Off the net for a bit.   Time for the annual League-Holland Reunion. 

The descendants of Robert Malvina Holland League and Commodore Butler League gather in Simpsonsville, SC. 

Robert, aka Grandmother Bobby, was a lady born in 1862 and named Robert in honor of her uncle who was killed at the  Battle of Seven Pines. 

She had 51 grandchildren = 1st cousins.  I am the next generation below that – probably 125 or so 3rd cousins. 

The League and Holland families moved from Amelia County, VA to Greenville County, SC when it was frontier in the 1760s.   Other direct family names for me on this my mother’s side include Cox, Yeargin, Henderson, and the inevitable – Smith.

Interesting times at this end of life looking back over 50 years to these gatherings and our People.    Interesting looking ahead at what my grandchildren will experience in family – and what they will think about it.

From the AP (June 22, 2009) at Newsmax.com.  “PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy lashed out Monday at the practice of wearing the Muslim burqa, insisting the full-body religious gown is a sign of the “debasement” of women and that it won’t be welcome in France.   

The French leader expressed support for a recent call by dozens of legislators to create a parliamentary commission to study a small but growing trend of wearing the full-body garment in France.

 In the first presidential address in 136 years to a joint session of France’s two houses of parliament, Sarkozy laid out his support for a ban even before the panel has been approved — braving critics who fear the issue is a marginal one and could stigmatize Muslims in France.”

Will the French enact a law banning the body bag dress?  Stigmatize Muslims?    That’s a joke.  The pressure will be on in the Muslim community against women who don’t want to wear the Halloween costume. 

 ”France enacted a law in 2004 banning the Islamic headscarf and other conspicuous religious symbols from public schools, sparking fierce debate at home and abroad. France has Western Europe’s largest Muslim population, an estimated 5 million people.”  Muslims are 25% of the French under the age of 25.  That means in another 25 years they will be well over 50% of the youth -if birth rates stay the same. 

 This is a first step to require more assimilation of the Muslims into the 21st Century civilization and culture that is France.    It’s important because menacingly, a “French Muslim group warned against studying the burqa.”

Who will overplay their hand first?  Muslims in riots?  Or, French police if they go beyond just ticketing the women wearing burqas. 

If Sarkozy has another two and half years in office, how long before this commission can report out and the parliament make a law?  Will the EU strike down the law? 

Hope the French are up for what they are getting into now.  Hope they understand the urgency of their actions – as well as the immediacy.   And, where it can go from here.

Got the notice yesterday from the Virginia Corporation Commission that BowdenHouse Inc. became a legal corporation on June 12th, 2009.

BowdenHouse Inc.  will sell James Atticus Bowden – first.  My labor, not me.   My oldest daughter may have a product to sell one of these days.  I may complete  the radio production I am working on – and BowdenHouse may produce that and pay the actors, pay for facilities, etc. – if it can. 

And, BowdenHouse will be the corporate name that accepts anything the Lord sends my way – where I can see it, get off my butt, and do my part to make it happen.

Why am I doing this?

A local guy who I’ve chatted politics at the 7-11 (coffee every a.m.), read my stuff at www.americancivilization.net  – and encouraged me. 

He said the same thing Rush Limbaugh has said,  “Why don’t you do what you love?”   I read and write for my day job, now.   But, there are other things I would rather read and write about.  So, I’ll sell my time in labor to do that – if I can.

I’m 58 years old.  Just had a nuke stress test – preventive medicine given my family’s DNA – and it came back “normal.”   So much better than the Abbie Normal from the movie Young Frankenstein.  Despite the economy.  Inspite of any Constitutional crisis which could come to a head soon or later under the One, B. Hussein Obama I.   Not knowing how long I’ll live or what cometh tomorrow.  I see opportunities.    I see hope.   Not BHO’s hope – but my political slogan – Dignity, Justice, Hope – the way I mean it.

I can’t find the word ‘retirement’ in the Bible.  We were made to work.  I’ve been earning wages since I was 15.  I been on my own financially since I was 17.   Put in 8 hours of outside work today in the sun.  I hope to work – not for pay – but in the Community of Christ until the day I die.   We’ll see where else I have to labor until then – or get to work is the better way to put it. 

I have too many things to do each day.  That includes quiet time reading the Bible and focused prayer (in addition to the prayer without ceasing).  Includes family time.  Includes watching the setting sun turn clouds into the Andrew Wyeth pink, orange and red.  Includes laughing whenever I can.  Includes still being up for a good fight – worth fighting.  So many more things I’d like to do. 

Lord, let whatever I get to do be submissive to Your Will.   And, guide my work in the vineyards, sewing tents, and hauling the fishing nets – my thoughts, words, and deeds – to be in Your Will. 

