Friday, September 13, 2013
We Get By with a Little Help from "When Swing Was King"
It's been a tough week around here -- sad news, bad news, long hours, andanother week of coughing, as my Dad used to say, "my fool head off." But there were also several bright spots of fellowship that helped us immeasurably to stay above the week's circumstances. Like the Beatles, we do get by with a little help from our friends.
Sunday, for instance, we had lunch after church with Allen & Cindy Nelson. They have become very dear friends and it's always a delight and a profound encouragement to be with them. The next day we enjoyed an early lunch at Le Peeps with Tom and Lila Sharman. Tom owns Tesco Studios where I recorded "Vital Signs" and "Vital Signs Weekend" for KGBI all those many years and we hadn't gotten together for a long time. That was great too. And there were my usual early morning coffee conversations at Panera's with Dick Wilson and John Malek (Tuesday) and Pat Osborne (Thursday).
And not at all to be overlooked are the uplifting friendships we enjoy with the residents and staff of the senior living facilities where we so joyfully present our "When Swing Was King" programs. This week we have already enjoyed five such presentations and another one will be taking place at Immanuel Courtyard this afternoon at 2 o'clock.
We absolutely revel in the friendships we've established over the last 3 years but we're always making new friends too. And both provide tremendous uplift and energy to Claire and I -- even when we're experiencing tough weeks like this one. For the whole of "WSWK" isn't the music, pictures and commentary (as neat as those things all are) nor is it even the memories and pleasure of the "sentimental journey" back to the resident's youth. No, it's also the very present experience of conversations, remembered stories told to an interested audience, handshakes and hugs, prayers together, practice of the social graces, laughter and sometimes tears.
We do give a bit with "When Swing Was King." It takes a lot of hours to create each volume and it takes a lot of hours to present 13 shows every month throughout the Omaha area and a bit beyond (Council Bluffs, Ft. Calhoun, Ashland). But what we give really can't be compared to what we get by presenting it. Thank you, Lord.
By the way, here's the songlist from this particular volume. (We have 23 different volumes -- each one with 12 songs, interesting notes, and 250-280 photos.)
1) Glenn Miller Orchestra: "In the Mood"
2) The Andrews Sisters (Backed by the Bob Crosby Orchestra):
"Begin the Beguine"
3) Tommy Dorsey Orchestra (Vocals by Frank Sinatra):
"This Love of Mine"
4) Sammy Davis, Jr: "What Kind of Fool Am I?"
5) Artie Shaw Orchestra (Vocals by Helen Forrest): "They Say"
6) Larry Clinton Orchestra: "Dodgin' the Dean"
7) Ella Fitzgerald: "Isn't It Romantic?"
8) Vaughn Monroe Orchestra: "Ballerina"
9) Harry James Orchestra: "You Made Me Love You"
10) Rosemary Clooney: "Hey, There"
11) Freddy Martin Orchestra: "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes"
12) Bob Crosby Orchestra (Vocals by Dave Street):
"I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen"
Sex-Selection Abortion Gets a Pass in the UK
Having been told the real reason for wanting a termination, one doctor instinctively replied “that’s not fair. It used to, yeah, it’s like the female infanticide, isn’t it?” Nonetheless, despite the doctor’s hesitation, he deemed the mother ‘too young for pregnancy’ on the form instead.
Another medic simply said, “I don’t ask questions. If you want a termination, you want a termination.”
(From Peter Smith's Mercator article, "Since when did abortion trump the rule of law?")
Wow. You would certainly guess these examples of lethal (and clearly illegal) discrimination would have sparked an outrage in the British public as well as government health and law enforcement officials.
Well…it didn't.
Indeed, the powers that be have not only decided to shut down any further investigations but even to avoid prosecuting the two cases that were publicized. The reason given? "Prosecuting could have a chilling effect on doctors carrying out lawful terminations."
This is so tragically typical in our post-Christian, post-rational era. Absolutely nothing can be allowed to interfere with the abortion industry lest it (gasp!) actually decrease the number of preborn kids being killed.
