Since the time for Christmas shopping is upon us, could I beg those of you who shop online at Amazon.com use the link http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=rightminded08-20 when logging onto Amazon.com? This will enable Right Minded to earn a share of the sales. And it doesn’t cost you anything extra.
Thank you in advance.
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Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, must not know American liberals very well, as he has committed the mother of all sins. Liberals will tolerate all sorts of shenanigans, such as killing the unborn, infanticide, adulterous affairs by their own politicians, same-sex marriages, all sorts of debauchery. Even a terrorist attack doesn’t get them too excited. But al-Zawahiri has done the one thing that DOES get the left’s hackles up. He directed a racial epithet at Barack Obama. It’s something you just don’t do. Bloggers have been fired for things like that. I’m not one for uttering racial epithets myself, but it’s not my #1. The left, however, is so obsessed with race that this may be the one thing that actually gets them on board the War on Terrorism.
→ No CommentsCategories: Racial Issues · War on Terrorism
California’s Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment limiting marriage in that state to one man and one woman, was approved by the voters 52-48% on Election Day. Since then, the gay-rights crowd has behaved with predictable anger and rage, and now the approved constitutional amendment is headed to court where it may be struck down. Folks, in a sane world, you know, a world without liberals, a constitutional amendment is considered part of the constitution. You cannot strike down a constitutional amendment, because passing a constitutional amendment by definition makes it constitutional. But we’re not operating in a sane world these days, so who knows what will happen?
In a related post, Michelle Malkin points out that the gay-rights crowd isn’t interested merely in equal rights or eliminating discrimination. They instead want to force their deviant behavior on everyone else, as evidenced by the eHarmony case.
→ No CommentsCategories: Same-sex Marriage
A proposed bailout of the UAW, disguised as a bailout of Detroit’s Big Three, has died in the Senate.
→ No CommentsCategories: U.S. Politics
Barack Obama, who built his campaign around the concept of change, has added another Washington insider, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, to his cabinet as head of Health and Human Services. Obama, of course, promised to change Washington, but it’s sort of hard to do that when you stack your cabinet with individuals who are well-versed in the ways of Washington.
→ 1 CommentCategories: U.S. Politics
Highway 41A near downtown Clarksville, Tennessee
→ No CommentsCategories: History · Pictures
Tagged: Historical Markers
The following article appeared on page 5 of the Mt. Juliet Chronicle on October 29. The link to the .pdf version of the paper is here, although I’m not sure how long they will leave it up, so I have copied the text of the news article below. This is especially important to those of us in Mt. Juliet as the City Commission debates on whether to sell the old Mt. Juliet Elementary School land to the YMCA.
YMCA of MidTn membership policy changes could affect MJ facility
By Tomi L. Wiley
Managing Editor
As if the purchase of property in the middle of town and the prospect of building a YMCA on it hasn’t been controversial enough locally, now a change in the organization’s membership policy is raising eyebrows in Mt. Juliet as well.
Effective January 1, the idea of what constitutes a “family” as it relates to YMCA memberships will change. There will be no more family memberships, and to get that rate members will only need to share the same address.
“Frankly, our existing membership categories were quite unwieldy and did not address these situations very well at all,” said YMCA of Middle Tennessee Coordinator of Communication Services Jessica Fain on Monday. “In addition, the categories were being applied in different ways at different centers. Because so very many unique situations exist, we determined that we needed to be consistent and not operate on the exception rather than the rule. We concluded that a shared household membership was the best way to achieve the most consistent access to membership at any of our YMCAs.”
Fain explained some of the “unique situations” as grandparents taking care of the children of military families, senior citizen widows sharing a home to save money in tough economic times, adults caring for aging parents in their homes, and college roommates. These situations also include both same-sex and heterosexual couples living together and not married, a situation that, considering the YMCA has long been an organization based on Christian beliefs, some people think conflict with a facility where Bible verses are displayed on the walls and Christianity guides the mission of the organization: “strong kids, strong families and strong communities.”