Until You call me home to my work there - had a dream about that!

The A-’name follows’ fellow in charge of Iran rules with the blessing of the mullahs.  The High Priests of Iranian Shiite Muslims are the power behind the president, king, peacock, you name it, talking to the crowds and visiting around the world as the head of state.   It looks like he cheated in the last election.  Oh, my, what a shock.

The A-named guy is a devout Muslim ‘end timer’ guy who talks about hurrying the end of the world - bringing out the hidden iman – by nuking Israel.  The M-’name follows’guy who may move a revolution in the streets of the Iran is another Shiite Muslim.   The M-named guy may wait on Allah to unleash the hell on Jews in Israel and Christians in Europe (the joke is on the Iranians with so few Christians in Europe – just millions of empty, cowardly Socialist Human Secularists) with the brand new nukes on missiles A-named guy is building.   Moreover, M’s opposition to A doesn’t make A the equal to Patrick Henry.  Opposition to A doesn’t mean M will be liberal (in the classical sense), Western, democratic, free market, or pro hip hop. 

We have no clue what a M victory means – if there is another Iranian Revolution.  Our cultures are farther apart than the Visigoths who sacked Rome were – to the Romans in the West. 

In the late 80’s a classic, iconic photo showed an Iranian woman wailing at the grave of her last son.  Her husband and all six or so of her sons had been killed fighting Iraq.  The caption of the photo said something about war weariness in the lament of a woman who had lost all of the men of her family.  Actually, she was lamenting that she had run out of sons to give and get killed.  Not quite the reaction of the farm Mom in Saving Private Ryan.  Not quite the same understanding of life and the world we live in. 

Culture commands.  Yes, all humans are the same in our humanity.  Yes, all spirits are the same in the love the one, only, true, living God has in His Grace to be close to each immortal human spirit  inj a personal relationship.  But, culture gives us world views, weltanschauung, that makes us so different in our understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, how to live life, how to worship, how to die, etc.   We speak almost as aliens one to another when our cultures are 800 years of civilizing experiences and learning apart. 

America has no clue what a M-name follows victory means.  None. 

We had such concrete assumptions about Iran until 1979 and the Ayotallah wiped them out.  What seemed steel in the Shah wasn’t even straw before the passion of the religious peasants.  A classmate of mine has an incredible story of his escape from way down country – teaching Iranians to fly Army helicopters – that would make a good book and a great movie.  His story shows how fragile – and totally wrong – so many of our American assumptions were.  

Cheers for any fair reader’s desire that foreign elections should be fair, open and honest.  Have a cookie on me.   Iran isn’t Iowa.  No comparison fits.  Iran might be like the Isle of Wight, England in 1215.   If you know chapter and verse of what that means in weltanschauung then, perhaps, you can understand – and share with us all – what a M win means or an A win. 

Then, explain the genius of B. Hussein Obama’s go slow, or no go, on missile defense in Europe against the Iranian, or Pakistani, Muslim missiles that will come a screaming into Europe someday.   Please.

I heard about the proposed legislation for more Federal Government oversight of financial institutions.  

The details make all the difference between a bad bill and a terrible bill.   The bill begins as a bad bill, because the Federal Government can’t prevent all future economic bubbles and calamities.   It especially won’t prevent problems like the current one – since the Feds are a major factor in creating the housing bubble. 

I’d love to know the details on what powers are missing today.   Then, look to see how those powers can be corrupted.  As they will be.

Finally, what is that makes any0ne think the government – legislative or executive branch – has the right people to guide financial institutions.  If they were that good, they would be working in the financial institutions – making a lot more money than any bureaucrat. 

The government shouldn’t run banks, or trains, or airplanes, or medicine, or car companies.  The government is barely competent to run wars – which is truly their expertise. 

Follow the money if the legislation becomes law  – and see how BHO and his Chicago thug brand of politicos profit.

B. Hussein Obama is a study of human incompetence compounded by superhuman arrogance.  Or, maybe it’s the incompetence that is the exponent to the arrogance.  The illustration is Iran this week. 

BHO had the talent, focus, skills, intelligence, etc. to get elected POTUS.  So did Jimmy Carter.  Carter did a county by county analysis (3,000 counties) of voting patterns to figure out what issues where would get him elected.  And, in the cosmic clowning sense of serendipity that “timing is everything”,  Carter ran against the guy who followed Nixon, pardoned Nixon, and was clueless on the economy.

Likewise, BHO’s  skin color showed that he was half-black which struck many chords in many longing, emotional hearts.  He ran against a guy who was clueless on the economy at the precise point of a major economic bubble burst.

But, getting elected doesn’t make him competent.  Or, wise. 

A bad case of arrogance and chip on his shoulder about his personal hierarchy of evil multiply the problems of not knowing how to govern. 