Unsafe, dirty conditions in abortion clinics? Uncaring, hurried, assembly line practices in the abortion mills? It's okay. Just don't think about it. Mega-abortion corporations like Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes found guilty of disdain for women, fraud, ripping off taxpayers, and other crimes? Ignore it. Pretend it's not really happening. Put your earphones on, turn up the volume, and kill some zombies on your smart phone. Do anything but acknowledge the horror represented by precious babies in their mother's wombs being scalded, poisoned, and cut up into pieces by greedy abortionists.
And, for the political powers in the UK, even when the evidence is clear that some of these babies are being destroyed simply because they are female, refuse to get involved. Let your fear of offending the Hindu community and, of course, the abortion zealotry of the left dictate your policies, rather than consider justice, the rule of law, or the sanctity of life.
Goodnight, civilization.
Benghazi: It's Been A Year and Still No Straight Answers
Secretary Clinton may not have wanted to speak to the accountability panel; strangely, it also refused to interview those who did desire to share their testimony. The State Department inspector general’s office announced in May that it would investigate why the review board had “failed to interview key witnesses who had asked to provide their accounts of the Benghazi attacks to the panel.” The decision to willfully ignore State Department employees who were volunteering information about the murder of an American ambassador suggests that the board began with a conclusion and avoided any possible contact with evidence that might contradict that conclusion.
Then there is the great mystery about why Stevens and his team were in that dangerous city to begin with…
There also remain the troubling questions about whether anything could have been done to save Stevens and his team that night. While testifying before Congress, Stevens’s deputy, Greg Hicks, said a security team at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli had been ordered to “stand down” — that is, ordered not to go to Benghazi to rescue U.S. personnel…
Finally, there is the issue of the laughably false explanation initially given to the American public surrounding the attack. White House press secretary Jay Carney has already been caught offering the bald-faced lie that the only changes to the “talking points” attributing the Benghazi attack to a protest over a YouTube video were “stylistic edits.” No one on the ground in Benghazi reported a protest, leaving no clear explanation of how it became the centerpiece of the administration’s storyline on the attacks. Unless, of course, the administration invented that explanation out of whole cloth.
The demonization of a nobody uploading videos onto YouTube, and his subsequent arrest on a parole violation, suggest a chilling cynicism at the highest levels of the Obama administration…
For its stunning blend of recklessness, fecklessness, callousness, and shamelessness, Benghazi overcomes steep competition to remain the worst of the Obama administration’s collection of scandals. The American people deserve to know what happened and why.
From "Benghazi, One Year Later" (The Editors of National Review)
More "Don't Miss" Articles
* "15 Journalists Have Joined Obama Administration" (John Nolte, Breitbart)
* "Obama Wants Your Sexual History" (Betsy McCaughey, Creator's Syndicate)
* "Keith Olbermann, Craig James and a Shocking Example of Double Standards" (Michael Brown, Town Hall)
* "Republicans introduce plan to stop Obamacare without shutting down government" (Patrick Howley, Daily Caller)
* "Christian Liberties, the Stepchild of Today's 1st Amendment" (David Limbaugh, Town Hall)
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Fox Fires Sportscaster: Christianity Wouldn't Play in Their Human Resources Department
As a former running back, Craig James (photo, upper left) isn't used to being on the defensive. But unfortunately, that's exactly where Fox Sports is putting him in a story that should rock the football world. The retired Pro-Bowler became the latest face of the war on religious liberty, when -- after one day on the job -- Fox Sports gave James the boot for his conservative views on marriage. And here's the kicker: he made the comments, not at the sports desk, but during last year's Senate campaign!
Apart from being a popular analyst, Craig also had political aspirations -- aspirations he followed to Texas in an unsuccessful bid against Ted Cruz during the primary. In the course of the campaign, Craig was asked -- as all candidates are -- about his views on marriage and sexuality. James's opinion happens to coincide with the research, which is that no one is born gay. And, as an orthodox Christian, he didn't shy away from the eternal consequences of this sin or any other. "...[T]hey are going to have to answer to the Lord for their actions," he said before pledging not to support same-sex unions.
