Miss Kelly

The "Stimulus" Bill Needs to Die

The Anchoress says it so perfectly, I simply have to crib all her words (and hyperlinks):

Stimulus” bill needs to die…

I’m tied up with a project, but since you don’t have to waste three minutes reading me today, do take two of them and call your representative and let him or her know how you feel about this absurdly pork-filled “stimulus” package, which is approaching almost 900 BILLION dollars.

The package does not seem to create many jobs at all - but it does keep shoveling money at the people who waste it while producing nothing and creating few jobs.

Tell them you’re not buying into the propaganda. Tell them we want a stimulus bill that will actually stimulate the economy, not simply lard up or entrench their favorite social programs. Worthy as some of them may be…they will not create jobs.

Find your rep in Malkin’s list and make a call.

What she said!  Call your reps every single day, keep calling and writing.  This attempted coup of our capitalist, market-based economy and its replacement with Euro-style socialism is not unstoppable!

Aisha and Namal Explain Gaza

This is pretty funny, from the United Kingdom of Infidels:

American Presidents 1 to 44

Morphing from the first American president to the fourty-fourth, accompanied by Ravel's Bolero.  Pretty cool.  Thanks, Boston Maggie!

An Idea That Needs to Catch Fire: Taxpayer March on Washington

This idea needs to catch on big-time and super-fast. From dapera:

"Many months into the disastrous financial crisis, I am still waiting for the people of the US to get really mad at their representatives in Congress who share a great deal of the blame for this mess What started with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act as a way to help some low income families to buy a home soon got blown totally out of shape by members of Congress through several Administrations. It morphed to where it could help almost anybody with a pulse to buy a home whether they were financially qualified or not. No down, low down, interest only, adjustable loans were made assuming that the value of the real estate purchased would only increase in value."

"...Taxpayers are now being forced to foot the bill to the tune of Trillions of dollars to try and fix Congress’s mistakes. If you have been paying attention to the news, you probably have heard that the first $350,000,000,000 that was used to “bail-out” the financial industry, hasn’t accomplished much and much of it hasn’t been used by these financial institutions for the purposes put forward by our wonderful government. As usually, our government’s cure for every problem is to throw more and more TAXPAYER money at the problem..."

"People…. Get mad,,,,,, get angry,,,, get involved!!! They survival of this country may depend on citizen action to regain control of our out-of-control government!!!!"

"Anybody want to join me for a taxpayer march on Washington???"

Yes, I do!  Who's gonna set it up? I'll be there!

This pork-laden Pelosi-Obama-Reid Trillion Dollar Debt Plan needs to be torpedoed.  Don't throw good money  after bad.  Stop spending taxpayers dollars in a futile attempt to stimulate the market.  Lower taxes, cut spending, and the market will right itself.   Contact your congressmen today and keep calling them!

Tommy Dorsey's Song of india

I've had this song written by Rimsky-Korsakov on my brain lately.  Here's the Tommy Dorsey version. Very WWII big band swing-y, it entirely lacks the yearning and melancholy of the original version though. 

These are the lyrics of Song of India:

And still the snowy Himalayas rise
In ancient majesty before our eyes,
Beyond the plains, above the pines,
While through the ever, never changing land
As silently as any native band
That moves at night, the Ganges Shines

Then I hear the song that only India can sing,
Softer than the plumage on a black raven's wing;

The Evocative President Bush, Alone

Time Magazine has a surprisingly good video collage of photos of President Bush taken over eight years by two Times photographers, Brooks Kraft and Christopher Morris.  You can see the images here.  Sissie's excellent commentary here.   Small Dead Animals has a good thread going about the photos.  My favorite comment, from Fritz:

"The biggest failing of George Bush was his communications strategy. I believe he thought that if he did things according to his principles and behaved with integrity that his actions would be self-evident to all. His experience as Governor of Texas and being the son of a president in the late 80's did not prepare him for how biased the media had become. Judging by the mediocre people (Scott McClellan) he put in the communications post he obviously did not take the task seriously and this hurt him tremendously using up his electoral capital very quickly."

"Clinton, even with a friendly media, had a team of attack dog spokespeople like Carville who did not let any slight go unchallenged. Clinton ran a perpetual election campaign. George Bush shunned this as beneath him. Unfortunately when 95% of the media is attacking you 24 hours a day about anything and everything you need a powerful response."