B. Hussein Obama gave a speech on the moral equivalency of the West – especially America – to backward, relatively barbarian cvilizations and identities tied to a pathetic evil excuse of a religion.  He expected, it seems, his words would transform the Middle East towards PC Liberalism.  Instantly.  It would include political dialogue. 

What happened was Iran demonstrated, as the world watches and listens on the internet, was that naked power allows the pretense of Western elections and the Rule of Law only when it props up the welders of raw power. 

It reminded me of the lovely liberals in my grad schools.  Good hearted people who wanted to do good works in the confines of their world view.  High energy people who may have traveled, but learned nothing.  People who don’t understand how much hate is in the world – and how power rules ruthlessly everywhere outside the bubble in time and space that is Western Civilization.  And even how much power rules within the West when Liberal and Socialist Human Secularists inevitably turn to dictatorial powers and totalitarianism to bend men to their rule.

BHP is equally as clueless on what to do – and not to do to avoid a war – with North Korea. 

He’s as off as Jimmy Carter – who wants Hamas to be the government of a Palestinian state.  Yes, don’t call the Hamas terrorists – “terrorists” – call them, “government.”

Son-in-law is back from the sandbox.  Home for a year. 

Three grandbabies and oldest daughter out of my house for awhile.  The quiet will be deafening.   Happy for every moment they all get together for the next year.

God is good.  All the time.  No matter what.

Praise the Lord Jesus.

Today is the birthday of the United States Army.  Since 1775.  Soldiers in the field over year before the Declaration of Independence. 

The Army carried the country on its bayonets for 8 years to 1783.  The Continental Line closed the deal – made their proof as a professional army in the assault on the redoubt at Yorktown.   It sealed the fate of the British Army there. 

The Army created the Nation.  Since then, the Army serves as the Nation’s servant.  The Army is the senior service. 

As Bob Dobson, one of my best students from West Point wrote today, “Born of need, needed still. Volunteers then, volunteers now. My hat is off and my heart is open to all who have filled its Ranks these two hundred and thirty four years.”  Including you, Bob, and your service in Operation Desert Storm.     

The United States Army is best Army in the world today.  Yet, it remains the humble servant as America’s Army.               ‘

The Fruits of Socialism

Please pay close attention to the two blue lines.  These are the official predictions of B. Hussein Obama and his government.  These lines were the reason why Congress was supposed to support printing money (see yesterday’s post) and passing the stimulus.  To fix the economy.   To save and create jobs. 

Except, look at the red dots.  Connect them.   Congress did what BHO demanded.   And unemployment is going up.

What went wrong with their predictions and promises? 

First, socialism – the spending of more money by government kills more private sector jobs than it creates in government jobs.   Let’s say that again.   A few people get new government jobs.  Many people lose their private sector jobs – or businesses. 

So, unemployment is getting worse because of the statist socialist policies BHO pushed.  Or, it’s getting worse because BHO didn’t know his policies would do what any competent economist could predict – he is just incompetent. 

A young man playing president.  Auditioning as an deity before the MSM and all the Liberal Human Secularists, their lackeys and the losers who – let’s say, charitably,  are less gifted in wisdom than they could be.  And destroying the economy.   Because BHO is a socialist or a boob or both.   It doesn’t matter.  The deeds are done. 

BHO assumes dictatorial powers because no one in the Federal Government and The People won’t stop him.  Practices for tyranny if the time comes.  Meanwhile real folks lose their jobs.  Many more will before – and if – enough Constitutional Republicans are elected to fix government and return the economy to the rightful owners – The People.

 

The steeply rising line on the right means too many dollars chasing too few goods and services.  It means inflation is coming.  It means robbing the poor, the seniors on fixed incomes, cheating the middle class of getting ahead – and destroying everyone’s savings.   Its as sinful as shameful because it is theft.  It is government theft, because of government monetary policies. 

It started with Bush at the end of his time, but it wholly belongs to B. Hussein Obama.  BHO could do everything to reverse the line pointing up to pain – across America.  But, actually BHO is going to make it worse.  He is going to print more money for healthcare.

Whether BHO and his administration are cunning for their stampede to socialist or supremely incompetent doesn’t matter.  The theft of capital, personal wealth, through inflation is shameful and sinful.  It’s theft.  It’s an assault which will cause real pain in families.

Yet, the fix is the responsibility of the soveriegn.  Every individual citizen of the United States of America. 

Find Constitutional Republicans who vote against this, speak against this, never contribute to this (earmarks, pork spending, unConstitutionally sound spending, size of spending, etc.) and help fix it with tax cuts, less spending and reducing the size of the federal government.   Get their names by September 2009.  Raise money for them.  Get them elected in 2010.