According to Sports Illustrated, the regional affiliate of Fox hired Craig without involving upper management. "Fox Sports executives were not happy with the hire by the regional network," sources explain. High level executives felt he hadn't been properly vetted (or, properly excluded, depending on how you look at it). When the news broke, a Fox Sports spokesman tried to explain away the network's religious profiling. "We just asked ourselves how Craig's statements would play in our human resources department. He couldn't say those things here."
First off, Craig didn't say them there -- or anywhere in his commentating capacity. He stated his position as a candidate for public office -- in response to legitimate constituent questions. To suggest that having an opinion on cultural issues disqualifies you from breaking down football plays is outrageous -- especially when that opinion is shared by the majority of Americans! Is the grip of religious hostility so tight that Americans can't even have an open debate for fear it'll cost them their jobs?...
From the military to Fox Sports to city halls like San Antonio's, the overwhelming message seems to be that when it comes to the public arena, conservative Christians need not apply. Let the network know what a disappointment their political correctness is by contacting Fox Sports and protesting Craig James's dismissal.
My note to Fox? "Your firing of Craig James represents an ugly, irresponsible act of bigotry. I'm very disappointed that you would so pervert political correctness as to deny a person employment due to their acceptance of moral convictions based upon the Holy Scriptures -- convictions that have, by the way, been the hallmark of Western civilization for centuries."
The Obama Administration -- They Just Can't Help But Hinder
But now they are facing yet another attack on their economic productivity.
Over at NRO, Congressman Kevin McCarthy lays out the problem.
...The first blow to the industry can be found within the president’s premier legislative achievement, Obamacare. In particular, Obamacare’s employee-insurance-mandate threshold has already forced restaurants to make the illogical choice of restructuring their work forces and not expanding their offerings and service in fear of this costly and arbitrary threshold. This requires any restaurant that employs more than 50 full-time equivalent employees to provide health insurance to any employee working over 30 hours a week; thus leading to the 29-hour work week as the new normal for restaurant employees.
Now the federal government has its sights on the restaurant world once again. But this time, it is coming from the agency with a penchant for picking on particular constituencies — the IRS.
Beginning next year, the IRS has announced it will change the way it views tips received by restaurant servers. Specifically, for restaurants that have a minimum gratuity charge on large groups, the IRS will now count those tips as regular wages rather than traditional tips that we are all familiar with when we dine out. Ask any server and they will tell you that this will directly affect their day-to-day lifestyle. Servers make very little in regular wages and largely rely on tips to pay the bills and budget for weeks ahead. Taking portions of a shift’s pay and pushing it to their paycheck weeks away will only add to the uncertainty already inherent in the business.
And it isn’t just the servers that will be frustrated by the new classification. Restaurant owners will be faced with more paperwork and reporting requirements, and less time to focus on how to keep an often volatile and competitive business with tight margins running smoothly. Will this little-publicized rule cause restaurants to no longer accept large parties? Probably not. But it will most definitely cause indigestion to servers and restaurateurs alike.
The IRS’s decision to target hardworking Americans navigating a very competitive industry already filled with regulations and burdensome compliance measures is just the latest example of a tone-deaf administration. Across the country people are struggling, and instead of promoting ideas that will ease their day-to-day burden, this administration is incrementally making life a little bit more difficult than it was before.
Right now, we have the smallest percentage of Americans active in the work force since 1978. This trend is a recipe for continued economic malaise. And with this recent IRS regulation, I’m sure that hardworking folks in the restaurant industry are scratching their heads like I am and asking, why the beef with America’s waitresses and waiters?
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Obama's Syrian Waffle
To which Jim Geraghty of NRO added:
A lot of things "dissipate into the air like gas" with this administration. Benghazi. Fast & Furious. The IRS targeting the Tea Party. The Department of Justice collecting the phone records of the Associated Press. Attorney General Eric Holder's potential perjury. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius shaking down health-care companies for 'contributions' to promote Obamacare. The General Service administration's wasteful spending scandal. The demonization and incarceration of the guy who made the YouTube video, and the use of him as a scapegoat for Benghazi. The NSA's domestic-surveillance programs. Huma Abedin doing private-sector consulting work while working for Hillary Clinton at the State Department.
