Archive for October, 2010

Bob Maistros

So just last week I was bloviating to my neighbor that the Yankees and Phillies were mortal locks to face off in the World Series.  I didn’t even know why they bothered with the preliminary playoff rounds.

Oops.

Yes, each team has just closed its respective league’s championship series to within a game.  But to reach the Fall (these days, sometimes Early Winter) Classic, each will have to win two more contests after having fallen into a cavernous three-games-to-one hole.  There are two chances both will make it to the Series:  Slim and None.  And Slim just caught the bus to Arlington, Texas by way of San Fran.

Red, white and blue -- or yella?

As they say, that’s why they play the games.  You still have to win your way in to the finals.

Notate bene, my Republican friends.

Oh.  You thought you would just waltz back into power in the House by hanging in a neutral corner while the voters rained their fury on Barack Obama?  You believed those brash predictions that a wave of animus toward health care and historic mega-spending would sweep in enough candidates to retake control of the Senate?

Dream on.

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Just days after the news that the Crystal Cathedral, home of so-called prosperity gospel preacher Robert Schuller, has filed bankruptcy, North Star Writers Group releases a new novel that features a remarkably similar preacher and institution.

Pharmakeia, written by North Star National editor in chief Dan Calabrese, follows his 2009 spiritual thriller Powers and Principalities, and is similarly set in Royal Oak, Michigan.

Like its predecessor, Pharmakeia explores the lives of three life-long friends and Royal Oak residents who find themselves grappling with disturbing spiritual insight. This new story finds one of the main characters receiving bizarre and frightening warnings in dreams about violent events affecting young people in the community. The three friends’ investigation leads them to the fictional Royal Oak Cathedral, which is struggling financially as Schuller-like prosperity gospel preacher Will Camus seeks personal fame at the expense of the church’s financial stability.

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Brett Noel

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Dan Calabrese

I see the TV spots, and you probably see them too. It’s a parade of senior citizens, addressing the Republican candidate for Congress in their district, exclaiming “How dare you?” and “Shame on you!” for supposedly wanting to privatize Social Security.

“Social Security is a trust!”

“I depend on Social Security to get by!”

“If you don’t believe in Social Security, then how can we believe in you?”

Watch it, sonny!

And on and on and on it goes. The Democrats don’t appear to have much hope, but if they have any, they appear to think that this is their best hope. The proposition is pretty straightforward: Democrats will guarantee your Social Security. Republicans will put it at risk. Vote Democrat.

And by offering such a proposition, Democrats reveal something about the way they perceive risk. To them, the only thing that imperils Social Security is the meanness of certain Republican politicians who would dare change it from what it is today – a birthright guaranteed by government forever and ever and ever, world without end, amen. It’s a perfectly simple world in which there is one dichotomy at work: A Democrat will vote to give you Social Security, therefore you will get Social Security. A Republican will vote to take it away, therefore you will lose it.

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Bob Maistros

NEWS ITEM:  U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips orders an immediate injunction preventing the government from enforcing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) law that prohibits openly homosexual individuals from serving in the military.  The government asks for a stay pending an appeal.

Bringing a whole new meaning to military "readiness."

(Sung to the tune of “Tea for Two,” with apologies to Vincent Millie Youmans and Irving Caesar)

Picture now how it will be
You’re free to do and due to see.
The judge has said DADT
Is done.

We’re all in positions to make propositions
There aren’t many borders in milit’ry quarters.
Judge P thinks it’s fine now;
You can ogle my behind, now.

Day will break and we’ll awake
To hourly sensitiv’ty breaks
While disc’pline takes the furthest of back seats, ooh.

We will have a milit’ry
Well hailed for its diversity.
Who cares if we can beat the enemy?

Dacia Nichol

I’m not sure if Bob Woodward did us a favor by confirming what we already knew about “Obama’s Wars”, or if the reality would have been better left to the pundits to ponder over upon seeing today’s news.  What news?  Didn’t you hear?  They’re baaaaack!

Commitment issues.

The Taliban that is.

According to reports published in the Wall Street Journal, the Taliban are taking some decent ground in northern Afghanistan while our troops are surging south and east.  General Petraeus has assured that the southern-eastern surges are necessary and are in fact advancing our goals there, so I’m not questioning why the north was even able to have parts retaken in the light of priorities.  I am questioning whether this could be the result of a commitment problem from the top.  As in the Commander-in-Chief at the top.

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Bob Maistros

So, as most regular readers of these postings could probably figure out, I’m a passionate guy.

I’m passionate about my wife of 32 years and our six kids, all of whom we have so far kept out of jail and off the public dole.  I’m passionate about my faith and especially apologetics.

A traffic engineer.

I’m passionate about the English language and its proper usage.  I’m passionate about some hapless baseball team that plays near the shores of Lake Erie, and about a certain college football team that plays some offense (but no defense) in a really Big House in southeastern Michigan.

Policy-wise, I’m passionate about the preservation of the family as the root of all virtue, and as you know if you read my series last week, fixing government, starting with the Fair Tax.

But one passion keeps rising front and center to the point where it has become a near obsession.

Ladies and gentlemen; friends, Americans, countrymen (and women); brothers and sisters:  we must stop the stoplight.

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Dan Calabrese

It’s getting to the point where parody is just too easy. And it’s too old and too obvious to say the media has a left-wing bias. Of course it does. But when you see a piece – presented in all seriousness – like this one from Jim Abrams of the Associated Press – you have to wonder how and when the people who report on federal governance became so completely divorced from reality.

All propaganda.

The headline sounds like something they would come up with on Saturday Night Live: “A productive Congress gets no respect.” You’d read it in search of the punchline if you didn’t know the AP so well. Seriously. They really mean this.

Abrams holds forth:

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Brett Noel

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Gregory D. Lee

If Nancy Pelosi approached and offered to pay you $250 to vote for a Democrat on November 2, would you take the money?

That’s what she and her fellow Democrats are attempting to do after the mid-term elections. They are to schedule a vote to give a one-time $250 payment to all current Social Security recipients. She is pushing the proposal since, for the second year in a row, the Social Security Administration will not be providing a cost of living increase due to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Shameless.

If there is no measurable inflation, or possible deflation, how can Congress justify borrowing another $14 billion to give away to retirees? Because of the way the CPI calculates inflation, in the third quarter of 2008 Social Security recipients received an unjustified and unprecedented 5.8 percent raise. The fluke calculations came when gasoline was selling at $4 a gallon. But it dropped rapidly after the cutoff date for the CPI survey. The following year, inflation was flat, as it is this year.

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