety. He was a man out of his time. With its reduced metabolism and procedural modesty, his campaign still might have served as an illustration of what politics once was like and--if we have the audacity to hope--might be again. After all, by the standards of a century ago, Thompson was a whirligig.
Political campaigns have always been boisterous affairs, but candidates themselves rarely took center stage till well into the 20th century. The first presidential candidate even to make an appearance on his own behalf was William Henry Harrison in 1840. When he showed up in Columbus, Ohio, to give a speech extolling his (exceedingly thin) record, the political world was scandalized. An opposition paper, the Democratic Globe, counted his uses of the pronoun "I"--there were 81 of them in his text--and pronounced the speech "a prodigy of garrulous egotism." The Cleveland Adviser, a nonpartisan paper, asked: "When was there ever before such a spectacle as a candidate for the Presidency, traversing the country advocating his own claims for that high and responsible station? Never!"
"The precedent thus set by Harrison," concluded the Adviser's editorialist, "appears to us a bad one."
But it wasn't much of a precedent. Active campaigning didn't catch on for another half century or more. (The exception was Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, the only one of the four presidential candidates that year to leave town to deliver a speech.) Candidates stayed home, receiving visitors and maintaining a quiet dignity while occasionally uncorking a speech in the neighborhood so the newspapers had something to report. Meanwhile surrogates scattered around the country, leading parades, holding rallies, and telling lies for which the candidates themselves couldn't be held responsible. Even the appalling Theodore Roosevelt, who would smooch babies at a train wreck if he thought it would get him votes, managed to contain himself and keep off the hustings when he ran for reelection in 1904. Eventually barnstorming became marginally acceptable, but only as the last recourse of candidates who, like Harry Truman in 1948, were so far behind they could risk looking desperate and undignified.
As late as the 1970s, the constant motion that modern presidential candidates subject themselves to was still of recent enough vintage that Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, in their great book Presidential Elections, felt the need to account for it. "Everybody does it because it is the fashion," they wrote, "and the spectacle of seeing one's opponent run around the country at a furious pace without following suit is too nerve-wracking [for a candidate] to contemplate. It is beside the point that no one knows whether all this does any good."
The traditional restraint of old-time presidential candidates wasn't arrogance or sanctimoniousness, the twin accusations that wised-up politicos made against Thompson during the campaign. There was a philosophical component to it too: By not seeming overeager--no matter how eager they were--candidates paid tribute to the democratic idea that political power is best sought, taken on, and used reluctantly. It was also a matter of seemliness, and Thompson, alone among recent candidates, felt its pull. In his stump speech he often mentioned George Washington, once a staple of political rhetoric for his willingness to walk away from the power that was thrust upon him. Today Washington's restraint seems nothing more than an archaism. And by extolling it Thompson sounded merely odd.
"If people really want in their president a super type-A personality," Thompson said at that Iowa town hall meeting, "someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night thinking for years about how they could achieve the presidency of the United States, someone who could look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning--I ain't that guy."
But does "super type-A personality" really describe the kind of person who runs for president nowadays? It's not pleasant to think of the life they lead, these Americans who would be president, from the first hints of dawn to well past midnight, this life of endless demands, this succession of superficial sociability, in which you smile and smile and pop your eyes wide open in delighted wonder at the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of faces and places that circles before you, and you haven't the time or leisure to settle on a single one. Charming countryside, pretty little towns, sprawling centers of commerce and industry fly by and you haven't a moment to enjoy them or learn their tales. You rush to meet hundreds of people a day and never have a meaningful exchange of words with any of them.
From the backseats of freezing cars and vans you're hustled into overheated coffee shops and those packed school gymnasiums with the stink rising to the rafters and then the oppressive hush of corporate meeting rooms, where your nose starts to run and a film of sweat forms under your wool pullover, and you press the outstretched hands that carry every bacterial pathogen known to epidemiology. You open your mouth and you release the same cloud of words you recited yesterday and the day before. And in the Q&A, when you stop to listen, you hear the same questions and complaints from yesterday, the same mewling and blame-shifting, all imploring you to do the impossible and through some undefined action make the lives of these unhappy citizens somehow edifying, uplifting, and worth living. And you always promise you will do that; you have no choice but to tell this kind of lie.
There's no rest, because there's not a moment to waste: The handful of minutes away from the kaleidoscope are spent chatting with the scorpions of the press, the ill-dressed, ill-mannered reporters from the prints and the pretty, preening peacocks of TV, each of them either a know-it-all or a cynic or a dope, take your pick, and each of whom, for professional and other reasons, will deploy all his energies and cleverness to the task of trapping you into a misstatement or ungenerous remark or expression of irritation so he can convey to his editors and the world that--at last!--you've made a gaffe; and if you won't make a gaffe then he will convey to his editors and the world how "scripted" and "over rehearsed" you sound; kind of slick, almost robotic, inauthentic.
When the scorpions are dismissed, in the seconds before you pass from the freezing van to the overheated gym or boardroom, a sycophant whose name you can't remember hands you a cell phone that connects you to a rich man whose face you dimly recall from another boardroom last summer and you beg him to give you money, or more often--considering the grinding pressure you feel for cash, always for cash--you beg him to assemble a circle of other rich men that he can beg on your behalf, and when you sign off you don't have time to be grateful. There will be more calls before dinner and after dinner, and dinner is a cold thigh of chicken in a sump of clotted gravy served from a steam table in a freezing cinder block banquet room at the Lions Club, and a hundred pairs of eyes fix themselves on you--a celebrity, someone they've seen on TV--as you dribble the gravy on your shirtfront. And after you release the same words and hear the same complaints you go to bed in a Hampton Suites for five hours of sleep on starchy sheets with dimly visible stains whose origins are impossible to discern, and from the corner the digital display on the microwave flashes 12:00 12:00 12:00 . . .
And you do all this so you can wake up the next morning and do it again. Because you like it.
The man or woman who seeks out such a life and enjoys its discomforts is not normal. Not crazy necessarily, but not normal, and probably, when the chips are down, not to be trusted, especially when the purpose of it all is to acquire power over other people (also called, in the delicate language of contemporary politics, "public service" or "getting things done on behalf of the American people"). The case is made, in defense of the contemporary campaign, that this is an efficient if unlovely way to choose leaders: It winnows out those who lack the stamina and discipline necessary to lead a rich, large, powerful, and complicated country. By this argument, Thompson failed because he deserved to.
But the opposite case is easier to make--that the modern campaign excludes anyone who lacks the narcissism, cold-bloodedness, and unreflective nature that the process requires and rewards. In his memoir -Greenspan remarks that of the seven presidents he has known well, the only one who was "close to normal" was Jerry Ford. And, as Greenspan points out, Ford was never elected.
Fred Thompson probably feels terrible at the moment, but he should be honored to be in Ford's company."
Friday, January 25, 2008
More Anti-McCain Cowbell Baby!
Just in case I didn't make clear the reasons that there is no chance in hell that I would ever pull the lever for John McCain as the GOP nominee in 2008, here's some more:
1.) Courtesy of the Mitt Romney campaign (Hat Tip: Emperor Misha), an absolutely devastating montage showing a litany of liberal Democrats and their enablers in the mainstream media talking heads speaking glowingly of Senator McCain.;
2.) The New York Times endorses Senator McCain and Senator Clinton because they are both inside the Beltway, poll-driven, MSM-worshipping liberals. Any real conservative would tell the New York Slimes where to stick their endorsement, but this whackjob touts it right there on his campaign website...as a good thing!;
3.) Senator McCain does not believe in the concept of America as a melting pot. As Mark Krikorian astutely points out, Senator McCain would prefer that we become a balkanized country along many different lines...racial, religious, tribal, cultural and language just to name a few. Don't believe it? Mr. Krikorian's article shows that Senator McCain's own voting history proves it. I love the final quote best of all:
"Before anyone ever compares him to Theodore Roosevelt again, just try to imagine McCain saying this, from one of TR’s letters:
"We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house."
Enough said.
4.) Senator Mel Martinez (RINO-FL), someone whose brief run atop the RNC did substantial damage to Republican fundraising efforts, actually managed to produce a negative trend in Hispanic outreach, and who was right there with Ted Kennedy, Lindsay Graham-nesty (RINO-SC), and Senator McCain attempting to ram amnesty down the throats of America, endorsed Senator McCain today.; and finally,
5.) Courtesy of several sources (Michelle Malkin, Emperor Misha, Lone Wacko, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies via NRO, Jerome Corsi, and Gateway Pundit)...McCain now has as a campaign consultant and director of Hispanic Outreach for his campaign an open-borders zealot by the name of Dr. Juan Hernandez. Whether this jackal is paid or unpaid is immaterial. I honestly believe that Mexican officials (past, present, and future) who seek to meddle in the internal affairs of America, especially when they actively promote and enable illegal immigration, should be arrested, blacklisted, and deported permanently, with the understanding that, if they are caught once more attempting to erode American sovereignty and undermine our laws, they would be subject to arrest and prosecution the same way an agent of any other nation caught engaging in unauthorized, unwelcome espionage on American soil would be...as a spy. And yet, John McCain, who allegedly "gets the message" regarding illgal immigration, hires someone who has clearly demonstrated at all times that he has the best interests of Mexico, not America at heart. Senator McCain, I and many other Americans with more than three neurons to rub together might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.