There's never any damn accountability with this bunch.
Why Approve the Keystone Pipeline Right Now? Here's 7 Reasons.
Or does our President, for other reasons, truly want to keep real jobs from being created? And why would he so actively resist America's winning independence from foreign oil?
Sean Hackbarth over at Free Enterprise, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce website, encourages readers to check out Merrill Matthews' USA Today column which explains the clear and overwhelming reasons why Barack Obama should approve the Keystone pipeline right now.
I encourage you to read it too; it's an excellent piece.
But in case you'd like a quick-hit version to pass along to others, Hackbarth provides that in his summation, "7 Facts about the Keystone XL Pipeline."
1) The phase awaiting President Obama’s approval is part of a larger pipeline network that has been safely transporting Canadian oil sands crude to the U.S. since 2010. The final section will run from Alberta to Nebraska linking oil to Gulf Coast refineries.
2) Construction of the final section of the pipeline “will disturb less land than the pipeline that has already been built.”
3) To satisfy environmental concerns, Keystone XL builder TransCanada, rerouted the pipeline around environmentally-sensitive parts of Nebraska.
4) Not only will Keystone XL transport Canadian oil sands crude but will also move 100,000 barrels a day of oil from North Dakota and Montana.
5) Keystone XL will help reduce the U.S. trade deficit by continuing the trend of declining oil imports.
6) Rail and other pipelines are being planned to move Canadian oil sands crude. Blocking Keystone XL will not stop this development.
I’ll add a #7. Both the State Department and IHS CERA conclude that Keystone XL will have a minimal impact on the environment.
Keystone XL will create jobs, help grow the economy, and improve energy security. President Obama should end the delay and approve the pipeline.
Planned Parenthood’s 3-Step Plan for Young Women
Among the revelations will be Planned Parenthood's carefully calculated schemes to establish long-term "customers" for its nefarious services:
Plan A: Provide poor quality, faulty birth control. In its February 2005 issue of Consumer Reports, the non-profit Consumers Union ranked two of Planned Parenthood’s condom lines the lowest out of all the brands that they tested.
Plan B: Encourage daily hormonal treatment. PP encourages young women to begin a daily regimen of hormonal birth control, and they placate fears about side effects by saying that modern hormonal contraceptives are safer than earlier iterations because they contain smaller amounts of hormones, even though there are still dangerous side effects like death. Should something go wrong though, they’ll then offer you those same hormones in massive doses (the “morning after pill” which can cause early abortions), claim it’s perfectly safe, and hope you won’t notice they’re contradicting themselves
Plan C: Offer deceptive counseling and biased information. If things didn’t go so well with the condoms and birth control, and pregnancy does occur, then Planned Parenthood offers “options counseling” to help decide a course of action. However, dozens of former employees have blown the whistle on the unscrupulous nature of PP’s “options counseling,” acknowledging that it was commonly used to steer women towards abortion (which they profit from) instead of adoption or parenting (which they don’t get paid for). In 2011, PP performed 145 abortions for every 1 adoption referral and has now mandated that every affiliate performs abortions.
For more information on this project and on Planned Parenthood in general (like how many abortions the business commits, how big a chunk of government money it is awarded every year, and the miniscule percentage of its activity in adoption and health screening), check out this SLA page.
Jihadists Using Terror to Extort Money
Raymond Ibrahim, writing in Human Events, describes how thepersecution of the Church by jihadist Muslims is escalating yet further. He especially addresses how the violence against Christians is moving from arson and murder to a vicious extortion -- and then back again.
So much for the Western liberal's continued assurance that Islam is but a religion of peace.
