American Girl Follow-up

I just got off the phone with an executive from American Girl.  My daughter's letter will be read to the president of the company sometime in the next few weeks.  I appreciate that.

The executive was very kind and she listened patiently to me.  I appreciate that, too.

Her point of view was one of tolerance and inclusivity.

You and I have been worried about the effects of this "tolerance and inclusivity" for decades.  But, I never would have guessed that our tolerance for the Muslim religion would result in radical terrorists all over the world.  I never would have imagined that being inclusive to people from other countries would result in 4 cases of Ebola on American soil.

Our worst fears AND WORSE have been realized due to our political correctness.

I understand that the American Girl catalog does not fit in to the world narrative of war and pestilence.

However, while she was talking, I realized that she had received many phone calls and emails from people who wanted "Christmas" to be taken out of the catalog.

And, it was.

And, my precious American Girl cried because she was, inexplicably, excluded in the process of tolerance and inclusivity.

I realized that some of the blame for this predicament may fall right at our Christian, kitten-heeled feet.

How many times have you LOVINGLY complained that Christmas wasn't mentioned at a store?  How many letters have you written?  How many calls have you made?

Maybe if American Girl, and society at large, heard our gentle reproach (nobody likes a militant Christian, not even me) about tolerantly excluding 90% of the population that celebrates Christmas, there would be a change.

Here is our call to action.  Please write a letter to American Girl in Midddleton, Wisconsin.  Write it to the attention of: Corporate Service Communications.  You can also email American Girl or call the corporate office.

Let this be the first step in taking back Christmas.  Let your loving voices be heard.

Don't waste your vote on a third party candidate

Please!  I mean it.  This election is too important.  When you are in that booth and it is just you and God in there, no one will ever know your vote.  Alison Lundergan Grimes has proved that, you never have to tell who you voted for.

So, please, push the big "R."

My daughters had to go to my local Republican meeting with me recently.  My 10-year-old read or something, her political activist career hadn't begun yet.  But, my 13-year-old must have been paying attention.

On our way out she said, "Sheesh, that could have been a Democrat meeting!"

I said, "What do you mean?"

She huffed, "The way they were ripping apart all of the Republicans they could have been liberals!"

And, she is right.

As Republicans, we are very informed, engaged and opinionated.  That is good.  We don't fall in line behind our party blindly.  We read, we listen and we have very strong opinions on lots of issues.

Democrats, by contrast, rely on low-information voters.  They hear cool tag-lines like "hope" and "change" and vote for democrats.  Even though Republicans are selling awesome things like personal responsibility and freedom, liberals make all of their campaign slogans sound like, "We love puppies, we love trees and we want everyone to get free stuff and be happy!"

No one gets a puppy, tree or is happy.  Liberals just keep on pumping out the "free stuff" and have lifelong voters.  And, loyal democrats dutifully fall in line with the party no matter who is in power.  If Hillary supporters hadn't dutifully set down their signs and immediately switched over to Obama, this disastrous president wouldn't have been able to do so much damage to this country.

Wouldn't that have been great?

Now, back to Republicans, listen up, I want to talk to you.  I know that the candidates aren't conservative enough for you.

YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR THEM ANYWAY.  Whatever we get will be exponentially better than having democrats in control.

Think about that for a second.

......

Mitt Romney wasn't conservative enough.  So, you stayed home.  You ordered from that cool pizza place down the street and caught up on Game of Thrones on Hulu.

How did that work out?

Is that pizza place still in business?  The cost of groceries has tripled, the price of gas has been doubled for the past 6 years.  (Thankfully, we are getting a brief reprieve from that right now.)  Health insurance premiums have doubled and you can't even use your insurance.  You have a deductible of about $6,000.

Don't vote for a third party candidate.  Please.  Vote for the Republican.  It will work out better than not voting.

A vote for a democrat or NOT VOTING for a Republican because he or she is not conservative enough IS A VOTE FOR OBAMA AND HIS DISASTROUS POLICIES THAT HAVE:

-raised taxes
-increased regulations
-increased the size and scope of government which has allowed:
   -the failure of the VA
   -the NSA spying on all of is
   -the IRS using its power to torture political opponents of the president
   -the retreat from Iraq that has caused the rise of ISIS, exactly as Geroge W. bush said would happen
   -the incompetency that has caused us to completely leave our southern border open and
   -the negligence that has led to not one but two cases of Ebola in the United States.

