Facebook Joke

Wow. There's a group on Facebook that is petitioning Facebook to remove the "hate group" which is praying inappropriately.

The original joke on FB went like this: Dear Lord, this year you took my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze and you took my favorite actress, Farah Fawcett. Please know my favorite politician is the president.

(I am paraphrasing because I don't care enough to look it up).

So ... in bad taste? Yes. Funny? Yes.

All I can say is that the 300,000 people who have joined the protest group must be exhausted after the last 8 years of protesting plays portraying the assasination of George Bush, T-shirt-wearing protesters with his face and a bulls' eye and too many paper mache Bush/Hitler heads for me to count.

And, of course, we only have to go back 12 years or so to remember the lovely moment when Alec Baldwin called for the populace to storm Henry Hyde's house.

I spent 8 years hearing that dissent was the highest form of patriotism. And now the entire media (and about 300,000 people on FB) act like those who are against the POLICIES of President Obama are one Glenn Beck monologue away from losing it and blowing up a building. It's dissent when the left does it and "dangerously violent" when it's the right?

Please. Get a life. Then get a sense of humor. And then grow a pair.

Old Trumpet Article

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

My relationship with the phone has been long and troubled.

I grew up in a home with five kids and – yes, believe it or not kids today – not only one phone line, but only one phone. Weird, but when the phone rang, you knew exactly where it was because it was connected to the wall. And it was so heavy Alfred Hitchcock was able to use a similar model as a murder weapon in Dail M for Murder.

My sisters and I all arrived at dating age at the same time. We had a mother that was ABSOLUTELY scrupulous in her unwillingness to tell a lie. So, in other words, you didn’t dare say:

If so and so calls, I’m not home.

If so and so calls, tell him I’m dead.

If John Yenny calls, I’M HERE!

So, it was not unusual for the phone to ring and all three girls run out the front door. From the front yard we would hear my mother say “no, I’m sorry she’s not here.”

On a good day, she would tell you who the call was for. As in: “Theresa, that was for you.”

No matter how good the day, you hardly ever heard who it was that had called. If it was a guy on the other end of the phone, no message was taken, since we girls were not allowed to return the call, anyway.

So all my life, when the phone rang, I have either bolted out the front door or dived for the phone in the ridiculous hope that it was either John Yenny or Ed McMahon.

But now I have reached a point memorable than turning 30, more life-changing than turning 40 and more life ****** than the prospect of turning 50.

When the phone rings I completely ignore it.

I have gotten to the point where I have given up on Ed McMahon and anyone worthwhile leaves a message. Now that I think about it, even those of no worth leave a message. Does the DNC, RNC and the carpet cleaning company REALLY think I listen to those recordings?

The phone is never for either of my teenagers, so there is no need to answer the phone to find out who is in their lives. The teenagers have cell phones and my only involvement with the telephone aspect of their lives is paying the bill. I had the illusion that I would actually study the bills and see who they were calling and vice versa. Doesn’t happen. My perusal of the bills is limited to who stayed within their minutes and who downloaded the AC/DC ringtone.

The phone is occasionally for one of the little guys. I hear them on the phone grunting for several minutes. They hang up.

I ask: Who was it?

They answer: No one.

What did you talk about, I ask.

They answer: Nothing.

Short of getting out a harsh light and rubber *** I’m not sure how much more involved the law allows me, as a parent, to be.

Watch, listen and enjoy

The two young ladies on the right are 6 years old. The two in the middle are 7 and the one on the left is 8 . Unbelievable.

John Stossel

I finally found the John Stossel special on Libertarianism on YouTube. This is part 2 of 5 and is brilliant. Libertarian thinkers explain how is was government, not the free market or capitalism, that caused our recent financial melt down. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57hcqsD_btg&feature=related

Jack Flanagan's funeral

Just found this picture on one of my niece's Facebook page. Taken by Ronda when we were all toasting my dad.

Our Finest Hour

Our Finest Hour [Mark Steyn]

Ever since this health care "debate" got going, I've worried that American conservatives underestimate the ability of Big Government to transform the character of a people. After all, the Euro-weenies weren't always Euro-weenies - else how would they have conquered the entire planet? Readers who think I'm just a mopey downer loser (as not a few do) might prefer this alternative take from Hillsdale's Paul Rahe. While "agreeing with almost every word" of mine, he has an entirely different conclusion:

We are not yet a people apt to acquiesce in dictates handed down by our lords and masters. When Britain and Canada drifted into socialism, there were no tea parties spontaneously formed by ordinary citizens to buck the trend. The British and the Canadians lacked the spirit of resistance – though, to be fair, it lived on in the likes of Margaret Thatcher.

We Americans are made of sterner stuff. During the Cold War, we defended the Free World. In our absence, I am convinced, everyone else would have given way...

In my view, [Barack Obama] and today’s Democratic Party represent the last gasp of the Progressive impulse. The tyrannical ambition hidden at the heart of Progressivism’s quest for what Franklin Delano Roosevelt termed “rational administration” Barack Obama has made manifest; and to all with eyes to see, the danger that we have temporized with for nearly a century is now perfectly visible... What is required in what he calls “this defining moment” is what Abraham Lincoln once called “a new birth of freedom.” The period we just entered could be our finest hour.