Now that the attacks on Egypt’s Christian churches have subsided, stage two of the jihad — profiting from the fear and terror caused by stage one — is setting in: reports are arriving that the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters are forcing the roughly 15,000 Christian Copts of Dalga village in south Minya province to pay jizya — the money, or tribute, that conquered non-Muslims historically had to pay to their Islamic overlords “with willing submission and while feeling themselves subdued” to safeguard their existence, as indicated in Koran 9:29.
According to Fr. Yunis Shawqi, who spoke yesterday to Dostor reporters in Dalga, all Copts in the village, “without exception,” are being forced to pay tribute, just as their forefathers did nearly 1400 years ago when the sword of Islam originally invaded Christian Egypt. He said that the “value of the tribute and method of payment differ from one place to another in the village, so that, some are being expected to pay 200 Egyptian pounds per day, others 500 Egyptian pounds per day…”
In some cases, those not able to pay have been attacked, their wives and children beaten and/or kidnapped. As a result, some 40 Christian families have now fled Dalga, joining the ever growing list of displaced Christians in the Middle East.
It’s the same in Syria and Iraq. “Rebels” recently went to a Christian man’s “shop and gave him three options: become Muslim; pay $70,000 as a tax levied on non-Muslims, known as jizya; or be killed along with his family…. Androus from Mosul, Iraq… says he received a similar demand via telephone. ‘Because you are infidels, you have to pay jizya,’ he recalled being told over the phone. ‘Either you pay jizya, or we will kill you or your son.’”
Monday, September 09, 2013
About Those "Draconian" Laws Closing Abortion Clinics
Over 50 abortion mills have closed down over the last 3 years and several others are only open because activist judges have refused to allow the democratic process to go forward.Of course, it's not surprising that Democrats and the progressive press are alarmed at this new rapidity in the abortion business decline. Nevertheless, the rage they've demonstrated over the new health and safety laws that have led to the abortuaries closing is quite over the top.
The liberals have called these laws a variety of things: radical, draconian, dangerous, cruel, mindless, bullying, conspiratorial, vengeful, unconstitutional and, of course, anti-women.
But what do these laws actually require that is so doggone hard for abortionists to meet?
How about simple health standards -- the same standards that have been on the books for years affecting other medical practices? Are the progressives so uncaring of a woman's health that they think requiring cleanliness in a medical facility is cruel? That surgical instruments and beds and sheets not be re-used? That surfaces be clean of germs, blood and other bodily fluids?
Draconian measures? Really?
How about the laws requiring that a currently licensed physician perform the operation and that said physician has appropriate medical privileges at a nearby hospital? Or that a woman be fully informed about the specific ways in which the abortion will be done, including the various dangers that procedure will pose to her own health and well-being?
Radical? Anti-women? You're kidding, right?
And finally, do abortion advocates really believe that a law requiring an ultrasound viewer be present or a law that prohibits late-term abortions that would kill viable children or a law that prevents minors from being aborted without their parent's permission is truly mean, dangerous, and unAmerican?
Of course not. But then such is the rabid and irrational nature of modern abortion advocacy. Powerful, dangerous chemical abortion drugs dispensed over the internet? That's fine. Abortion clinics ignoring the basic health and safety measures that even the tattoo parlor across the street must meet? Yeah, abortion is a special class. They don't need to abide by regular rules. What about abortions performed by non-doctors? Sure, that's cool too. In fact, we just passed that law in California.
Gone are the days when Planned Parenthood and Democrat politicians spoke of the tragic deed being safe, legal but rare. Nowadays the raucous demands are for more and more abortion -- everywhere, all the time, and with no restrictions whatsoever.
The Increasing Promotion of Euthanasia for Organ Use
Says Smith, "I can think of nothing more dangerous than making mentally ill and despairing disabled people believe their deaths have greater value than their lives. Well one thing, perhaps: Having a society accept the idea that it can benefit at the expense of people in desperate need of care -- and whose care is very expensive."
Can "Grownup" Conservatives Win? Ask Tony Abbott.
Most conservative parties and leaders face something like the same negative cultural stereotyping as Tony Abbott did. This undoubtedly puts them at a disadvantage and gives their opponents a leg-up in an election. The answer to it is neither to rage wildly against it nor to surrender nervously to it — a response that Australians call the “cultural cringe.” The first reaction makes voters nervous that the potential prime minister is too irresponsible or prejudiced to be trusted with the highest office; the second reaction makes even those being appeased contemptuous and dismissive. Even if such appeasement is rewarded electorally, it usually ensures that the incoming government will be too compromised by its concessions to achieve much in the way of conservative reform.
Abbott demonstrated, however, that conservatives can overcome such cultural opposition by presenting a positive, reasoned case for their policies in a grown-up way. Sure, they face the disadvantage of a liberal establishment and a cultural atmosphere hostile to their values and policies, but they have the incomparable advantage that those values are the values of most voters across the spectrum.
If they present their case calmly and steadily, the voters will see through the negative caricatures. If they start out lacking the respect of the voters, they will gradually earn it by the manner of their campaigning. And respect will turn into votes when the time comes…
From "A Lesson from Australia" by John O’Sullivan, editor-at-large of National Review.
Must Christianity Surrender?
And you thought Jesus taught us to love God rather than the world.
Mark Tooley's important essay, "Is Christianity now outside the norms of American patriotism?" is right here at American Spectator.
Catholic thinker Jody Bottum’s recent controversial Commonweal essay suggested, “American Catholics should accept state recognition of same-sex marriage simply because they are Americans.” A bow to legally institutionalizing sexual liberalism has become the ticket to American civic engagement, it is suggested.
Noting he is a “Christian first, and an American second,” columnist Rod Dreher responded to Bottum by noting that “traditionalist Christians should think about what patriotism means in an America that is turning hostile to them.” He recalls that “many conservative Christians have thought, wrongly or rightly, for many years that being a ‘good Christian’ and being a ‘good American’ were one and the same.” But the “emerging order is forcing them, or should force them, to rethink all this.”...
In a different spirit, Bottum justified Catholic surrender on marriage in civil law by arguing the debate, among other harms, imperils the church’s image and effectiveness in the wider culture. Many evangelicals now make similar claims, believing unpopular culture war stances now inhibit evangelistic appeal, especially among young liberal urban elites. The most liberal end of Protestantism, embodied in the Episcopal Church, pushes full throttle for sexual liberalism inside and outside the church. More orthodox but combat-weary segments affirm traditional mores within the church but silence outside.
Popular author and conservative Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller of Redeemer Church in Manhattan successfully preaches orthodoxy to socially liberal audiences while usually avoiding controversial sexual issues, which, he admits, often leaves congregations shunning eye contact with him for days afterward. And yet, when asked, he continues to espouse traditional morality. He essentially practices a selective political prudence in the topics he preaches…
Churches’ once aversion to culture clash over race echoes discomfort over marriage debates. As Wesley Hill in First Things recently observed, the endless polls ostensibly showing increased support for same-sex marriage even among the religious don’t capture the full reality. Many of the seriously religious who accept legal same-sex marriage retain orthodox beliefs about sexual morality and affirm those teachings within their churches. Hill quotes neo-Anabaptist Minnesota pastor and author Greg Boyd, a former culture warrior who quit the fight: “It’s one thing to say that a behavior falls short of God’s ideal, and quite a different thing to say that Christians should try to impose a law preventing that behavior.”
Boyd misses the point that current public debates aren’t over the legality of non-traditional sexuality but over the legal affirmation and promotion of it, often to the duress of dissenters from the Sexual Revolution. But many evangelicals and Catholics are tempted by his Mennonite style separatism. Religious calls to surrender in the culture wars believe a truce will win goodwill for traditional religion, not understanding the relentless, authoritarian character of sexual and social liberalism, which usually brooks no dissent. Same sex marriage and sexual orientation laws facilitate encroachments on private religious liberty and prepare tomorrow’s debates over polygamy, amid increasingly exotic claims over gender identity, with “open” bathrooms only a small first step…
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