Democrats: Short Memories - Long Wind

I was reading a story on Drudge about Hillary Clinton and what she had to say about her vote for the war. I read that the Senator from New York said "I take responsibility for my vote". For a split second a thought came into my head that I never thought was possible - maybe Hillary Clinton is going to do the right thing.

Frankly, I was scared. My entire world had turned upside down. Black was white, up was down, right was left (which means wrong). Dogs and cats were living together and it wasn't pretty. The scene in my head was one of myself and Hillary Clinton running toward each other in slow motion on a grassy, daisy spotted hill. Only, instead of there being beautiful music playing I was hearing the theme from Jaws. Very disturbing.

Mercifully, the world turned back to normal when I read the rest of her quote: "and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the president and his administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war". So, really it was just her using the old standby "Bush Lied".

It is amazing that Democrats are able to get away with this lame excuse for a criticism of the President. This whining would make sense if it weren't for one small detail. These same people were privy to the exact same evidence that the President had and they voted for the war.

What could have been going on that would make these otherwise dove-ish legislators vote for a war that they would later call unjust? How about an election? No doubt about it, at the time talking tough was good for their electability. But there is one inescapable truth that guaranteed that they would change their minds. The fact is that war is really hard. It is hard on the soldiers (duh), it is hard on the families at home, it is hard for the populace to stay solid (especially when the only update that they ever hear is "5 US soldiers were killed today"), and it is very hard for politicians.

This rhetoric may be dangerous to our soldiers and it will certainly undermine our ability to fight this war, but it sure will get them some votes. Sleep well tonight Senator.

Jessica Simpson's Marriage

You will find absolutely no information about Jessica Simpson's marriage at this blog. For this, you should be thankful.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Noodle Spined Repubs Making Me Sick

Well, here we go. The President is seeing some low polling numbers and it has scared the Republican controlled Senate. But have no fear for our conservative leadership has a plan. This plan is really a two step plan. Step 1: Bend Over. Step 2: Grab Ankles. This plan is becoming quite familiar. It was the same plan we used when the minority party (that means they have less votes so they aren't supposed to be the ones in control) decided to push a filibuster down the throats of the American citizenry.

First things first let us take a step back and realize the poll numbers go up and poll numbers go down. Leadership, however, is supposed to remain solid. I guess I should let you know what has me so riled. It is Senator Frist's sponsorship of a resolution demanding a plan from President Bush on how we are going to finish up the war. Maybe in the meantime he can send a memo to our enemies letting them know where we plan to pull out first so that they can leave that place alone for now until we are gone.

Well, I am going to go to bed, stare at the ceiling and just be ticked off at the lack of backbone that has been shown this week.

Mr. President, keep up the good work and don't let the sissified among us get you down.

Also, check out Blogs for Bush on Bush's speech from last week.

What's In a Name?

For some reason, within the last couple of days or so an interesting topic has come up in front of either myself or my wife. The subject is regarding whether or not children should be allowed to call adults by their first name. I will let you know right off the bat that our children are not allowed to call adults by their first name. A very popular option in our church is to have the children call the adults by their first name, but put a "Mr." or "Miss" in front of it. Frankly, my wife and I are not really into this either. We have found through a couple of conversations that other adults actually have a problem with the fact that our children are required to call adults by their last names.

I am not really sure when it became the norm for children to call adults by their first name. My parents were not what you would call strict, but still, calling an adult by their first name (with the exception of some really close family friends) is very foreign to me. I didn't really realize it was a big deal until Lisa and I started to work with 3 and 4 year olds at church. Lisa and I always refer to ourselves using our last names. "Hey everybody, Mrs. Green is going to lead us in a rousing chorus of 'Jesus Loves Me'". It was obvious from the start that we were in the minority on this issue. It doesn't bother me that I am in the minority. I wish I could tell you that it doesn't bother me when I hear a child call an adult by their first name but it does. It really does.

This whole business of children being put on an equal plane with adults is one that liberals have been trying to push for a long time. To a liberal, there is no difference between an adult and a child. Children's opinions and thoughts are as valid as any adult's. This does not wash with common sense, with tradition or with the Bible. Liberals do all that they can to promote the idea that children are simply little people. This is done by trying to lower the voting age, by lowering the age at which they become sexual and lowering the age at which their parents have control over them. Actually this last point has more to do with lowering the age that government has more control of them so that the State will control them for the rest of their lives but hey, let's not split hairs.

The apex of liberal's fascination with treating children as adults came during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. During the convention the Democrats paraded a 12 year old girl out on the stage. This young girl was given the opportunity, and one must assume encouraged, to give a scathing diatribe against the President and Vice-President and to openly show disrespect, not only to an adult but to the President of the United States of America.

If my child spoke this way to any adult they would certainly know the "wrath of Dad", but in today's society seeing a child speak this way to an adult is taken very well. If the child is 2-6 years old it is seen as cute. If the child is 7-12 it is seen as the child "learning to think on their own". Anywhere between 13 and 18 and the child is just trying to "find out who they really are".