Some people in Mt. Juliet, which is currently in the works to buy county land on N. Mt. Juliet road and “give” to the YMCA, feel the Christian principals touted by the YMCA are being put in jeopardy by joining them to non-traditional concepts such as co-habitation and the gay community. Mt. Juliet has long thought of itself as a strong community with a Christian backbone, and some people find the ideas upsetting.
“I don’t know a lot of Christians that honestly like the idea of people living together when they’re not married, although I know it’s done a lot more lately,” remarked Lou Kent, a Mt. Juliet transplant from the Nashville area. “I’ve been thinking about joining the Y if it builds in the city, but now I don’t know. I don’t know how an organization who’s built itself and its reputation on Christian values can just up and change its mind like that.”
Fain said that “the persons described are already included in the YMCA; they are already members. It has never been the policy of the YMCA to exclude anyone from membership.”
“The YMCA is proud to be a worldwide, charitable fellowship united by a common loyalty to Jesus Christ for the purpose of helping persons grow in spirit, mind and body,” Fain said.
She said the new membership policy is based off of “three simple criteria”: the age and number of adults in a household and whether there are children in the household who utilize the membership. She said the only cost change for existing members will be that of annual rate adjustments. Membership fees for each of the categories are determined on an annual basis, and this year is no different in that regard. An annual rate adjustment might occur in a particular category, but that is not the result of realigning the categories.
The YMCA, in order to build the new facility in Mt. Juliet, must depend on fundraising in the community for funding. Fain commented on how these policy changes in a growing city that has long considered itself a Christian-based, family center with a “small town feel” might affect fundraising for the new facility.
“We have enjoyed working with many citizens of Mt. Juliet as we work to fulfill the dream of having a new facility,” Fain said. “By the time this article is printed, we hope to be well on the way toward having a lease for eight acres of land near the center of town. We intend to create a place that Mt. Juliet can be proud of, and we believe the new membership categories will attract even more Mt. Juliet citizens to our facility.”
Fain said the change in policy will benefit current members and be a motivation for prospective members to joining the YMCA.
“For one thing, our sometimes confusing membership categories should be streamlined and much easier to understand, whether you’re a current member or a prospective one,” she said. “For another, we believe the new categories provide increased affordability and access for prospective members.”
For more information on the policy changes taking effect in January or about the YMCA of Middle Tennessee visit www.ymcamidtn.org or call 615-259-9622.
→ No CommentsCategories: Mt. Juliet & Wilson County
The media are speculating on what Barack Obama will do with Osama bin Laden, whether to continue the hunt or assume that he is either dead or untraceable. My own belief is that bin Laden assumed cave temperature long ago. At any rate, the last reliable sighting of bin Laden was sometime around 9/11, and that was 7 years ago.
→ No CommentsCategories: War on Terrorism
Barack Obama, who promised during the campaign that he was going to lower the sea levels, is poised to lead on climate change.
In the roughly four-minute message, Obama reiterated his support for a cap-and-trade system approach to cutting green house gases. He would establish annual targets to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them another 80 percent by 2050. Obama also promoted anew his proposal to invest $15 billion each year to support private sector efforts toward clean energy.
Global warming has taken a backburner in recent weeks because of other news items, such as the economy and the election, but global warming is a cause du jour, anyway. Remember, global warming is a scientific hoax. There is no proof that man has any effect whatsoever on the earth’s climate. Global warming is nothing more than the left’s attempt to raise taxes and leverage more government control over the private sector and private citizens. This is why opinion over global warming is so partisan. Liberals see it as an opportunity to grow liberalism. Conservatives see if for the hoax that it is.
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President Bush has agreed to a fixed withdrawal date from Iraq, and the mainstream press is gleeful that he has broken with his own policy of refusing to leave Iraq based on timelines alone. However, Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air points out that this template is simply hogwash. He writes, “This is unadulterated hogwash. Bush repeatedly vowed not to withdraw from Iraq until the violence dwindled to levels that Iraq can handle on its own. We’ve already all but arrived at that point. The Iraqi Army and its national police have been handling primary security duties for months, and took back control of militia-held areas on their own initiative earlier this year. In three years — the length of the SOFA — the Iraqis will be able to seal their own borders and defend themselves from assault from both within and without Iraq.”