I mean, read the man's own website on the issue of illegal immigration, you'd think this egomaniacal, obfuscating bastard was running for President of Mexico and/or greater Latin America. After paying token lip service to securing the border, mind you, with absolutel no details about how he plans to do this (because he has no plans to secure the border), he talks more about the alleged duty of America to absorb anyone and everyone who manages to break into our nation, more about the alleged rights of illegal immigrants to crash the gates of our country and violate our sovereignty, and more about pandering to and the rights of greedy employers who would love nothing more than an endless supply of illegal foreign labor to hire any illegal they please in order to pad their bottom line at the nation's expense than he does about actually securing the border and all that entails. That tells me everything I need to know about the man as a presidential candidate...I just can't fathom why the people of Arizona, home of Proposition 200 and the "business death penalty" for businesses who hire illegal immigrants, haven't tossed this idiot out on his ear yet.
Oh, and last but certainly not least, Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently think McCain is just ducky and dandy...as my profession is fond of saying, I rest my case.
1.) Courtesy of the Mitt Romney campaign (Hat Tip: Emperor Misha), an absolutely devastating montage showing a litany of liberal Democrats and their enablers in the mainstream media talking heads speaking glowingly of Senator McCain.;
2.) The New York Times endorses Senator McCain and Senator Clinton because they are both inside the Beltway, poll-driven, MSM-worshipping liberals. Any real conservative would tell the New York Slimes where to stick their endorsement, but this whackjob touts it right there on his campaign website...as a good thing!;
3.) Senator McCain does not believe in the concept of America as a melting pot. As Mark Krikorian astutely points out, Senator McCain would prefer that we become a balkanized country along many different lines...racial, religious, tribal, cultural and language just to name a few. Don't believe it? Mr. Krikorian's article shows that Senator McCain's own voting history proves it. I love the final quote best of all:
"Before anyone ever compares him to Theodore Roosevelt again, just try to imagine McCain saying this, from one of TR’s letters:
"We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house."
Enough said.
4.) Senator Mel Martinez (RINO-FL), someone whose brief run atop the RNC did substantial damage to Republican fundraising efforts, actually managed to produce a negative trend in Hispanic outreach, and who was right there with Ted Kennedy, Lindsay Graham-nesty (RINO-SC), and Senator McCain attempting to ram amnesty down the throats of America, endorsed Senator McCain today.; and finally,
5.) Courtesy of several sources (Michelle Malkin, Emperor Misha, Lone Wacko, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies via NRO, Jerome Corsi, and Gateway Pundit)...McCain now has as a campaign consultant and director of Hispanic Outreach for his campaign an open-borders zealot by the name of Dr. Juan Hernandez. Whether this jackal is paid or unpaid is immaterial. I honestly believe that Mexican officials (past, present, and future) who seek to meddle in the internal affairs of America, especially when they actively promote and enable illegal immigration, should be arrested, blacklisted, and deported permanently, with the understanding that, if they are caught once more attempting to erode American sovereignty and undermine our laws, they would be subject to arrest and prosecution the same way an agent of any other nation caught engaging in unauthorized, unwelcome espionage on American soil would be...as a spy. And yet, John McCain, who allegedly "gets the message" regarding illgal immigration, hires someone who has clearly demonstrated at all times that he has the best interests of Mexico, not America at heart. Senator McCain, I and many other Americans with more than three neurons to rub together might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.
I mean, read the man's own website on the issue of illegal immigration, you'd think this egomaniacal, obfuscating bastard was running for President of Mexico and/or greater Latin America. After paying token lip service to securing the border, mind you, with absolutel no details about how he plans to do this (because he has no plans to secure the border), he talks more about the alleged duty of America to absorb anyone and everyone who manages to break into our nation, more about the alleged rights of illegal immigrants to crash the gates of our country and violate our sovereignty, and more about pandering to and the rights of greedy employers who would love nothing more than an endless supply of illegal foreign labor to hire any illegal they please in order to pad their bottom line at the nation's expense than he does about actually securing the border and all that entails. That tells me everything I need to know about the man as a presidential candidate...I just can't fathom why the people of Arizona, home of Proposition 200 and the "business death penalty" for businesses who hire illegal immigrants, haven't tossed this idiot out on his ear yet.
Oh, and last but certainly not least, Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently think McCain is just ducky and dandy...as my profession is fond of saying, I rest my case.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
A Recipe for Marital Success, by Mrs. DuToit
As crazy as it is, and as exciting as it sounds, marriage is a huge thing...one of the biggest, most important journeys any of us can undertake. I'm about to do it myself less than nine months from now, so I should know. I have a pretty even number of friends who are married as compared to those who aren't. The ones who are married are still very new at this game, and my mostly biological family takes dysfunctionality in marriage to peaks that make Mt. Everest blush. Other than the pastor who will likely end up presiding over my wedding ceremony (a wonderful Christian man with an amazing wife with whom he is still very much in love), I haven't really found a lot in the way of good real life advice on marriage.
So, I was very glad to come across this fine essay by Mrs. DuToit on this very subject. It's very long, but I can scarcely find anything wrong with it, save a few nitpicking things around the edges that have more to do with my own personality and the contours of the specific relationship my fiancee' and I share. I'd recommend it to anyone, whether they are a long way from getting married, soon-to-be or freshly married, or even those of us who have been married a while. It's really quite good, so do read the whole thing. :)
"A friend of ours, a young friend, was recently married. He knows who he is so I won’t mention him by name, but I’ll call him “Barry.” He is a pup himself, just 22. His young bride, a blushing 19. I’ll refer to her as “Carrie.”
Carrie is just a few months younger than my own, dear Wendy, so it is difficult for me to think of Carrie as a peer, and I temper my manner and my words to her accordingly. I hope I don’t treat her in a demeaning way, but I think she understands (at least I hope she does).
Barry is a very direct kind of fellow and (for whatever reason or by whatever cause) is ahead of his peers on the maturity scale. He’s been quite successful at business, working as a consultant and running a few small side businesses. He is more than capable, even at his young age, to support a wife. It is a choice he has made with joy, both at being able to do it, and the joy it brings him to do it.
I think one of the qualities that enable Barry to be so successful, at such a young age, is that he listens. He also asks a lot of questions (and can be quite irritating about that!). But I jest. I enjoy people who are inquisitive and demanding about it. I think it is an admirable quality. I think I was equally irritating when I was his age, never shy about inquiry and the forever, “But why?”
Payback time.
Before and after their wedding, Barry (in not so many words), asked me So what advice can you give us?
Oh, brother!
Barry is quite aware that Kim and I have what could be described as a pretty sound marriage, and he wanted to know, I assume, what I think made that so. Their relationship with their own parents is somewhat strange, and not relationships they want to emulate. They are wise enough to recognize that.
So there they were, just a few weeks from their wedding date, sitting on our sofa, with open and innocent eyes.
It was so sweet and I was both flattered and terrified at what they were asking me to tell them. It was clear to me, by both body language and expression, that Carrie was the most desperate for words of advice and encouragement, so it was to her that I directed most of my advice, with cautions to Barry how he was to react/respond to his lovely wife.
Carrie will not have to support herself financially. She may, at some future point, expand on hobbies as small business ventures (which Barry will happily fund, if only to keep her happy), but her main job will be as a housewife? and at a future date, the responsibility of caring for their children.
A housewife.
That term has been so maligned and discounted for the last half century, and the idea of it scoffed at as something servant- or maid-like, I felt the first thing I needed to do was to explain to Carrie what that meant, and more importantly, what it did not mean.
It doesn’t mean that she sits around all day and does nothing, in the stereotypical bon-bon eating, soap-opera-watching freeloader.
A housewife is a grand and noble calling and it has a job description.
First are the obvious: She keeps the house. She does the shopping, the cooking, and the cleaning. If their income can support it and hire people to do some of that, great, but the housewife is responsible for doing that hiring, and the training of the people who are hired. If they do have help, that still doesn’t mean she sits around and does nothing.
She should then do volunteer work (to help others), take classes to prepare herself for educating her children some day?but she must keep busy and treat it as an occupation.
The not-so obvious comes next:
She is the manager of the house, and all it entails, but not a Drill Sergeant. That includes maintaining a household budget, keeping the checkbooks balanced and the bills paid on time. She plans meals according to their nutritional value, their cost, and the preferences of the family. She does not take the role as meal provider to mean she is the health Gestapo, but attempts to provide a balanced diet, within the scope of preferences of the family. If they don’t like peas, she doesn’t make them. She learns everything she can about nutrition, cleanliness issues, and keeping the family healthy. She is the back up nurse, in case someone takes ill, and must know the basics of first aid.
She gets dressed every day. She bathes every day. She gets up when her husband gets up and if he is so inclined, she makes him breakfast or coffee, before he goes off to work. They say good bye each morning and hello each night.
She is responsible for laundry and making sure the clothes are ironed with proper creases. If he asks for assistance in coordinating outfits, then she may provide it, but if he doesn’t ask, she does not offer the advice.
The house is her domain. She is in charge of it, but she must share it, and provide a home that is welcoming to men. Getting married is not the time to do everything she wanted to do as a girl, with pink frilly curtains, or doll or stuffed animal displays (there is time for that if she has a daughter of her own, but she must say good bye it all of that for herself). She must not turn their home into a version of a little girl’s room. It is an adult home and must be equally comfortable to men and women. She may have a study or small room that she decorates just for herself (where her household management things are kept), but every other room, shared rooms, must be sex neutral.