"Bush just seemed resigned to negative media coverage so why bother? The reason he should care is that he eventually lost the public relations battle and his approval ratings tanked. This meant Republican Senators and Congressman did not want to tarnish themselves by being public Bush supporters. This made it almost impossible for him to push any vital program."

Yeah, Bush's famous "turn the other cheek" attitude did not help him or our country.  

Photographer Kraft said, "There was always something about him alone that was evocative of him as a major historical figure."

Review of "The 10 Big Lies About America"

A review of Michael Medved's new book, The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions about Our Nation.  What are the 10 Big Lies?

1. "America was founded on genocide against Native Americans."

2. "The United States is uniquely guilty for the crime of slavery and based its wealth on stolen African labor."

3. "The Founders intended a secular, not a Christian nation."

4. "America has always been a multicultural society, strengthened by diversity"

5. "The power of Big Business hurts the country and oppresses the people"

6. "Government programs offer the only remedy for economic downturns and poverty"

7. "America is an imperialist nation and a constant threat to world peace."

8. "The two-party system is broken, and we urgently need a viable third party."

9. "A war on the middle class means less comfort and opportunity for the average American."

10. "America is in the midst of an irreversible moral decline."

The review at Front Page Magazine briefly refutes the 10 Big Lies.  Looks like an excellent book, perhaps a good gift for your middle school and high school kids.  Young people need an antidote to the public school "education" that probably is teaching them the 10 Big Lies right now.

Our New President

Spengler analyzes POTUS 44:

"Inauguration day brings to mind the reason I don't read science fiction. It's never weird enough. Today, America will place more power than any peacetime president ever has wielded into the hands of a man nobody knows. He has convinced more incompatible constituencies that he takes their side than any politician in American history. And through no fault or merit of his own, he has stumbled into more power than the White House has had since World War II."

"...I have never met the man, but I have interviewed a fair sampling of his supporters, and conclude that Obama learned the power to cloud men's minds, like the Shadow on the old radio show. Apart from ambition, there is no 'there' there. There are as many Obamas as there are interlocutors. He is a hollow man, I concluded, a Third World anthropologist studying us with engaged curiosity but complete emotional detachment. In this respect he is unpredictable."

And from Gerald Warner of the UK Telegraph:

"This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming. What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence - la trahison des clercs - in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right."

"...It is frightening to think there is a real possibility that the entire world economy could go into complete meltdown and famine kill millions.....It is questionable whether the present political system can survive the coming crisis. Whatever the solution, teenage swooning sentimentality over a celebrity cult has no part in it. The most powerful nation on earth is confronting its worst economic crisis under the leadership of its most extremely liberal politician, who has virtually no experience of federal politics. That is not an opportunity but a catastrophe."

All is not doom and gloom for David Horowitz though, who appreciates the symbolism - if not the politics - of our new president:

"First we have to recognize and then understand that whatever happens in the Obama presidency, this Inauguration Day is a watershed moment in the history of America and a remarkable event in the history of nations, and thus a cause for all of us who love this country, conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican, to celebrate."

Pray the Holy Hours for Life - Choose Life not Death!

How timely.  Around the state on Wednesday January 21, hundreds of Catholic churches in Masschusetts (thousands across the country) are holding a Holy Hours for Life, an hour of prayer and eucharistic adoration, praying in solidarity with thousands of pilgrims going to Washington, DC for the annual March for Life.  Most service are being held at 7:30 PM.

President Bush has been a staunch pro-life advocate:

"In one of his final actions in the White House, President Bush on Thursday declared Jan. 18 to be 'National Sanctity of Human Life Day'.”

“ 'All human life is a gift from our creator that is sacred, unique and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world,' reads the presidential proclamation."

“...'The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent.... The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women... History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.' ”

Meanwhile, our next president Obama is poised to "act quickly to reverse controversial Bush administration abortion policy."  Unlike President Bush, Obama has been a staunch supporter of abortion and has vowed to remove any state restrictions on abortion.  Say good-bye to the Culture of Life. We'll be experiencing more of the Culture of Death for the next four years.  

Child sacrifice is a key indicator of a degraded and pagan culture.  Pray for a change in peoples' hearts on this one.

Roxbury Mosque Raises Funds for Gaza - or Hamas?