At any rate, the drawdown is going to occur during Obama’s presidency. The war is won, and Iraq is increasingly securing its own peace, so U.S. forces are increasingly not needed. However, Obama promised to end the war, even though it is already more or less ended already. I have a sick feeling that the media are going to heap praises on the Obamessiah for ending the Iraq war, even though the only role he will have is overseeing a withdrawal that was agreed upon by his predecessor. And I am sure he will readily accept credit for the work of George W. Bush.
→ No CommentsCategories: War on Terrorism
It's the Davis Chapel Methodist Church on Highway 22 south of Huntingdon, Tennessee.
→ 1 CommentCategories: Pictures · Tennessee
Tagged: Churches
I hope we have not seen the last of Sarah Palin. She was the one bright spot in an otherwise dim campaign season for the Republican Party. Governor Palin has already made it clear that the door to a presidential run in 2012 is open. Let’s hope so. She was the only true conservative on the ticket, and if there’s one thing the GOP sorely needs, it’s a conservative at the top.
The left despises Sarah Palin. The mainstream press and Democrats were relentless and merciless in their attacks on her and her family. True, when you enter the political arena, you certainly open yourself to scrutiny and criticism, but what Governor Palin endured was far more grueling than the public examinations given Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Her critics said she was inexperienced, even though Sarah Palin has more executive experience than John McCain, Obama, and Biden combined. They went after her family, at one point spreading the rumor that her baby Trig was not her son, but her grandson. They exposed the Palins’ teen-aged daughter Bristol and her pregnancy, sneering about the hypocrisy of a family-values conservative having a daughter pregnant out-of-wedlock. They went after Todd Palin and his associations. They made an issue out of Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe. They hung her in effigy and hacked her e-mail account.
They tried to pass her off as a dumb blond, a cheerleader-type who was chosen for her appearance rather than her substance. They questioned whether she could handle the job of vice-president and still raise a family, which is odd given that the staple of liberal feminism has been to convince women to eschew families and pursue careers. In short, the candidacy of Sarah Palin transformed the party of women’s rights into the party of male chauvinism.
But what really stoked the left’s outrage was the fact that Sarah Palin gave birth to a baby with Down Syndrome. You see, abortion is the sacrament of the Democrat Party. There have been nearly 50 million unborn children sacrificed on the altar of choice under Roe v. Wade, and the left’s callous disregard for unborn human life is just as rife as ever. That Sarah Palin did not abort Trig hit them squarely between the eyes. The image from the GOP convention of the Palins’ 7-year-old daughter wetting and smoothing the baby’s hair during Governor Palin’s speech endeared pro-family conservatives, but frosted the left.
For example, Canadian Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Ottawa, expressed concern that such a prominent role model as Sarah Palin completing a Down Syndrome pregnancy may prompt other women to make the same decision against abortion because of that genetic abnormality, and thereby reduce the number of abortions.
About 9 out of 10 Canadian women given a diagnosis of Down Syndrome choose to terminate their pregnancies. But Dr. Lalonde worries that Palin’s decision may cause abortions in Canada to decline as other women there and elsewhere follow suit.
Barbara Walters said on The View (October 6) that Sarah Palin having her baby at the debate “bothered her.”
And the day before, Liz Trotta was on Fox News Live to discuss the Palin-Biden Debate, and remarked “One other note…the image of dragging that handicapped infant around and having it on stage has caused consternation in some quarters as to how tasteful this is.”
Folks, this is how liberals see unborn/newborn life that is less than perfect. The Democrat Party just nominated and got elected a politician who has supported infanticide for abortion survivors. On the other hand, Sarah Palin carried a Down Syndrome pregnancy to term, and she is despised for it.
Remember, Democrats are supposed to be the party of the little guy, the downtrodden, the oppressed. And yet when it comes to the littlest and most defenseless of us all, liberals have shown themselves to be completely devoid of compassion. Their behavior toward the Palin family, especially 7-month-old Trig, was classless and shameful.
→ 3 CommentsCategories: Abortion · Published Columns 2008 · U.S. Politics
Tagged: Lebanon Democrat Columns
First, Jesus Christ was a community organizer, and now, according to State Representative Tommie Brown, God is a socialist. Next thing you know, the Holy Spirit will be a registered Democrat.