Don't waste your vote on a third party candidate, no matter how informed you are, please.  Vote for Republicans, even if they aren't conservative enough for you. It will work out better in the end.

Ok?

Liberals vs Muslims

I am starting to see a situation in which liberals, who staunchly defend the rights of Islamic terrorists as "freedom fighters" with "legitimate grievances" are going to have some really big problems with the Muslim religion.  It might happen pretty soon.  This religion, which they bend over backwards to accommodate doesn't line up very well with liberal philosophies.

Liberals consider themselves champions of all women.  Muslims beat, stone, and mutilate women.  How can liberals keep defending this?

Liberals have placed animals above all life, including human, for decades.  Muslims (I just found out yesterday by reading one of our articles) don't like dogs.  How will elite liberals feel when they can't carry Schoompsie-poo in her Gucci bag to democratic fundraisers?

Liberals have been shoving the LGBT agenda down our throats for years now.  Muslims punish homosexuality by death.

Liberals aren't really crazy about religion.  They have pushed to removed all references to God and the Bible from public places for decades, even though our country was founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic.  In Islam, not being a believer is punishable by death.  They do give that choice convert OR die, which is so nice.  But, still.

The only thing keeping Muslims from killing women, homosexuals and beloved pets right now is the armed Christian standing between them.

Shouldn't all Americans, on both sides of the aisle, be against violence toward women?  Shouldn't we all protect our domesticated American pets?  Shouldn't we all be ready to physically defend our gay friends and neighbors?  Shouldn't we all be protecting the religious liberties granted under the first amendment?

I think so.

Don't you?

Ok, help me out here

 I am just a simple Republican and I can't keep track of all the liberal flip-flopping.  My belief system doesn't change based in who is currently in the Oval Office.

See, I haven't changed my position on illegal aliens.  I still believe that it is, like, illegal.  But, Harry Reid has.  He was against amnesty for illegal aliens when George W. Bush was in office.  He is all for it now that Obama is in office.

Senator Obama called raising the debt ceiling "unpatriotic" when George W. bush was in office and was against deficit spending.  But, PRESIDENT Obama has no problem recklessly spending us into the ground.

Sheesh, where is that watchdog media when you need them?

I mean, if a Republican changes their favorite postage stamp, they will report on it, call him or her a flip-flopper.  They would start wearing flip-flops to press briefings in 6 inches of snow.

I am just saying, you would know about it.

But liberal flip-flopping is swept under the proverbial rug, which is starting to look a little bit like the Rockies.

Take the election that is coming up in two weeks.  Liberal democrats who are in danger of losing their senate seats can't seem to run far enough or fast enough away from their patron saint, Obama.

Liberal democrats, who have blocked the Keystone pipeline, crushed the coal industry, and are against fracking, are pulling out their guns and Carhartts and, well, acting like Republicans.

You know, Republicans who are for the Keystone pipeline, for coal and for fracking.

The problem is those liberal democrats, who are in danger of never being re-admitted to the congressional lounge, voted FOR Obama's energy and job killing
policies.  In most cases, they voted with Obama 95-97% of the time.

Inexplicably, Obama made sure that voters know who they are voting for in those key senate races.  He said that even though he isn't on the ballot, his policies are.

Sheesh, thanks.

But, that is ok.  This is where liberal lying and that Rocky Mountain carpet come in so handy.  Obama, in an interview with the totally politically neutral Al Sharpton, ace reporter, oh and advisor to the White House, said to democrats desperately clinging to their Capitol Hill lanyards, "You do what you need to do to win. I will be responsible for making sure that our voters turn out."  Because, the record doesn't lie and even Obama has to admit, in the same interview, "The bottom line is, though, these are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in congress."

If Republicans can't pull this one out, God help us all.

Desperate Dems...

...Will do anything to hold on to the senate.  Some say that all is fair in politics.  The problem with that is both sides don't play by the same rules.  Unfortunately, Republicans do lie sometimes.  But, when they are caught, the other Republicans help in getting the liar out of office.