[At this point Barry interjected that he had no issue with that. He was more than willing to have a hands-off approach in the way the house was decorated and the furnishings she chose.]
I chastised Barry for saying that, even though I knew his heart was in the right place.
“How would you feel if she took no interest in what you did, and said to you things like ‘that’s your work, I don’t want to hear about what you do’”? The husband must take an interest in these things. When she brings home paint swatches, and presents him with choices, he should tell her what he likes and doesn’t like. “I don’t care, whatever you want to do is fine with me” is demeaning. It says to her that he doesn’t care about the house, and by extension, her and what she thinks is important. He should take equal pride in their home, even though the final decision on these matters is hers.
That doesn’t mean he chooses the colors or she becomes dictatorial in the choice, but she isn’t doing that, because she has pre-selected colors to show him. She’s chosen colors she likes and hopes he will like. If he doesn’t like any of them, he should say so, and she must not take his sharing of preferences as a personal slight. It is just the sharing of information. She should be happy to receive the input, and go back to the drawing board, with better insight.
Similarly, a young husband doesn’t get to turn his house into a black leather sofa bachelor pad, with the stereo and speaker system as the focal point in the room. That’s the male equivalent of a little boy’s room. He has to grow up, too.
She must know the basics of home repair, not to the point of being able to add an addition on the house (unless she likes that sort of thing), but she should be familiar with ordinary tools, hammer, screwdrivers, and small power tools (drills and the like).
If she has no knowledge of decoration, furnishings, or style, then it is time she did. She will need to take a class in home decoration, even taking furniture, drapery, or basic art classes if she needs to.
She will need to make a household budget, and if she does not know how to do that, then she’ll need to learn to do that, too.
She will keep the household’s social calendar, remembering to purchase “bread and butter” gifts if they will be going to someone else’s home for a meal or party. She will need to remember birthdays (her friends and family and his). She will write thank you notes for gifts the two of them have received, or hand her husband the card and stamped envelope for the ones he will need to send.
And, there is no such thing as “girls? night out” or “boys? night out” anymore. There are no “boys? rooms” in the house, where he goes off with his buddies to watch football, leaving her a weekend widow. She will not go off with her girlfriends when her husband is home.
That is what his lunch hour is for and what she does when he is at work.
When he is off work it is time for him and time for her.
That does not mean that he might engage in activities where she has no interest or the reverse. But the pastimes and leisure activities not mutually enjoyed should be gradually phased out, or limited in scope, in preference to things they enjoy doing together. That might mean she will need to learn more about football for the occasional football-watching party at the house.
If he wants to do something he knows she doesn’t like, then they need to negotiate about that, and find times for doing those things where the other doesn’t feel left out, or left home alone.
The exceptions are social activities of a business nature. They can enjoy those, but should understand these serve a broader purpose. If he likes playing golf, then golfing becomes a social- or business networking exercise, as well as a leisure activity. In the same vein, she socializes with the wives of his business associates, building a social network that supports their income. They are a team in the business/social sphere.
When he comes through the door at night, it is not his job to entertain her or to take her out because she’d been cooped up all day. She must occupy her time and engage in activities that will keep her from feeling house-bound. He is not her tour director.
What he will want when he gets home is to be home. There can still be a balance, on the occasional weekday, and especially on weekends. What is most important to understand is that their time to together is valuable and precious, and of the highest priority. Where they are and what they are doing is not important, being together and relishing that is more important than the venue or the activity. That doesn’t mean that either becomes a doormat to the other’s preferences, but to accept that wherever they are together is home.
He is now her home. She is now his home. Wherever they find themselves together is home. They are now a family, a single unit, separate and distinct from her family or his, or his friends or her friends. None of that can or should be maintained in the same way, after they are married. Their discussions and pillow talk are private, never to be discussed with friends or family, except in the vaguest of ways for advice and support. They become each other’s confidants and confessors, keeping faithful and privileged all manner of intimacies between the two of them.
They should treat each other as well as they would treat strangers. Say thank you for every meal that is prepared, for every laundry basket carried into the closet, for every run of the vacuum. When the paycheck is handed to her to deposit, she thanks him, for providing the money they both share and need. He must open doors for her, especially the door to their own home, and he must carry everything for her, but she must not assume or take it for granted, but allow him to do these things for her. They may leave small gifts on pillows or tucked inside briefcases, buying her a candy bar, or buying him a music CD. Never forget that marriage is a date that never ends. Never wait for Hallmark holidays to shower the other with words of love or small gifts. Everyday is the opportunity for Valentine’s Day.
To prevent a wall from ever being built between the two of them, they must not allow any bricks to be laid. Not a single brick. Once the first one is laid, it will be easier to lay the second, then the third, and eventually they will have built a wall so wide and so tall, they will not be able to get over it or around it.
That means that they talk about things. They must talk about things the other did that were upsetting, but do so as adults. They must accept that each other is a distinct and separate person, never intending to intentionally hurt the other. If cross words are spoken or hurt feelings occur, they must work it out, but both must be willing to compromise. They must think before they speak, never lashing out at each other. If she is upset by something he said, then she needs to develop a tougher hide. If he says things that hurt her, then he needs to temper his words, and learn to be kinder. It will allow him to practice being gentle for when he has children, and has boo-boos to kiss, and bandages to apply to crying babes, and lullabies to sing.
“When you said X, I felt Y” is the way these things should be addressed. Never should it be phrased in an accusing tone, such as “You made me feel.” He didn’t make her feel anything. She chose to feel that way, and that is what they need to work out. “My feelings were hurt when you said?” is sharing of information, not accusing the other of intentionally hurting the other, or acting in bad faith.
There are no grudges and no tit-for-tat comeuppances. If he gets new clothes without discussing first, that doesn’t mean she runs out and buys something just for spite, or just to make it “equal.” All major purchase decisions are mutual. Each should have a private checking account for their personal use? their “mad money” for things they buy for themselves (or for each other). But each must stay within that budget.
Neither has to ask the other for permission to do anything. They discuss, as adults, what each wants to do, and set priorities and budgets for things they buy and plan. Similarly, they never tell the other what to do. Never. They are equals. They might have segregated roles and responsibilities, but neither should act as parent of the other.
[There are some things I could have told them, but were too personal to say to their faces. But I can share them here.]
She must never say “no” in the bedroom. Never. Not once.
But he should never impose. Finding out when that would be an imposition is his job. Clearing herself of any emotional baggage that would cause her to say no, hers. The bedroom is not a battle ground, nor a place to settle scores or grievances.
When he wants to make love to her, why would she say no? He loves her and wants to provide her pleasure and take pleasure from her. Why would she want to deny him that? What possible excuse, other than illness or fatigue, could she use to justify saying no?
He must continue to seduce her and arouse her to his arousal. He must talk of love and coo at her, in a manner in which she feels safe and comfortable. She must be willing to be open to him and respond to his advances. He chose her. He thinks she is the most beautiful and precious being on the planet. She must live with the knowledge of that. He, too, must remember that she chose him. She chose to spend the rest of her life with him, to hear his snoring, to bear his children. He must live with the comfort and confidence of that.
There is something else terribly wrong if “no” is heard in the bedroom. They must fix that and never allow it to occur? or they must consider that they have made a bad match, and end it before they add children to the mix.
And finally, only one person gets to be crazy at a time and you must take turns. Each of us needs down time, when the other takes the turn at being the grown up, allowing the other to act a little whacky, depressed, anxious, or out of control. But only for a short time, and only within reason. Then the other gets a turn.
Having children will strain a marriage in ways only those who have children can fully appreciate. Before getting to that point, know each other. Travel if traveling is your thing. Build a house first in every sense of the word.
For those of you with daughters, do not discount the duties of a housewife. Do not discuss it as a “fall back” as if it is something you would do if you could do nothing else well. Be truthful about what it will entail, and prepare them for all the skills they will need to have to accomplish it. She must also know that she can never be petty or jealous, and must accept the man for what he is, the way he came. Her job is to support him and be supported by him, not remold him into something he never was.
For those with sons, treat them to respect women, and to enjoy (but never take for granted) their desire to please others. And let him know that if he ever raises his voice to his wife in anger, or raises his fist to her as threat or strikes her, he will have little to fear from the police or from her. You will kill him first."
So, I was very glad to come across this fine essay by Mrs. DuToit on this very subject. It's very long, but I can scarcely find anything wrong with it, save a few nitpicking things around the edges that have more to do with my own personality and the contours of the specific relationship my fiancee' and I share. I'd recommend it to anyone, whether they are a long way from getting married, soon-to-be or freshly married, or even those of us who have been married a while. It's really quite good, so do read the whole thing. :)
"A friend of ours, a young friend, was recently married. He knows who he is so I won’t mention him by name, but I’ll call him “Barry.” He is a pup himself, just 22. His young bride, a blushing 19. I’ll refer to her as “Carrie.”
Carrie is just a few months younger than my own, dear Wendy, so it is difficult for me to think of Carrie as a peer, and I temper my manner and my words to her accordingly. I hope I don’t treat her in a demeaning way, but I think she understands (at least I hope she does).
Barry is a very direct kind of fellow and (for whatever reason or by whatever cause) is ahead of his peers on the maturity scale. He’s been quite successful at business, working as a consultant and running a few small side businesses. He is more than capable, even at his young age, to support a wife. It is a choice he has made with joy, both at being able to do it, and the joy it brings him to do it.
I think one of the qualities that enable Barry to be so successful, at such a young age, is that he listens. He also asks a lot of questions (and can be quite irritating about that!). But I jest. I enjoy people who are inquisitive and demanding about it. I think it is an admirable quality. I think I was equally irritating when I was his age, never shy about inquiry and the forever, “But why?”
Payback time.
Before and after their wedding, Barry (in not so many words), asked me So what advice can you give us?
Oh, brother!
Barry is quite aware that Kim and I have what could be described as a pretty sound marriage, and he wanted to know, I assume, what I think made that so. Their relationship with their own parents is somewhat strange, and not relationships they want to emulate. They are wise enough to recognize that.
So there they were, just a few weeks from their wedding date, sitting on our sofa, with open and innocent eyes.
It was so sweet and I was both flattered and terrified at what they were asking me to tell them. It was clear to me, by both body language and expression, that Carrie was the most desperate for words of advice and encouragement, so it was to her that I directed most of my advice, with cautions to Barry how he was to react/respond to his lovely wife.
Carrie will not have to support herself financially. She may, at some future point, expand on hobbies as small business ventures (which Barry will happily fund, if only to keep her happy), but her main job will be as a housewife? and at a future date, the responsibility of caring for their children.
A housewife.
That term has been so maligned and discounted for the last half century, and the idea of it scoffed at as something servant- or maid-like, I felt the first thing I needed to do was to explain to Carrie what that meant, and more importantly, what it did not mean.
It doesn’t mean that she sits around all day and does nothing, in the stereotypical bon-bon eating, soap-opera-watching freeloader.
A housewife is a grand and noble calling and it has a job description.
First are the obvious: She keeps the house. She does the shopping, the cooking, and the cleaning. If their income can support it and hire people to do some of that, great, but the housewife is responsible for doing that hiring, and the training of the people who are hired. If they do have help, that still doesn’t mean she sits around and does nothing.
She should then do volunteer work (to help others), take classes to prepare herself for educating her children some day?but she must keep busy and treat it as an occupation.
The not-so obvious comes next:
She is the manager of the house, and all it entails, but not a Drill Sergeant. That includes maintaining a household budget, keeping the checkbooks balanced and the bills paid on time. She plans meals according to their nutritional value, their cost, and the preferences of the family. She does not take the role as meal provider to mean she is the health Gestapo, but attempts to provide a balanced diet, within the scope of preferences of the family. If they don’t like peas, she doesn’t make them. She learns everything she can about nutrition, cleanliness issues, and keeping the family healthy. She is the back up nurse, in case someone takes ill, and must know the basics of first aid.
She gets dressed every day. She bathes every day. She gets up when her husband gets up and if he is so inclined, she makes him breakfast or coffee, before he goes off to work. They say good bye each morning and hello each night.
She is responsible for laundry and making sure the clothes are ironed with proper creases. If he asks for assistance in coordinating outfits, then she may provide it, but if he doesn’t ask, she does not offer the advice.
The house is her domain. She is in charge of it, but she must share it, and provide a home that is welcoming to men. Getting married is not the time to do everything she wanted to do as a girl, with pink frilly curtains, or doll or stuffed animal displays (there is time for that if she has a daughter of her own, but she must say good bye it all of that for herself). She must not turn their home into a version of a little girl’s room. It is an adult home and must be equally comfortable to men and women. She may have a study or small room that she decorates just for herself (where her household management things are kept), but every other room, shared rooms, must be sex neutral.
[At this point Barry interjected that he had no issue with that. He was more than willing to have a hands-off approach in the way the house was decorated and the furnishings she chose.]
I chastised Barry for saying that, even though I knew his heart was in the right place.
“How would you feel if she took no interest in what you did, and said to you things like ‘that’s your work, I don’t want to hear about what you do’”? The husband must take an interest in these things. When she brings home paint swatches, and presents him with choices, he should tell her what he likes and doesn’t like. “I don’t care, whatever you want to do is fine with me” is demeaning. It says to her that he doesn’t care about the house, and by extension, her and what she thinks is important. He should take equal pride in their home, even though the final decision on these matters is hers.
That doesn’t mean he chooses the colors or she becomes dictatorial in the choice, but she isn’t doing that, because she has pre-selected colors to show him. She’s chosen colors she likes and hopes he will like. If he doesn’t like any of them, he should say so, and she must not take his sharing of preferences as a personal slight. It is just the sharing of information. She should be happy to receive the input, and go back to the drawing board, with better insight.
Similarly, a young husband doesn’t get to turn his house into a black leather sofa bachelor pad, with the stereo and speaker system as the focal point in the room. That’s the male equivalent of a little boy’s room. He has to grow up, too.
She must know the basics of home repair, not to the point of being able to add an addition on the house (unless she likes that sort of thing), but she should be familiar with ordinary tools, hammer, screwdrivers, and small power tools (drills and the like).
If she has no knowledge of decoration, furnishings, or style, then it is time she did. She will need to take a class in home decoration, even taking furniture, drapery, or basic art classes if she needs to.
She will need to make a household budget, and if she does not know how to do that, then she’ll need to learn to do that, too.
She will keep the household’s social calendar, remembering to purchase “bread and butter” gifts if they will be going to someone else’s home for a meal or party. She will need to remember birthdays (her friends and family and his). She will write thank you notes for gifts the two of them have received, or hand her husband the card and stamped envelope for the ones he will need to send.
And, there is no such thing as “girls? night out” or “boys? night out” anymore. There are no “boys? rooms” in the house, where he goes off with his buddies to watch football, leaving her a weekend widow. She will not go off with her girlfriends when her husband is home.
That is what his lunch hour is for and what she does when he is at work.
When he is off work it is time for him and time for her.
That does not mean that he might engage in activities where she has no interest or the reverse. But the pastimes and leisure activities not mutually enjoyed should be gradually phased out, or limited in scope, in preference to things they enjoy doing together. That might mean she will need to learn more about football for the occasional football-watching party at the house.
If he wants to do something he knows she doesn’t like, then they need to negotiate about that, and find times for doing those things where the other doesn’t feel left out, or left home alone.
The exceptions are social activities of a business nature. They can enjoy those, but should understand these serve a broader purpose. If he likes playing golf, then golfing becomes a social- or business networking exercise, as well as a leisure activity. In the same vein, she socializes with the wives of his business associates, building a social network that supports their income. They are a team in the business/social sphere.
When he comes through the door at night, it is not his job to entertain her or to take her out because she’d been cooped up all day. She must occupy her time and engage in activities that will keep her from feeling house-bound. He is not her tour director.
What he will want when he gets home is to be home. There can still be a balance, on the occasional weekday, and especially on weekends. What is most important to understand is that their time to together is valuable and precious, and of the highest priority. Where they are and what they are doing is not important, being together and relishing that is more important than the venue or the activity. That doesn’t mean that either becomes a doormat to the other’s preferences, but to accept that wherever they are together is home.
He is now her home. She is now his home. Wherever they find themselves together is home. They are now a family, a single unit, separate and distinct from her family or his, or his friends or her friends. None of that can or should be maintained in the same way, after they are married. Their discussions and pillow talk are private, never to be discussed with friends or family, except in the vaguest of ways for advice and support. They become each other’s confidants and confessors, keeping faithful and privileged all manner of intimacies between the two of them.
They should treat each other as well as they would treat strangers. Say thank you for every meal that is prepared, for every laundry basket carried into the closet, for every run of the vacuum. When the paycheck is handed to her to deposit, she thanks him, for providing the money they both share and need. He must open doors for her, especially the door to their own home, and he must carry everything for her, but she must not assume or take it for granted, but allow him to do these things for her. They may leave small gifts on pillows or tucked inside briefcases, buying her a candy bar, or buying him a music CD. Never forget that marriage is a date that never ends. Never wait for Hallmark holidays to shower the other with words of love or small gifts. Everyday is the opportunity for Valentine’s Day.
To prevent a wall from ever being built between the two of them, they must not allow any bricks to be laid. Not a single brick. Once the first one is laid, it will be easier to lay the second, then the third, and eventually they will have built a wall so wide and so tall, they will not be able to get over it or around it.
That means that they talk about things. They must talk about things the other did that were upsetting, but do so as adults. They must accept that each other is a distinct and separate person, never intending to intentionally hurt the other. If cross words are spoken or hurt feelings occur, they must work it out, but both must be willing to compromise. They must think before they speak, never lashing out at each other. If she is upset by something he said, then she needs to develop a tougher hide. If he says things that hurt her, then he needs to temper his words, and learn to be kinder. It will allow him to practice being gentle for when he has children, and has boo-boos to kiss, and bandages to apply to crying babes, and lullabies to sing.
“When you said X, I felt Y” is the way these things should be addressed. Never should it be phrased in an accusing tone, such as “You made me feel.” He didn’t make her feel anything. She chose to feel that way, and that is what they need to work out. “My feelings were hurt when you said?” is sharing of information, not accusing the other of intentionally hurting the other, or acting in bad faith.
There are no grudges and no tit-for-tat comeuppances. If he gets new clothes without discussing first, that doesn’t mean she runs out and buys something just for spite, or just to make it “equal.” All major purchase decisions are mutual. Each should have a private checking account for their personal use? their “mad money” for things they buy for themselves (or for each other). But each must stay within that budget.
Neither has to ask the other for permission to do anything. They discuss, as adults, what each wants to do, and set priorities and budgets for things they buy and plan. Similarly, they never tell the other what to do. Never. They are equals. They might have segregated roles and responsibilities, but neither should act as parent of the other.
[There are some things I could have told them, but were too personal to say to their faces. But I can share them here.]
She must never say “no” in the bedroom. Never. Not once.
But he should never impose. Finding out when that would be an imposition is his job. Clearing herself of any emotional baggage that would cause her to say no, hers. The bedroom is not a battle ground, nor a place to settle scores or grievances.
When he wants to make love to her, why would she say no? He loves her and wants to provide her pleasure and take pleasure from her. Why would she want to deny him that? What possible excuse, other than illness or fatigue, could she use to justify saying no?
He must continue to seduce her and arouse her to his arousal. He must talk of love and coo at her, in a manner in which she feels safe and comfortable. She must be willing to be open to him and respond to his advances. He chose her. He thinks she is the most beautiful and precious being on the planet. She must live with the knowledge of that. He, too, must remember that she chose him. She chose to spend the rest of her life with him, to hear his snoring, to bear his children. He must live with the comfort and confidence of that.
There is something else terribly wrong if “no” is heard in the bedroom. They must fix that and never allow it to occur? or they must consider that they have made a bad match, and end it before they add children to the mix.
And finally, only one person gets to be crazy at a time and you must take turns. Each of us needs down time, when the other takes the turn at being the grown up, allowing the other to act a little whacky, depressed, anxious, or out of control. But only for a short time, and only within reason. Then the other gets a turn.
Having children will strain a marriage in ways only those who have children can fully appreciate. Before getting to that point, know each other. Travel if traveling is your thing. Build a house first in every sense of the word.
For those of you with daughters, do not discount the duties of a housewife. Do not discuss it as a “fall back” as if it is something you would do if you could do nothing else well. Be truthful about what it will entail, and prepare them for all the skills they will need to have to accomplish it. She must also know that she can never be petty or jealous, and must accept the man for what he is, the way he came. Her job is to support him and be supported by him, not remold him into something he never was.
For those with sons, treat them to respect women, and to enjoy (but never take for granted) their desire to please others. And let him know that if he ever raises his voice to his wife in anger, or raises his fist to her as threat or strikes her, he will have little to fear from the police or from her. You will kill him first."
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
A Million Things I'd Rather Do Than Vote for John McCain...
...and why scooping out my own eyeballs with a rusty melon baller is on the list. Look, people can say what they want to, and I respect the man's military service to this country and his disdain for pork barrel spending, but that. is. it. That's the entire list. I will no sooner vote for this illegal immigrant enabling, terrorist coddling, glow-bull warming worshipping, anti-tax cutting, free-speech squashing, mainstream media darling (until the general election, when he assumes the form of a bug when colliding with a windshield at high speed), non-straight talking weather vane of a politician than I would volunteer to have my future infant son shot out of one of those T-shirt cannons at a Memphis Grizzlies NBA game. And that's before Ann Coulter has her say. Do read the whole thing, but here's your money quote:
"John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth. Like McCain, pollsters assured us that Dole was the most "electable" Republican. Unlike McCain, Dole didn't lie all the time while claiming to engage in Straight Talk.
Of course, I might lie constantly too, if I were seeking the Republican presidential nomination after enthusiastically promoting amnesty for illegal aliens, Social Security credit for illegal aliens, criminal trials for terrorists, stem-cell research on human embryos, crackpot global warming legislation, and free speech-crushing campaign-finance laws.
I might lie too, if I had opposed the Bush tax cuts, a marriage amendment to the Constitution, waterboarding terrorists and drilling in Alaska.
And I might lie if I had called the ads of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "dishonest and dishonorable."
Human Events gets in on the fun too right here. Couldn't have said it better myself.
"John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth. Like McCain, pollsters assured us that Dole was the most "electable" Republican. Unlike McCain, Dole didn't lie all the time while claiming to engage in Straight Talk.
Of course, I might lie constantly too, if I were seeking the Republican presidential nomination after enthusiastically promoting amnesty for illegal aliens, Social Security credit for illegal aliens, criminal trials for terrorists, stem-cell research on human embryos, crackpot global warming legislation, and free speech-crushing campaign-finance laws.
I might lie too, if I had opposed the Bush tax cuts, a marriage amendment to the Constitution, waterboarding terrorists and drilling in Alaska.
And I might lie if I had called the ads of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "dishonest and dishonorable."
Human Events gets in on the fun too right here. Couldn't have said it better myself.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Fred '08 is Dead, and What Might Have Been...
I agree with Emperor Misha on this one...all I have to say is Dammit! In case you haven't heard, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson has decided to drop his bid for the White House in 2008. Here's the official statement from Fred's website:
"Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."
I believe the GOP itself and conservatism as a philosophy definitely did benefit from Fred being in the race. His candidacy certainly got people to stand up and talk seriously about issues that people would otherwise gladly ignore (entitlements, border security, judges, etc.) or remain maddeningly ambiguous about. I'll agree with Republican strategist Mark Corallo, who said the following in this Washington Post piece:
"His legacy is one of missed opportunities, broken promises and an unfortunate disdain for the process. "His legacy is also one of having been the only candidate seeking the Republican nomination who was willing to talk real substance, take a true, consistent conservative approach to every issue, of actually challenging the notion of big government, championing federalism and being honest about the looming entitlement train wreck that is going to bankrupt our kids. He was a lackluster candidate who would have been a great president."
I supported Senator Thompson by volunteering for his campaign, by talking him up and supporting him online in blogs and other electronic forums, and by praying for him. With him out of the race, the only GOP candidate left I could support with any level of enthusiasm is Mitt Romney, although I do have reservations about him (i.e. whether his beliefs the ones he is espousing now or the ones he espoused running for Senate against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts.) As for any of the others, I will sit home or write in Fred Thompson. I simply can not and will not vote for John "Amnesty and Global Warming, Bob Dole Redux, Not-so-Straight Talk Express" McCain, Mike "Bill Clinton with an R in front of My Name" Huckabee, and Rudy "Gun Grabber" Giuliani. I think I, along with many other conservative voters have had more than our fill of voting for a GOP candidate because the liberal option is worse. I am glad we got George Bush because of the War on Terror, taxes, judges, but his records on immigration, spending, energy are atrocious.
As anyone familiar with his lifetime of public service can see, Fred has been outstanding at everything about which he has been passionate and to which he has set his mind. I don't see that changing just because he isn't running for President any longer. I don't think we have heard the last of Fred...I just pray it's because he decides to run for Governor of Tennessee in a couple of years or because he is appointed Attorney General in a (hopefully) Mitt Romney administration, and not because he has decided to endorse John McCain or, worse yet, be his choice for Vice President on the 2008 GOP ticket.
To Fred, regardless of your future plans, you and your family remain in my thoughts and prayers. Conservatism needs a lot more good men and women such as yourself, and I hope to hear more good things from you in the future. God bless and Godspeed.
"Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."
I believe the GOP itself and conservatism as a philosophy definitely did benefit from Fred being in the race. His candidacy certainly got people to stand up and talk seriously about issues that people would otherwise gladly ignore (entitlements, border security, judges, etc.) or remain maddeningly ambiguous about. I'll agree with Republican strategist Mark Corallo, who said the following in this Washington Post piece:
"His legacy is one of missed opportunities, broken promises and an unfortunate disdain for the process. "His legacy is also one of having been the only candidate seeking the Republican nomination who was willing to talk real substance, take a true, consistent conservative approach to every issue, of actually challenging the notion of big government, championing federalism and being honest about the looming entitlement train wreck that is going to bankrupt our kids. He was a lackluster candidate who would have been a great president."
I supported Senator Thompson by volunteering for his campaign, by talking him up and supporting him online in blogs and other electronic forums, and by praying for him. With him out of the race, the only GOP candidate left I could support with any level of enthusiasm is Mitt Romney, although I do have reservations about him (i.e. whether his beliefs the ones he is espousing now or the ones he espoused running for Senate against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts.) As for any of the others, I will sit home or write in Fred Thompson. I simply can not and will not vote for John "Amnesty and Global Warming, Bob Dole Redux, Not-so-Straight Talk Express" McCain, Mike "Bill Clinton with an R in front of My Name" Huckabee, and Rudy "Gun Grabber" Giuliani. I think I, along with many other conservative voters have had more than our fill of voting for a GOP candidate because the liberal option is worse. I am glad we got George Bush because of the War on Terror, taxes, judges, but his records on immigration, spending, energy are atrocious.
As anyone familiar with his lifetime of public service can see, Fred has been outstanding at everything about which he has been passionate and to which he has set his mind. I don't see that changing just because he isn't running for President any longer. I don't think we have heard the last of Fred...I just pray it's because he decides to run for Governor of Tennessee in a couple of years or because he is appointed Attorney General in a (hopefully) Mitt Romney administration, and not because he has decided to endorse John McCain or, worse yet, be his choice for Vice President on the 2008 GOP ticket.