Representative Brown was discussing cuts in the state’s budget in order to balance out an estimated $800 million deficit. Here’s the full quote: “I will be there doing battle for children and poor and middle-class families. We have to try to protect them. Maybe that’s socialism, but I suspect God might be a socialist, particularly Jesus Christ when he stopped to feed the multitudes.”
A couple of things.
First, Representative Brown apparently falls for the thinking that government, and not families, is the sole guarantor of our children’s well-being. Government has no such role. If she really wanted to do something for the children, the poor, and the middle-class, she should have joined ranks with the GOP years ago to lower or eliminate the state’s sales-tax on groceries. The Legislature had that opportunity during Governor Bredesen’s first term, when the state ran annual surpluses adding up to more than a billion dollars, and it wouldn’t have taken much to eliminiate the food tax. This was something that Senator Mae Beavers attempted to do, but to no avail.
Instead, the Democrat-led General Assembly and our Democrat governor used those surpluses to grow government, rebuffing repeated attempts by Republican members to cut the food tax, and the Democrats even raised taxes on cigarattes to allow even more spending. And, just as we conservatives predicted, when the lean economic times came, the state would find itself in a mess, just as we did during the ill-fated second term of turncoat, disgraced Governor Don Sundquist.
Second, socialists don’t feed people. Capitalists do. If you look at all the places where socialism has actually been implemented (the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, North Korea, Cuba), you will find that people commonly go hungry and lack other basic items and services that we in capitalist nations take for granted.
It amazes me how liberals, who demand strict separation of church and state for evangelicals, have no problem using God to justify their own political positions.
→ No CommentsCategories: Government · Liberalism · Tennessee Politics
From time-to-time, I have documented asinine decisions made by school administrators based on their slave-like adherance to zero tolerance policies. My problem with zero tolerance policies is that they force otherwise intelligent human beings to completely suspend logic and common sense. Terry Frank has a recent example of zero tolerance idiocy that happened right here in Tennessee.
→ 1 CommentCategories: Education
Bill Hobbs points out that Tennessee’s budget deficit is expected to reach $800 million this fiscal year. Also, the FY 2008-09 budget overspent the Copeland Cap by $723 million at Governor Bredesen’s request.
→ No CommentsCategories: Government · Tennessee Politics
Bill Hobbs and I both agree that Barack Obama isn’t going to be the friend of Israel that he’s made himself out to be. The reasons for my own doubt are the friends Obama has made over the years.
→ No CommentsCategories: U.S. Politics
Gay-rights activists are still aflame over the passage of California’s Proposition 8, as chronicled by Michelle Malkin on her blog. And I thought the Obamessiah was going to heal our broken souls.
→ 1 CommentCategories: Liberalism · Same-sex Marriage
According to both the U.K. Guardian and Drudge, Barack Obama has tapped Hillary Clinton to be the new Secretary of State. If this is true, then it means that Obama, who promised to change Washington, has instead chosen yet another Washington insider to a high-level government post.
→ No CommentsCategories: Government · U.S. Politics
Michelle Malkin believes the GOP’s road to redemption could begin right here by denying any more federal bailouts to U.S. corporations, including the automobile industry which is screaming for a handout of taxpayer handout. Oddly, the Democrats, who railed against the Bush administration and GOP Congress for deficit spending, suddenly believe deficit spending is just fine as they have already handed out more than a trillion dollars in bailout money already. Enough is enough! As Malkin says, I pay my debt, you pay yours.
As Bill Hobbs (and others) points out, a bailout for the automobile industry would really be nothing more than a bailout for the UAW.
→ No CommentsCategories: Government · U.S. Politics
Howard Kurtz chronicles how the mainstream press is falling over itself to more or less create a mythological figure out of Barack Obama, how the media have echewed reporting actual news in favor of sculpting an image.
At the same time, major media outlets continue to watch their readership/viewership drop off, their stock prices fall, and their layoffs mount. According to Rupert Murdoch, the media have no one to blame but themselves: “My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it’s not newspapers that might become obsolete. It’s some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset: the bond with its readers.”
→ No CommentsCategories: Media
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