Democrats lie as par for the course.  When they are caught, everyone falls in the party line and supports both the lie and the liar.  When all else fails, they just shrug and go, "Oops!"  There are never any repercussions.

If a Republican did something like this (see below) the media would report on it 24/7 in a continuous cycle.  Why aren't they reporting on this?

This is from the Washington Free Beacon:

* "Just a week after Sen. Kay Hagan (D., N.C.) recommended a North Carolina judge to President Barack Obama for a seat in the U.S. District Court, the judge ruled in favor of a company partially owned by Hagan’s husband. The senator’s husband, Charles T. ‘Chip’ Hagan, was a managing member of Hydrodyne Industries LLC when it sued a regional water authority for drawing water out of a river that had one of its hydroelectric dams built on…. Superior Court Judge Calvin E. Murphy ruled the case in favor of Hydrodyne … Murphy’s ruling was made on Oct. 23, 2009, just nine days after Sen. Hagan sent his name to Obama to be nominated for a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for Western North Carolina. Hagan withdrew her recommendation to Obama after North Carolina’s News and Record contacted her office about the apparent conflict of interest, telling the paper that she “was not aware that Judge Murphy was hearing a case in which my husband had an interest.””

Please, the case and the judge hearing it would have been just about the only topic of discussion around the Hagan dinner table.  How can this level of corruption be allowed in American politics?  Is it all just because the mainstream media agrees with liberal policies?  What the heck happened to objectivity?

So, do the democrats fess up?  No way, they double down.  This is from the Washington Examiner:

* “This year’s North Carolina Senate race is shaping up to be one of America’s first $100 million Senate races. By the time Nov. 4 rolls around, money spent or committed to the race between Democratic U.S. Sen Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis is supposed to top $103 million, according to analysis by the Charlotte Observer. Three-quarters of the money comes from both party and interest groups, while more than $22 million comes from groups that don’t disclose their donors, known as ‘dark money’ groups. Hagan’s campaign has spent $19.6 million, being backed by $35 million from outside groups. Tillis’ campaign has spent only $6 million, but outside groups have sent more than $42 million his way.”

This is distressing.  We all need to know about it and tell it to other people.

* Washington Free Beacon and Washington Examiner quotes excerpted from "Fox News First" by Christ Stirewalt

First World Problems

I took the kids and my mom to Niagara Falls this past summer.  I was checking out in the gift shop and struggling to hold my purchases while cramming my wallet in my over-stuffed purse.

I apologized to the young man, of indeterminate ancestry, who had checked me out, for holding up the line.  He quipped, in perfect English, "That is a first world problem."

Sensing a kindred spirit, I immediately responded, "Only someone who knows how bad the third world is would say that," all thoughts of the line behind me now gone.

His mother was in fact from the third world, which is why he was raised here, speaks the King's English and works in the Niagara Falls gift shop.

I have come to realize, through one of my liberal cousins, that the "first world problem" line is actually AN INSULT to the first world.

Ok.

People die trying to get here.  People put their children on planes, alone, in the hopes that they will make it here to be swaddled in first world problems.  People claw their way across the desert to be encumbered with first world problems.

So, I have decided to relish all of my first world problems.  Every time that I prop up my hobbit slippers on my leather barco lounger to watch the news, I thank God that I don't have to carry water for 3 miles each way.  (I can walk six miles if I feel like it, but I don't HAVE to, if I don't want to.)

I am thankful every time that I turn on the water to brush my teeth, make dinner, wash the dishes or the laundry.

I am thankful that I have a dog (frowned upon in third world countries) and that I have to go pick up her allergy medicine today.  Poor puppy.

I am thankful that I have to go BACK to NTB to have them fix the tire that they fixed last week on our second car.

I am thankful for a few of the thousand or so channels that I get on several televisions.

And, I am thankful that I can worship the way that I want.

All first world problems.  The first world rocks and if we don't start defending it, we are going to lose it because I am starting to think that liberals (please see my previously published works) want to send us back to the dark ages.

Is the state responsible for the well-being of its citizens?

This question, posed by a reader on my blog, actually keep me up last night.

It wasn't the answer that kept me up, that is an emphatic "NO!"  But, rather what kept me from a good night's sleep was the pervasiveness of this seemingly innocuous argument.

I mean, it sounds fabulous at cocktail parties, right?

"Ah, dahling, the state should be responsible for the well being of its citizens.  Pass me the caviar..."

It reminds me a lot of "let them eat cake."  Of course, the upper class, which pays a small percentage of their income to the state, feels no negative effects from the state.  They pass laws that don't pertain to them, pay taxes out of their abundance to keep the government going and don't really care much about the cost of food, gas, heating bills, clothes or anything.

Like Nancy Pelosi.

However, the poor have to pay a much larger percentage, or even everything that they have to the state and are then slaves to the state.  They get only the amount of what is left that is rationed to them by the government.  Instead of being free to work hard, take what they earn and spend it on anything they want, the government takes it and gives it to other people.

So, while things are going well at the cocktail party, a wild-eyed redneck with a shotgun yelling, "Stay off my land!" doesn't go over nearly as well.  But that freedom fighter is exactly who built this country.  This republic was settled and built by people who wanted to be free from government tyranny.

It is hard to figure out how this country full of immigrants who came here to work hard and live free FROM the state has succumbed to the argument that the state can and should take care of them.

Last Thanksgiving I helped one of my cousins with his college economics homework.  (We got an A.)  He was being taught to factor in the economic costs and benefits of government in all of his calculations.  I couldn't believe it!

In economics, I was taught the free market.  (I got an A.) Government isn't the solution, it is the problem.  Government doesn't make, it just takes and re-distributes.  The elite class gives a little and doesn't notice.  The low class, which is all that is left, there is no middle, has nothing, it all belongs to the state.

Sadly, the socialist model, which is exactly what I am describing, has been tried throughout the world for centuries and it always collapses when the government runs out of other people's money and goes bankrupt.

(Yes, foreign readers, America is headed in that direction, which is why I am so upset.)

Here are just a few of the examples where socialism/communism/liberal progressivism/call it what you want has been tried and failed.

In the Bible, the new church tried out socialism.  Everyone took what they had and gave it to the church and everyone had enough.  Until, Ananias and Sapphira came along.  They sold some land and gave part of the money to the church.  They kept some for themselves, which is fine.  But, they lied and said that they had given everything.  They were both struck down dead.  (Look it up, it is in Acts.)

The Pilgrims tried communism.  Did you know that?  In the new world, the land belonged to everyone.  Everyone worked and everyone shared the harvest.  It didn't take long for a Pilgrim to figure out that if he stayed in the dirt-floor cabin, propped those buckle-y shoes on a milk urn and watched the sheep stroll by on the big screen picture window, he would get the same amount of food.

So, people stopped showing up at work!  Yeah!

Then, they divided up the land.  When the land was privately owned and you ate what you grew, guess what happened?  They worked their buckle-y shoes off to grow food.

Remember the USSR?  The government took everything and then distributed to everyone the portion that the government decided each person deserved.  People were starving.  Even now, socialist countries all over Europe are scratching their heads as they watch their governments go bankrupt.

Socialism sounds great!  But, it doesn't work anywhere.  We all used to agree on this.  It used to be something that we all fought against.  Remember the book by Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time?

(My daughter wanted me to point this out and please watch the comments, she can, like, read you know.)

In it, the greatest evil was a place where they lulled you to sleep, made you stop thinking and made you act like everyone else.  If you didn't, you were taken away and "re-programmed."  We are introduced to the world in the book by a description of a street where all of the houses are exactly the same.  All of the children bounce the balls in exactly the same way.  They all come inside exactly when they are told and the one boy who doesn't bounce properly is taken away.

Frighteningly, that doesn't sound too dissimilar from where we are headed right now.  We all are being forced to comply with a very narrow liberal worldview.  We are being programmed to stop thinking that government is the problem.  We are being told that government is the solution.

After Obamacare, the IRS, the NSA, Ebola and ISIS, do you really believe that?

We are being told that "you didn't build that" business.  We are being turned toward class and race warfare.  Hillary Clinton just said that businesses aren't job creators.

Once we all stop thinking and working hard, then we all turn to the government to fill all of our needs and willingly let the government take over - where exactly will we be?