To Fred, regardless of your future plans, you and your family remain in my thoughts and prayers. Conservatism needs a lot more good men and women such as yourself, and I hope to hear more good things from you in the future. God bless and Godspeed.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Last Call for N'awlins, and Good Riddance
You know, I always thought that New Orleans was something akin to a circus, the carnival freakshow of America as it were. Even when Katrina hit, I couldn't really muster much sympathy for them. Frankly, 99% of them are mind-numbing, skull-crushing idiots in my book, because they knowingly made their homes in a place that is guaranteed by nature to get flooded nearly out of existence every 25-30 years or so. This is no different than the idiotic mostly white retards who insist on rebuilding their trailer park homes in places with names like "Tornado Alley". The only reason the mainstream media and their bedfellows in the Democratic party pretend to give a flying crap is because this corrupt, socialist-bordering-on-communist hellhole is a "chocolate city". Hence, letting this cancer of a city ooze into the sewer would make it look like the plantation folks of the Dem-Cong don't really care about their little brown people who vote for them at an equally idiotic 90%+ clip in every election. The MSM and the Dem-Cong, who never give a fart in the wind's worth of thought to the black community until elections roll around, can't risk being viewed as unsympatheeeeeetic to the plight of an ethnic minority...it's just that simple.
My sympathy level for New Orleans, however, has gone from barely registering, to non-existent, to fu*k you very much. Never mind the recovery that is proceeding in Mississippi quite nicely (and not coincidentally a conservative stronghold refreshingly devoid of the cult of victimhood in socialist New Orleans), look past the millions of dollars so kindly laid out from fellow citizens in private donations to help this cesspool back to being a non-underwater cesspool, and forget the $250 billion (that's a quarter of a trillion for the math majors in the audience) already set to be shelled out from taxpayer dollars by the federal gubmint. Now, these fat and ever-growing piglets on the government tit have filed claims amounting to over THREE QUADRILLION dollars. That's a three with FIFTEEN zeroes behind us, and it's more ridiculous than Dr. Evil's line from Austin Powers, only it's much more sad because it's actually true. I think that pretty much tells you my opinion on giving these greedy little parasites another plugged nickel, but for the righteous rant of the century on this subject, I proudly give you Mr. Vanderleun.
Cutting Through the Katrina Krapola
"You've got a mouth full of gimme, a hand full of much obliged." -- Bessie Smith, Gulf Coast Blues
I don't know about you but I have had it with the legions of hustlers, grifters, drunks, junkies, pathics and drooling layabouts that keep waddling and teetering up to the public trough from that swamp of puke called New Orleans. The latest of an endless line of calls upon the kindness of strangers by these public-purse pimps is this little bit of chicanery: Katrina victim sues U.S. for $3 quadrillion
Hurricane Katrina's victims have put a price tag on their suffering and it is staggering -- including one plaintiff seeking the unlikely sum of $3 quadrillion.
The total number -- $3,014,170,389,176,410 -- is the dollar figure so far sought from some 489,000 claims filed against the federal government over damage from the failure of levees and flood walls following the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane.
This chunk of legalized slunk trading may or may not include the Washington con job currently being floated in Swampy Bottom -- "Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number." But it hardly matters.
I've considered the matter of New Orleans carefully.
I've weighed the never-ending, and now maudlin, saccharine suffering of its people against my now limitless cache of compassion fatigue. They have been found wanting.
To be fair and just, here's what I propose we give New Orleans from this day forward. Nothing. Niente. Zip. Zero. Nada. And a full-scale barium enema just for asking for one more thin dime. Did you send money to this barrage of bozos? I did and I want it back. With interest.
The city and its long line of corrupt citizens and politicians have already managed to hoover $127 billion out of the federal government and that, as they say, should be enough for any cluster of crooks. On a per person basis that comes to $425,000 for each of the 300,000 fools still living in that pulsating pustule on the bayou.
Keeping that figure in mind, my policy is that the New Orleaners among us are paid up and paid in full as of today. Boys, girls, bozos, bad jazz musicians, and underemployed drags queens all, take heed. It is over. Take your toothless gums off the public tit. It is time for you all, like some overfed prolapsed Sumos who have double-dipped at the Hometown Buffet dessert table once too often, to belch, break wind, and move on.
Let's get cold-blooded about New Orleans. We've been far too nice to it for far too long. Nature, in the final analysis, may have been trying to do us a favor by flooding it. New Orleans is well past its sell-by date. The harsh truth is that New Orleans is more expendable than any other city of its size in the country.
As a city that is part and parcel of America New Orleans does exactly nothing to better the country and a lot to make it a crappier nation all around. I mean, just what is the big deal about this humid, festering, below-sea-level, rotting and clapped-out town with more STDs per capita than any other burg its size? Anne Rice? Vampire novels? A literary tradition that launched many millions of bad goth tattoos? A few blocks of mouldering and rusting antebellum architecture that oozes the tattered ghosts slavery and child prostitution? A cuisine composed of liquid pork fat, overweight oysters, and second-string animal parts so vile they have to be soaked in wine and then crusted with chile peppers and charred to a blackened husk? Don't even get me going on taking bad coffee and making it worse by dumping some chicory in it. Sludge has more savor.
Plus when you die of the clap, the booze, the food and the coffee, you can get a colorful marching band of off-key musicians to haul your body into an above ground concrete box so you can come sloshing back out with all the rest of the rotting dead the next time the water rises. The quaintness of it all just exceeds the mind's capacity to boggle.
All of those and more, yes. But the single thing that seems to be valued in New Orleans above all else is the ability to have a large schooner of raw alcohol poured into a plastic cup so that you can.... wait for it... walk outside the bar and onto the sidewalk... and never have to stop drinking. Wow! That's a quality feeling.
It gets better. When you are out "in the Quarter" (Quaint phrase, that.) on a "normal" night, you can walk around and drink with thousands of other drunks reeling and whooping and practicing their projectile vomiting skills on each other. During Mardi Gras you can do this in an absurd and ever-more obscene costume with hundreds of thousands of others as absurd and obscene as you. Man that's living. That's entertainment!
We've already poured billions over this raw festering sore of a city. The infection is still there and it gets more virulent by the day. And now we find that the denizens of this sewer want us to actually pay billions and trillions more to keep this chancrous old collection of corruption afloat? I don't think so. But con-artists don't stop conning until you stop them.
My suggestion to the Army Corps of Engineers is simple. The next time any of the poor sots of New Orleans come staggering up to the Federal Courts shaking the begging cup, blow all the levees and let the city drown its sorrows in the Mississippi."
My sympathy level for New Orleans, however, has gone from barely registering, to non-existent, to fu*k you very much. Never mind the recovery that is proceeding in Mississippi quite nicely (and not coincidentally a conservative stronghold refreshingly devoid of the cult of victimhood in socialist New Orleans), look past the millions of dollars so kindly laid out from fellow citizens in private donations to help this cesspool back to being a non-underwater cesspool, and forget the $250 billion (that's a quarter of a trillion for the math majors in the audience) already set to be shelled out from taxpayer dollars by the federal gubmint. Now, these fat and ever-growing piglets on the government tit have filed claims amounting to over THREE QUADRILLION dollars. That's a three with FIFTEEN zeroes behind us, and it's more ridiculous than Dr. Evil's line from Austin Powers, only it's much more sad because it's actually true. I think that pretty much tells you my opinion on giving these greedy little parasites another plugged nickel, but for the righteous rant of the century on this subject, I proudly give you Mr. Vanderleun.
Cutting Through the Katrina Krapola
"You've got a mouth full of gimme, a hand full of much obliged." -- Bessie Smith, Gulf Coast Blues
I don't know about you but I have had it with the legions of hustlers, grifters, drunks, junkies, pathics and drooling layabouts that keep waddling and teetering up to the public trough from that swamp of puke called New Orleans. The latest of an endless line of calls upon the kindness of strangers by these public-purse pimps is this little bit of chicanery: Katrina victim sues U.S. for $3 quadrillion
Hurricane Katrina's victims have put a price tag on their suffering and it is staggering -- including one plaintiff seeking the unlikely sum of $3 quadrillion.
The total number -- $3,014,170,389,176,410 -- is the dollar figure so far sought from some 489,000 claims filed against the federal government over damage from the failure of levees and flood walls following the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane.
This chunk of legalized slunk trading may or may not include the Washington con job currently being floated in Swampy Bottom -- "Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number." But it hardly matters.
I've considered the matter of New Orleans carefully.
I've weighed the never-ending, and now maudlin, saccharine suffering of its people against my now limitless cache of compassion fatigue. They have been found wanting.
To be fair and just, here's what I propose we give New Orleans from this day forward. Nothing. Niente. Zip. Zero. Nada. And a full-scale barium enema just for asking for one more thin dime. Did you send money to this barrage of bozos? I did and I want it back. With interest.
The city and its long line of corrupt citizens and politicians have already managed to hoover $127 billion out of the federal government and that, as they say, should be enough for any cluster of crooks. On a per person basis that comes to $425,000 for each of the 300,000 fools still living in that pulsating pustule on the bayou.
Keeping that figure in mind, my policy is that the New Orleaners among us are paid up and paid in full as of today. Boys, girls, bozos, bad jazz musicians, and underemployed drags queens all, take heed. It is over. Take your toothless gums off the public tit. It is time for you all, like some overfed prolapsed Sumos who have double-dipped at the Hometown Buffet dessert table once too often, to belch, break wind, and move on.
Let's get cold-blooded about New Orleans. We've been far too nice to it for far too long. Nature, in the final analysis, may have been trying to do us a favor by flooding it. New Orleans is well past its sell-by date. The harsh truth is that New Orleans is more expendable than any other city of its size in the country.
As a city that is part and parcel of America New Orleans does exactly nothing to better the country and a lot to make it a crappier nation all around. I mean, just what is the big deal about this humid, festering, below-sea-level, rotting and clapped-out town with more STDs per capita than any other burg its size? Anne Rice? Vampire novels? A literary tradition that launched many millions of bad goth tattoos? A few blocks of mouldering and rusting antebellum architecture that oozes the tattered ghosts slavery and child prostitution? A cuisine composed of liquid pork fat, overweight oysters, and second-string animal parts so vile they have to be soaked in wine and then crusted with chile peppers and charred to a blackened husk? Don't even get me going on taking bad coffee and making it worse by dumping some chicory in it. Sludge has more savor.
Plus when you die of the clap, the booze, the food and the coffee, you can get a colorful marching band of off-key musicians to haul your body into an above ground concrete box so you can come sloshing back out with all the rest of the rotting dead the next time the water rises. The quaintness of it all just exceeds the mind's capacity to boggle.
All of those and more, yes. But the single thing that seems to be valued in New Orleans above all else is the ability to have a large schooner of raw alcohol poured into a plastic cup so that you can.... wait for it... walk outside the bar and onto the sidewalk... and never have to stop drinking. Wow! That's a quality feeling.
It gets better. When you are out "in the Quarter" (Quaint phrase, that.) on a "normal" night, you can walk around and drink with thousands of other drunks reeling and whooping and practicing their projectile vomiting skills on each other. During Mardi Gras you can do this in an absurd and ever-more obscene costume with hundreds of thousands of others as absurd and obscene as you. Man that's living. That's entertainment!
We've already poured billions over this raw festering sore of a city. The infection is still there and it gets more virulent by the day. And now we find that the denizens of this sewer want us to actually pay billions and trillions more to keep this chancrous old collection of corruption afloat? I don't think so. But con-artists don't stop conning until you stop them.
My suggestion to the Army Corps of Engineers is simple. The next time any of the poor sots of New Orleans come staggering up to the Federal Courts shaking the begging cup, blow all the levees and let the city drown its sorrows in the Mississippi."
Friday, January 4, 2008
Why Do I Think Britain is Circling the Drain? Here's Why...
Right now, France is probably 15 years, maybe 20 from becoming the Islamic Republic of France due to its constant pandering to the African Islamic hordes teeming and breeding, but never assimilating, in the projects outside the major cities. It's only a matter of time before Islamic sharia law becomes he governing law of France. Simply put, that is what political correctness gets you. Unfortunately, as blogger Lionheart has figured out, posting the truth about violent, radical Islam online will get you an arrest warrant issued with your name on it while those who threaten your life walk free with no charges. I pray for this man's safety, and that someone, somewhere in authority in the rapidly deteriorating hellhole that used to be England rescinds this unconscionable warrant against Lionheart and issues one against the jihadists who make no secret of their wish to kill him. I won't be holding my breath for this development...I do like living and breathing after all. Read the whole sad, pathetic story.
"I am currently out of the Country and on my return home to England I am going to be arrested by British detectives on suspicion of Stirring up Racial Hatred by displaying written material" contrary to sections 18(1) and 27(3) of the Public Order Act 1986.
This charge if found guilty carries a lengthy prison sentence, more than what most paedophiles and rapists receive, and all for writing words of truth about the barbarity that is living in the midst of our children, which threatens the very future of our Country.
The cultural weapon in the hands of the modern Jihad within Great Britain, silencing the opposition using our own laws against us - The Dumb Filthy Kaffir's as the Moslem would say to his children behind closed doors.
What has become of my homeland, the land my forefathers fought and died for on the battlefields of the world when one of their children is forced into the position of facing years in prison for standing up for what is right and just within British society.
At least my words of truth have obviously now reached people's eyes and ears, with the powers that be now intent on silencing me - Third World Tyranny in a supposed 21st Century democracy!
I wonder if the Moslem peer Lord Ahmed was one of the people behind trying to silence me, I did wonder about why he crashed his car and nearly killed himself over Christmas, let that be a lesson to you - 1 Chronicles 16:22 Saying, “Do not touch My anointed ones, And do My prophets no harm.”
How dare any Moslem try and silence the truth from being told by an Englishman about the Islamic enemy in our midst within the British homeland.
Who have I killed, who have I threatened to kill? No one, all I have done is written about my reality on a computer screen, and now I face going to prison in my own country for standing up for myself and others.
What has happened to those who threatened my life or who have killed my friends - NOTHING - This is British justice in the 21st Century - Shove your British Labour justice because it is worthless to the Englishman whose country this is, whose country you have destroyed.
Who blew up trains and buses on 7/7, who tried blowing up cars in London and Glasgow, who is seeking to detonate a dirty bomb upon the streets of Great Britain and who believes that non-Islamic territory is to be viewed as 'the house of war and must be converted at all costs', I don't think you will find it is me, but I have no problem with educating others to the threat, the threat that this 'Loony Labour Government' is pretending is not real - The former Home Secretary knew what he was talking about.
How dare those power hungry fools seek to silence me or anyone else like me from speaking the truth for the sake of our children, grandchildren and the future of our homeland, who do they think they are, they are nothing more than mere men like the rest of us, just in positions of power over us that they totally abuse against us, look at the treason that has happened within Brussels by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, handing over the Sovereignty of our Nation into foreign hands - Treason is the only word for it yet no one is arresting them, no they are arresting me for writing a few words of truth on a blog.
You cannot hide from your actions within the Catholic Church.
Traitors to the British people are those who pass this judgment and enforce it against their fellow countrymen when all they are doing is standing up for themselves, their children and their neighbours now that we are all surrounded by the armies of Islam who are camped deep within our land conducting Holy War on a daily basis against us and the innocent and the vulnerable in our society - The facts speak for themselves!
Is it not time for the British people to wake up and see this horror within their daily lives that threatens their children's existence, or is the next devastating Islamic terrorist attack going to be so horrific like a dirty bomb that this will force them out of their sleep because of so many lives lost and the aftermath.
This arrest and potential imprisonment is what now awaits me at the start of 2008, and this is what now awaits every other blogger in Great Britain who writes the truth about the modern war that is now unfolding against us, our children and the British homeland by the State (Labour government) sanctioned and protected enemy that is living in our midst - The Islamic Kingdom
Read Melanie Philips' book "Londonistan" if you want a real insight into what the British Elite who are in power have allowed to be born and grow within your midst, the Islamic beast that now lives and breaths upon English soil for nothing more than Holy War against the infidel - Me, you and ever other innocent non-Moslem within Great Britain.
The Moslems cry we are peace and you believe it, when their brothers declare war and murder, a different side of the same coin, a different branch of the same tree with the murder and war of Mohamed and the Koran as their root.
Ask yourself what does the future hold for your children and grandchildren now we have the Islamic Kingdom with its murderous, suppressive ways now growing and advancing upon our homeland - There comes a point when enough is enough and the survival instinct of the Nation kicks in.
I have placed my head above the parapet ready to be shot off because of threats against my life by Pakistani Moslems, how dare these enemies to the State threaten my life, me an Englishman living in my own country surrounded by my own country folk?
Yet my own country folk are now my enemy for standing up for them, their children and their grandchildren and all because their pay masters do not like me speaking the truth - What does that make you?
Today its is me, but tomorrow it is you - No truer words to be said about the present age within British society that we are living in.
I could go on and on about this situation but enough for now as I will use my time to now tell everyone how I have ended up in this position, with the British police now arresting me on suspicion of stirring up Racial Hatred.
I did not wake up one morning and think I hate Moslems and start my blog, I do not have a racist disposition as this blog is not a race issue it is a Religious issue, I had my life threatened and this blog is the result.
I know that there are many people around the World who view my blog, that there are many bloggers and site owners who are also fighting the online Jihad to raise awareness of this global Islamic Holy War that has been declared against us that our governments are trying to pretend is not happening, and I ask for your help to raise awareness of my personal plight.
I do not want to go to prison for many years for standing up for my children and other childrens futures, it is an injustice within what is supposed to be a civilized democratic society and people need to know what is happening, that my government is now seeking to silence me from speaking the truth about the war that has been declared against us all.
Today it is me and my blog and tomorrow it is you and your blog.
Please help me get this message out there by raising the awareness of this injustice, then my State Sanctioned arrest will not be in vain.
Please keep coming back because this is all I will now be posting on - My life and my freedom now hangs in the balance after all.
In service of the King - Jesus - The Lion of the tribe of Judah
Lionheart"
"I am currently out of the Country and on my return home to England I am going to be arrested by British detectives on suspicion of Stirring up Racial Hatred by displaying written material" contrary to sections 18(1) and 27(3) of the Public Order Act 1986.
This charge if found guilty carries a lengthy prison sentence, more than what most paedophiles and rapists receive, and all for writing words of truth about the barbarity that is living in the midst of our children, which threatens the very future of our Country.
The cultural weapon in the hands of the modern Jihad within Great Britain, silencing the opposition using our own laws against us - The Dumb Filthy Kaffir's as the Moslem would say to his children behind closed doors.
What has become of my homeland, the land my forefathers fought and died for on the battlefields of the world when one of their children is forced into the position of facing years in prison for standing up for what is right and just within British society.
At least my words of truth have obviously now reached people's eyes and ears, with the powers that be now intent on silencing me - Third World Tyranny in a supposed 21st Century democracy!
I wonder if the Moslem peer Lord Ahmed was one of the people behind trying to silence me, I did wonder about why he crashed his car and nearly killed himself over Christmas, let that be a lesson to you - 1 Chronicles 16:22 Saying, “Do not touch My anointed ones, And do My prophets no harm.”
How dare any Moslem try and silence the truth from being told by an Englishman about the Islamic enemy in our midst within the British homeland.
Who have I killed, who have I threatened to kill? No one, all I have done is written about my reality on a computer screen, and now I face going to prison in my own country for standing up for myself and others.
What has happened to those who threatened my life or who have killed my friends - NOTHING - This is British justice in the 21st Century - Shove your British Labour justice because it is worthless to the Englishman whose country this is, whose country you have destroyed.
Who blew up trains and buses on 7/7, who tried blowing up cars in London and Glasgow, who is seeking to detonate a dirty bomb upon the streets of Great Britain and who believes that non-Islamic territory is to be viewed as 'the house of war and must be converted at all costs', I don't think you will find it is me, but I have no problem with educating others to the threat, the threat that this 'Loony Labour Government' is pretending is not real - The former Home Secretary knew what he was talking about.
How dare those power hungry fools seek to silence me or anyone else like me from speaking the truth for the sake of our children, grandchildren and the future of our homeland, who do they think they are, they are nothing more than mere men like the rest of us, just in positions of power over us that they totally abuse against us, look at the treason that has happened within Brussels by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, handing over the Sovereignty of our Nation into foreign hands - Treason is the only word for it yet no one is arresting them, no they are arresting me for writing a few words of truth on a blog.
You cannot hide from your actions within the Catholic Church.
Traitors to the British people are those who pass this judgment and enforce it against their fellow countrymen when all they are doing is standing up for themselves, their children and their neighbours now that we are all surrounded by the armies of Islam who are camped deep within our land conducting Holy War on a daily basis against us and the innocent and the vulnerable in our society - The facts speak for themselves!
Is it not time for the British people to wake up and see this horror within their daily lives that threatens their children's existence, or is the next devastating Islamic terrorist attack going to be so horrific like a dirty bomb that this will force them out of their sleep because of so many lives lost and the aftermath.
This arrest and potential imprisonment is what now awaits me at the start of 2008, and this is what now awaits every other blogger in Great Britain who writes the truth about the modern war that is now unfolding against us, our children and the British homeland by the State (Labour government) sanctioned and protected enemy that is living in our midst - The Islamic Kingdom
Read Melanie Philips' book "Londonistan" if you want a real insight into what the British Elite who are in power have allowed to be born and grow within your midst, the Islamic beast that now lives and breaths upon English soil for nothing more than Holy War against the infidel - Me, you and ever other innocent non-Moslem within Great Britain.
The Moslems cry we are peace and you believe it, when their brothers declare war and murder, a different side of the same coin, a different branch of the same tree with the murder and war of Mohamed and the Koran as their root.
Ask yourself what does the future hold for your children and grandchildren now we have the Islamic Kingdom with its murderous, suppressive ways now growing and advancing upon our homeland - There comes a point when enough is enough and the survival instinct of the Nation kicks in.
I have placed my head above the parapet ready to be shot off because of threats against my life by Pakistani Moslems, how dare these enemies to the State threaten my life, me an Englishman living in my own country surrounded by my own country folk?
Yet my own country folk are now my enemy for standing up for them, their children and their grandchildren and all because their pay masters do not like me speaking the truth - What does that make you?
Today its is me, but tomorrow it is you - No truer words to be said about the present age within British society that we are living in.
I could go on and on about this situation but enough for now as I will use my time to now tell everyone how I have ended up in this position, with the British police now arresting me on suspicion of stirring up Racial Hatred.
I did not wake up one morning and think I hate Moslems and start my blog, I do not have a racist disposition as this blog is not a race issue it is a Religious issue, I had my life threatened and this blog is the result.
I know that there are many people around the World who view my blog, that there are many bloggers and site owners who are also fighting the online Jihad to raise awareness of this global Islamic Holy War that has been declared against us that our governments are trying to pretend is not happening, and I ask for your help to raise awareness of my personal plight.
I do not want to go to prison for many years for standing up for my children and other childrens futures, it is an injustice within what is supposed to be a civilized democratic society and people need to know what is happening, that my government is now seeking to silence me from speaking the truth about the war that has been declared against us all.
Today it is me and my blog and tomorrow it is you and your blog.
Please help me get this message out there by raising the awareness of this injustice, then my State Sanctioned arrest will not be in vain.
Please keep coming back because this is all I will now be posting on - My life and my freedom now hangs in the balance after all.
In service of the King - Jesus - The Lion of the tribe of Judah
Lionheart"
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Year's Resolution...A Change in Strategy
In making my New Year's Reolutions this year, I decided to change tactics a bit. It seems to me that a lot of the reason most people fail at keeping New Year's resolutions is because they bite off more than they can chew, taking on huge projects, often more than one at a time, and trying to radically alter their lives at the snap of a finger. Let's take, for instance, my 2007 New Year's Resolutions, and see how I did:
2007 Resolution # 1.) Stretching- I actually didn't do too badly here. According to my records, I stretched almost daily for approximately 10 out of the 12 months of the year. Also in this same vein, on average, throughout the year, I worked out approximately 4-5 days a week for the entire year, with the exception of December, when I took the month off to rest my body a bit. If I can repeat or improve upon that kind of record every year, my fitness level should be fine.
2007 Resolution # 2.) Learning to Better Forgive Myself, Grieve Losses, Let Go, and Move Forward- I have done substantially better in this regard than I could have hoped when I posted about this subject last year. Unfortunately, I have lost four dear friends from my life (they didn't die, we just moved on, mutually) in the past year. I think those losses tested my ability to keep this resolution more than anything, and I'm pleased to say I performed really well. I took to heart the truism that almost everyone is in our lives for a reason and a season, and most of the time, these folks just move on. Life is funny that way sometimes. I thank God for the people they were to me in my life and the blessings they brought, I pray that I was a blessing to them during my time in their lives, and I pray nothing but the very best of things into their lives going forward. They (JH, AP, TR, and LM) enriched my life while they were a part of it, and now it's time that they become blessings to others and likewise for me.
2007 Resolution # 3.) Getting off the Bench and Learning About my Spiritual Gifts- This is the one where I have made some progress, but not as much as I would like. For one thing, this is a lifelong journey, not something that can be done in a month or a year. I am happy to report, however, that I have finally found a church of which I am happy to be a member. That church is Bethel World Outreach Center in Nashville, TN. I think finding a home church is a substantial step in my spiritual growth, and I pray that this place helps me to learn more about my spiritual gifts and allows me to be a blessing to others locally and around the world.
SO, my change of strategy this year is this: I am going to have 12 New Year's Resolutions, one per month for each month. I hope to be able to incorporate these changes into my daily life, transforming it into the vision of what I want my life to be...serving God, healthy, and happy. For January, my resolution is to stop drinking soda pop, especially diet drinks. Regular sodas can make you fat, and diet sodas have chemicals that can kill you. I plan to be around a while as a servant of God and as a family man, so the soda's got to go.
2007 Resolution # 1.) Stretching- I actually didn't do too badly here. According to my records, I stretched almost daily for approximately 10 out of the 12 months of the year. Also in this same vein, on average, throughout the year, I worked out approximately 4-5 days a week for the entire year, with the exception of December, when I took the month off to rest my body a bit. If I can repeat or improve upon that kind of record every year, my fitness level should be fine.
2007 Resolution # 2.) Learning to Better Forgive Myself, Grieve Losses, Let Go, and Move Forward- I have done substantially better in this regard than I could have hoped when I posted about this subject last year. Unfortunately, I have lost four dear friends from my life (they didn't die, we just moved on, mutually) in the past year. I think those losses tested my ability to keep this resolution more than anything, and I'm pleased to say I performed really well. I took to heart the truism that almost everyone is in our lives for a reason and a season, and most of the time, these folks just move on. Life is funny that way sometimes. I thank God for the people they were to me in my life and the blessings they brought, I pray that I was a blessing to them during my time in their lives, and I pray nothing but the very best of things into their lives going forward. They (JH, AP, TR, and LM) enriched my life while they were a part of it, and now it's time that they become blessings to others and likewise for me.
2007 Resolution # 3.) Getting off the Bench and Learning About my Spiritual Gifts- This is the one where I have made some progress, but not as much as I would like. For one thing, this is a lifelong journey, not something that can be done in a month or a year. I am happy to report, however, that I have finally found a church of which I am happy to be a member. That church is Bethel World Outreach Center in Nashville, TN. I think finding a home church is a substantial step in my spiritual growth, and I pray that this place helps me to learn more about my spiritual gifts and allows me to be a blessing to others locally and around the world.
SO, my change of strategy this year is this: I am going to have 12 New Year's Resolutions, one per month for each month. I hope to be able to incorporate these changes into my daily life, transforming it into the vision of what I want my life to be...serving God, healthy, and happy. For January, my resolution is to stop drinking soda pop, especially diet drinks. Regular sodas can make you fat, and diet sodas have chemicals that can kill you. I plan to be around a while as a servant of God and as a family man, so the soda's got to go.
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