The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) and the Muslim American Society are holding a fundraiser dinner on Saturday, January 17 at the ISB Cultural Center (aka the Roxbury mosque).  The ISB/MAS co-organized several anti-Israel protests around Boston last week, aligning itself with radical Marxist organizations such as A.N.S.W.E.R.  This weekend, it's a fundraising dinner for Gaza sponsored by the Islamic Relief USA.  More info here.  The speakers include Abed Ayoub and Yousef Abdullah, CEO and Operations Manager, respectively, of Islamic Relief. 

So is the ISB raising money for Hamas?

Boston's own Citizens for Peace and Tolerance issued a press release earlier this week that examined the links between the Islamic Relief Worldwide and Hamas and with the Muslim Brotherhood:

Dennis Hale, President of the Boston based Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT) - an interfaith group of Christians, Muslims and Jews - warned today that an upcoming Muslim American Society of Boston (MAS Boston) fundraising event advertised to donors as humanitarian aid to Gaza may instead channel funds to the terror group, Hamas.
 
"The January 17th fundraiser is collecting money for the Gaza operations of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), a group previously accused of transferring funds to Hamas," Hale said.
 
Hamas is an Islamic supremacist organization that belongs to the Palestine branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is considered to be the origin for most of the modern jihad movements. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and uses terrorism and murder to achieve its goals. It is an openly genocidal organization that has explicitly and continuously called for the murder of all Jews worldwide. The founding charter of Hamas proclaims that peace will come to Earth only when all the Jews are killed:
 

" ... as long as Islam does not take its rightful place on the world arena everything will continue to change for the worst...The Last Hour [redemption] won't come until the Muslims fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them..."

 
"Virtually the entire civilized world, from Barack Obama to the government of Egypt, agrees that Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce terrorism against Israeli civilians is the root cause of the horrible violence in Gaza and Israel," said Hale. "For the Muslim American Society to raise funds for a Hamas-linked charity in the heart of Boston is an affront to the traditions of liberty and tolerance on which this city was built. "

Upcoming Lecture - "Inspiring a Whole-Hearted Faith in a Half-Hearted Age"

Noted Catholic layman, author and lecturer Gil Bailie is back to continue the Emmaus Road Initiative lecture series at S. Peter's Church in Cambridge, MA.

Date:  Monday, January 19, 7 to 9 PM.  Lecture topic:  Why did it take the Incarnation to save us?

"Emmaus Road in Cambridge.   In a collaborative effort, St. Paul’s, St, Peter’s and St John the Evangelist join together to host a series of monthly workshops over the next year called The Emmaus Road Initiative, Inspiring a Wholehearted Faith in a Halfhearted Age."

"Drawing on the theological tradition for which Benedict XVI is today’s preeminent exponent as well as on René Girard’s extraordinary insights into the anthropological and cultural uniqueness of Christianity, the Emmaus Road Initiative is an effort to bring 'the truly most exciting part of Christian faith' to bear on the challenges facing the Christian vocation in our time."

If you need some post-Christmas inspiration and want to hear provocative, challenging ideas, come to Gil Bailie's lecture at St. Peter's next Monday. 

Jussi Björling Sings "Song of India"

Apropos of nothing, here's Swedish tenor Jussi Björling singing "Song of India" from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Sadko.

I suppose this is considered to be a schmaltzy song, but I find its quite moving and evocative.  Makes me yearn for something, I don't know what.  As Wiki says about Jussi's voice: "his beautiful timbre and soft tone - always with a sublime kernel of melancholy." Roger that.

"An American will not lie, even for little things "

I enjoy reading about America and Americans from people who are from other cultures.  This interview with a Kuwaiti scientist who studied at Boston University has all sorts of strange tidbits, ranging from praise for the Mujahideen in Gaza to scorn for Arab leaders.  And there's this:

"Q: From your experience do you think there is greater scientific awareness among the general public in America than here?"

"A: Not all of them are scientists or economists in America. They are very ordinary people. Most of them don’t know about their own country. But you don’t need to be scientists. But I see Islamic values of honesty in them. We are honest too, but it’s a way of life there. An American will not lie, even for little things. There is no such as a white lie. A lie is a lie. This advancement of America does not come from a void. It is born out of the sheer dedication of people, who worked not just for money but for the sake of the nation’s prosperity."