You may be wondering why I think this is so important. The reason is because if you go into the average school today and ask the teacher if they can tell which kids in their class are the Christian kids based on how they treat their teacher I am positive you would be told that they cannot. More than likely the best they would be able to do is point out a few Mormon kids who show them the respect they deserve. I know this to be the case - I have asked teachers this exact question. I have spent a considerable amount of time around Christian teenagers and seen their disrespect towards adults. I know this to be the case.

Why is this happening? Because we are not teaching our children that there is a difference between children and adults. I will bet that most of the people who read this post now have a lower opinion of me for even suggesting that maybe, just maybe a child's thoughts on a particular subject are not as important as my thoughts. Why is what I have to say more important? Because I am an adult. I have had more experience in life. I have had time to develop a better awareness of how this world works. There are people who come to our house that are appalled to find out that we do not allow children to take their drinks out of our kitchen, but that we have no problem with an adult doing the same thing. People actually ask me how I explain this discrepancy to our children. The answer is simple, we are adults they are children. We have greater faith that an adult will not spill her drink. It is amazing how this makes perfect sense to the child, but not to the parent.

This post is dragging on a bit so I will wrap up with my thoughts on why children should refer to adults using their last name.

1. Children are supposed to refer to adults by their last name.

2. It makes it harder to make them mind. This probably doesn't matter to a lot of people, but it's a big deal to me. We, as adults, are given the charge of teaching these young ones how they are to act in the world. This is harder to do when they just think of you as someone who is on equal footing with them.

3. A rite of passage is lost. I will never forget when I was in college and I was told by a man I respect that I should call him by his first name. He had been a coach at my High-School. I called him "Coach Wolfe" and he told me to call him "Mike". I couldn't do it, but man what a way to let a boy know that he is truly a man.

4. Children are supposed to refer to adults by their last name.


5. You are setting them up for a better respect for God. It would be easy to overstate this one but I really do believe that instilling a sense of respect for adults in children sets them up to have a better respect for God. One time I was praying with a group of people. It was really more of a deal where we were sitting around giving some praises to God. Something happened that struck me. One of the guys actually said the sentence "God, you are the man". We as Christians really have developed a severe lack of respect for the righteous and holy God of the universe. I believe that some of this, but not all, is attributable to our lack of respect for our elders.

President Bush Comes Out Swinging

Finally, President Bush has responded to critics of the war. This speech was nothing short of a breath of fresh air for me. It is amazing that he has had the patience to sit back for this long. If you haven't heard what he said, you can watch the video here. I am proud of our President. I am sick of hearing his detractors lie about what happened while we were deciding whether or not to go to war with Iraq. And, I would like to say that I fully, 100% and completely support the war in Iraq. Knowing what I now know about weapons of mass destruction, I still think that we are safer because of the war in Iraq.

Of course you can always count on the libs to be whiners when reality is fed to them with a spoon. Here are some of the comments that were made by the libs.

Instead of providing open and honest answers about how we will achieve success in Iraq and allow our troops to begin to come home, the president reverted to
the same manipulation of facts to justify a war we never should have ought.

--Edward Kennedy D-Mass.

Senator Kennedy, this is a very interesting comment considering what you said in 2002. Let me help you remember

We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction. --2002

and

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be
tolerated. He must be disarmed --2002

Senator Kennedy's words are an example of someone talking tough to get elected. However, his tough talk will not help our troops whose morale he is killing with his dissention. Senator Kennedy, it is time for you to go away now.

Then there was our old friend Harry Reid.

The president may think this matter can be swept under the rug or pardoned away, but Democrats know America can do better

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. I'm not really going to comment on what he said because I think that it is funny enough on its own, but I did want to post it because he really is a funny little man.

I am disappointed with our good friend Rick Santorum's lack of support.

Certainly, mistakes were made

-- Rick Santorum


Brilliant Senator, just brilliant. Now sit back down in your armchair where you can continue with your quarterbacking.

Again, I want to say that I think this speech was awesome. It had to feel great.

Obscene Oil Profits

OK, now it is time for me to take any chance that I ever had of making people like me and throw it down the drain. I have been asked to blog about the record profits that oil companies are having this year. This is a touchy subject to people, but I will say that my thoughts are that companies (especially publicly traded companies) are in business to make money. If they are not doing something inethical (making lots and lots of money doesn't count) then I say let them do their job.

The fact is that I cannot say it as well as Walter Williams, so I will simply refer you to the man himself and let you read what he said about Windfall Profits.

Scooter Who?

If there is anything you can count on it is one piece of news making yesterday's big headlines today's snore-fest. Oh well, I'm glad at this point that the big thing is my new biggest hero, Samuel Alito. The Washington Times claims that the confirmation process is going to be Armageddon. I hope so. As I said in my last post I can't wait for the debate to get started.

Also, as K said on his post "Alito for SCOTUS", please call your Senator and let him/her know that we want a fair and quick hearing. Let them know that dropping the f-bomb (filibuster) is not acceptable. A simple email will do a world of good. Also, give them a call. They count the calls and each call makes a huge impact. If you don't feel good about actually talking to someone then wait until the evening to give them a call and leave a quick message on the answering machine. Remember, you don't have to be eloquent - this is a numbers game. If you just call and mumble something about supporting Alito then you have done your patriotic duty. Let's get those phone ringing!!