I like that observation that we do not lie.  It may be an Islamic value, as the doctor says, but in this country, it clearly derives from our country's Judeo-Christian foundation. I t's the 8th Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.  I can only conclude from the declaration that honesty is a way of life in the U.S. that the opposite must be true in Kuwait, where dishonesty must be commonplace and unremarkable.

"Agnus Dei, Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi, Miserere Nobis..."

I was pleasantly surprised at my church a few weeks back when the cantor chanted the Agnus Dei after the eucharistic bread was consecrated.  Chanting Latin in a "normal" Post Vatican II Novus Ordo mass?!   But there is was, all reverent and sacred and stark:

"Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccati mundi, dona nobis pacem."

Which translates as "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.  Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace."  Gregorian chant is simultaneously pure, simple and transcendent.  It takes you to a sacred place, unlike much of the sing-song responses and modern "hymns" we're singing these days. Sigh.

Told Ya So! LeT Terrorist Group Raises $$$ in U.S.

For over two years, I've been following the relatives of Lashkar e Toiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, three of who were imans at Massachusetts mosques.   Saeed's brother-in-law Sheikh Hafiz Abdul Hannan is still the imam at the Islamic Society of Greater Lowell. Lately Brother Hannan has been branching out to a mosque in Manchester, New Hampshire.  Watch out, neighbors to the north! I've raised the question several times in the past: "Have these folks (Masood, Hamid or Abdul Hannan) been raising money for LeT in mosques in Massachusetts?"  Looks like they have, according to an article today in the Times of India:

"For all the protestations that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a charitable organisation and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is an injured innocent, it's clear that the organisation and Saeed's family, in particular, have been in the crosshairs of US government for several years and a couple of Saeed's family members are already in US custody."

"As the Lashkar-e-Taiba grew in stature, profile and links to violent terrorism in Pakistan, curiously, its amir Saeed's family kept making tracks to the US to live and work there over the past decade.

"Over the years, LeT aka Jamaat-ud-Dawa has morphed from an ISI-sponsored terror outfit against India to become a global jihadist organisation with increasing ties to Al Qaeda."

"...Saeed's family had been making determined tracks to the US -- to live there as imams and preach and raise funds for jihad."

Salah Soltan Calls for US Destruction (Again)

Salah Soltan was the person who initially got me interested in keeping an eye on what different Islamic groups were doing in the Boston area.  Dr. Soltan was the featured speaker at an Al Huda Society (of Revere) fund-raising dinner back in October 2005. (The dinner was held at the Irish American Club of Medford, MA of all the unlikely places.  Faith and begorah!!)  Dr. Soltan was also an invited lecturer at the Islamic Society of Boston prior to the Al Huda event. 

I did some online research on Dr. Soltan, who lived in Columbus OH at the time, and what I found was disturbing: He supported suicide bombing, wanted to see Israel destroyed, counseled an American women to accept that her husband took a second wife, counseled another American women that she can't leave the house without her husband's permission.  Yowzaa.  Solomonia did additional research and published his findings here.   I was dumbfounded that the Islamic Society of Boston and Al Huda would invite a man who held these beliefs.  I thought back then, "If this is moderate Islam," we're in for trouble."  And so we are.

Patrick Poole of Central Ohioans Against Terror has done a terrific job of tracking Dr. Soltan, and you can read about Soltan's latest diatribes against the US at Pajamas Media here.  A few of Soltan's latest quotable quotes, made last week on Egytian TV:

"America, which gave [Israel] everything it needed in these battles, will suffer economic stagnation, ruin, destruction, and crime, which will surpass what is happening in Gaza. One of these days, the U.S. will suffer more deaths than all those killed in this third Gaza holocaust. This will happen soon."

Paradigm Shift Underway for Global Warming Hooey

Every day I come across another article that shows that unquestioning acceptance of global warming hysteria  is fading fast.  Even the lefties are starting to reject Al Gore's exaggerations (and bad science) about man-made global warming and the ridiculous notion that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.  Hooray!!  I've recently come across three articles on that score, first from Telegraph U.K.:

"Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming."

"....First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare....Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a 'scientific consensus' in favour of man-made global warming collapsed."

The Huffington Post published an op-ed that was scathing towards Al Gore and his global warming scare:

"Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that 'the science is in.'  Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind."

"...Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as 'flat-Earthers.' This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.  Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers."