Pneumonia and Other Things to be Thankful For

I'm at my girlfriend's house in southern MD for Thanksgiving this year. It's my first away from home, and I must say they have done their best to make me feel like I'm somewhere I belong.

A bad case of pneumonia could have marred this holiday for me, but it hasn't. Thank God for antibiotics and an inhaler and a quick-thinking doctor with her own x-ray machine in house.

It's funny how when you sit down to write a list of things to be thankful for, it's hard to even know where to begin. I'm thankful for my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, first and foremost, and to God for all of the amazing blessings. I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful my family didn't raise me on the Black Friday traditions that seem deliberately bent on destroying the simple holiday of thankfulness. I'm thankful for my friends at school, my roommates, and most of all my girlfriend, who is a constant source of encouragement, comfort, strength, and direction.

I'm also thankful for the little things: my laptop, blogger, my blogging friends, the internet, Drudge Report, KFI news, and most of all, the three "L's": Lithium, Lexapro, and Lamictal.

I've taken a much longer break than any blogger should, but once you stop blogging it's hard to start again. I'll be skimming the Heritage debate and some other news and you should get regular posts from me from this point forward. If you're reading this, thanks for bearing with me through the break. If you're not...uh.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tired

I'm tired. Coming off the SAT where I slept a total of 16 hours over five days, plus jumping back into school, plus a wedding, and now some weird flu/cough/fever thing that has me in bed most of the day. Hence the week-long sabattical from blogging, which I realize isn't healthy for my numbers, but se la vie. I'll be back into it full swing in a few days. But in the meantime, watch the full Herman Cain response to Lybia and ask yourself whether his answer was right or wrong.

Michigan Debate Liveblog

8:06 First question to Cain: Should we allow Italy to fail? Cain says make us strong. Romney says we don't need to step in.

8:09 This guy's questions are gonna make me so happy!

8:12 Romney says that he said from the very beginning the bailout was a bad idea.

8:13 Moderators going after flip-flipping Romney. Wow. Been with the same wife, worked the same job, etc for a long time, therefore he is stable. Wha?

8:15 Perry-If you're too big to fail you're too big. Whaa?

8:16 Fire Bernanke is getting more and more popular.

8:18 Someone fixed Bachmann's hair.

8:21 Inappropriate behavior question for Cain. People are booing the question. Cain's response gets WILD applause. American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion. No 999 yet. Just sayin. Handled that crisis well.

8:22That's a RETARDED question. They asked Romney if he would hire Cain based on character questions. The crowd don't like that string of questions.

8:26 Good, straight answer on businesses from Romney. He still looks hung over.

8:27 We need to go out there and stick a big ol flag in the middle of America that says "Open for Business again." I love Perry!

8:31 Question about taxes to Cain. Will we finally hear the 999 line? Yep. "Tax codes do not raise taxes, poeple do." Good answer. He thinks the American people will hold politicians' feet to the fire.

8:35 I'm done with Bachmann. Can she go away now? Everyone pays something in her tax plan. Uhhh...

I've stopped having opinions for the night. 3 hours of sleep each night for the last 5 nights isn't helping.

ALLRED ERUPTION!

When the Cain story first broke, I pondered:

The story is ridiculously long for the details provided, which are few, shady, and unconfirmed. I'm predicting a Gloria Alred showing in the next week on this topic, as well as the women, who are not mentioned in the story "coming forward" to share the sordid details. If the story's true, Cain's shaky campaign is over. If it's not, well, he'd better work darn hard to make sure every American understands how untrue it is.

And now Washington Post has the story:

Celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred will appear before reporters Monday afternoon in New York City with a woman who will allege that GOP presidential contender Herman Cain sexually harassed her, Allred’s office said Monday.

The woman is not one of the three women previously reported to have accused Cain of sexual harassment, Allred’s office said.

One week to the day, ladies! What now!?! Ahem...anyways

Cain's response is awesome:

Shortly before the press conference, the Cain camp sent out this tweet over the Twitter handle @Cain’s staff: “Welcome to the campaign, Gloria Allred. What took you so long?.”

This is gonna be fun. Can't wait to hear the latest bottom-of-the-barrel nonsense Allred has dug up.

The Ron Paul Fruitcake Hypothesis

I'd like to submit a hypothesis for your consideration, and perhaps enjoyment.

I'm sure you know the old story about there being only one fruitcake in the world...

After attending and following many conservative conferences, straw polls, etc, I have come to the conclusion there must be only a handful of Ron Paul fans in the world. They just follow him around from conference to conference helping him win straw polls.

If I had to posit a guess, I'd say they're around 4 busfulls strong...

Double Standard Much?

The Guardian has this wonderful story:

The revolution could be trademarked in the US as more entrepreneurs seek to profit from the Occupy demonstrations.

T-shirts began to appear days after the first protest on 17 September, a march through lower Manhattan. Now T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise are being offered on the campsites that have sprung up in cities across the US. The US patent and trademark office has received a spate of applications.

Ray Agrinzone, a clothing designer, who launched theoccupystore.com and has received hateful tweets and emails, said: "There's nothing wrong with turning a profit."

 Wait, it's ok to turn a profit? I thought we were supposed to eat capitalists...or hang them...or shove them downstairs...?

Occupy Oakland and the French Revolution

Spoiled, arrogant, selfish, lazy, idiotic, moronic, stupid, jerks. And I avoid using any worse language simply for fear my younger brother will read this.

I am disgusted with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Officially done. If I was dictator, I'd order immediate clearing out of any and all camps accross the nation. Call in the national guard if you have to.

Our good friend and mentor Robert Stacy McCain over at The Other McCain has a great article detailing what the Occupy Wall Street movement has become (or perhaps was the whole time?).

We can no longer tolerate media assertions that this is a non-violent movement. When your purpose is to inspire hatred, to threaten and intimidate, when you trespass and obstruct traffic, when you chant obscenities and deliberately seek to provoke confrontations — no, you’re not being non-violent, no matter how often you claim to be “peaceful.”

But who can expect honesty from such savages? And who can any longer doubt that the mainstream media are acting as accessories to this criminal movement by pretending that the “Occupy [Whatever]” mob’s regular eruptions of violence and criminality are atypical aberrations? Just look at the headlines:

Occupy Protester Arrested In $10M Arson Fire
– KMGH-TV

Occupy Boston Occupies Israeli Consulate
– Ira Stoll

Zuccotti protesters put up women-only
tent to prevent sexual assaults
– New York Post

Fear Of Violence Spreading To OccupySeattle
– Thomas Ferdousi

This is Ann Coulter's latest book played out on a national--and international--stage. In Demonic, Coulter details a history of the mob mentality, and David Limbaugh says the book is Coulter's best yet.

She first establishes her base line, defining the mob as "an irrational, childlike, often violent organism that derives its energy from the group. Intoxicated by messianic goals, the promise of instant gratification, and adrenaline-pumping exhortations, mobs create mayhem, chaos, and destruction, leaving a smoldering heap of wreckage for their leaders to climb to power."

…Next, Coulter takes us on a gripping tour of the murderously barbaric and ghoulishly bloody years of the French Revolution and its philosophical underpinnings, which were inspired in part by Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Rousseau, as you know, is one of the left's celebrated secular political philosophers. Anticipating modern liberals, he twisted words and concepts to turn common sense on its head.

Rousseau was a proponent of the "general will," but his idea of the general will did not remotely resemble any bottom-up expression of the people en route to republican government. It more closely resembled the process whereby autocrats impose their "superior" ideas on the masses in the name of carrying out the people's will.

As Coulter puts it, "a select group of elites with absolutely no grasp of human nature will figure out the program, inflexibly impose it on the people and thereby regenerate mankind."

What's appalling about the OWS movement is how mindless it is. How can people be so stupid? Yeah, you're angry you don't have a job. Who's fault is that? Most likely your own, if you have pink hair and 30 piercings popping out of every orafice, you nitwit!

Is everyone really that dumb that they believe they're entitled to a high-paying job just out of college because they went into debt and got a Master's Degree in Navel Gazing? Because good lord, I thought the public education system was bad, but this is atrocious.

What we have here, folks, is the result of years of the previous generation's entitlement mindset being, slowly but surely, foisted on my generation. Yes, baby boomers and generation x-ers, that would be you. Thanks for screwing us over, in so many different ways. Lying to us as teachers by telling us we deserved a high-powered job off the starting block. Lying to us as parents telling us that we were perfect little darlings who needed no parental guidance or discipline and that the pink hair, face tatoos, and tongue piercings were just us exploring our identities and individuality.

[Editor's Note: This doesn't apply to my parents, or the thousands of other parents--you know who you are--who have made an effort to raise your kids the old fashioned way. If you're not sure if you fall into that category, here's a simple test: did you spank your children? If the answer is no, you probably don't belong to the exception category]

That doesn't mean this isn't our fault as well. I mean, rather than resist, we flung ourselves wholeheartedly into this mess, but seeing as how we were forced into this mold from a early age, I think my generation has come to the point where we start taking the blame for our poor choices.

And the Oakland mayor disgusts me. If she thinks she can placate these people by letting them have their way with the city on the promise they are "peaceful" protesters, she's dead wrong. I'd rather stick a sign in front of my door telling criminals I don't own a firearm in hopes I placate them enough they don't rob me.

I think what we're seeing here is the beginning of a dichotomy that threatens to pull apart our generation. On the one hand, we have the OWS movement, who represents the attitude of the spoiled in our generation. On the other, we have the new conservative youth who are fed up, homeschooled, or otherwise "right-wing." The underlying assumptions of these two movements will be battling it out on a scale never seen before in this country. Our generation will be the one to decide if we're going to end up like Greece or take the painful steps required to get the country back on the right track. And on that mission we're sure to get no help from the OWS rabble.

Campaigning!

I'm sitting in the lobby of a hotel. I just sent around 40 teens and kids to bed, and I'm taking a moment to catch up on life, watch the LD debate I missed, mourn the Caps loss, and do some schoolwork before crashing.

Yes, it's the craziness of a Generation Joshua student action team. Between you, me, and the fencepost, this is my first rodeo, not that the kids would know it. When you're only 20 and the people you're leading are 17, it's a lot more convincing to act like you know what you're doing.

We rolled out and door knocked in a GOTV (Get Out The Vote, for the uninitiated among you) in crews of six, and managed to cover an large area of our county over the day, with Chick-Fil-A and Five Guys stops in between. After church there's more door knocking and some phone banking, nothing but a wild party.

We're campaigning for Caren Marreck, a candidate for state senator, as well as five other regional candidates for Virginia.

Why is Generation Joshua, an organization that usually sends teams on a national level, devoting time to this and other local races in Virginia? They see it as ground zero for 2012. And apparently so does everyone else. Virginia went blue during the last presidential election for the first time in 40 years. Reuters details the potential significance of Virginia state elections.

Political analysts said loss of the 40-seat state Senate to Republicans would be a bad sign for Obama as he seeks to win Virginia and its 13 electoral votes next year.

In 2009 Republicans won the governorship, previously held by a Democrat, and increased their majority in the House of Delegates. A Senate majority would complete Republican control of the state.

"I think the odds are strongly in favor of the Republicans taking control of the Senate," said Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University.

"It is a very key, important state, and political observers around the country will be watching Virginia as an important bellwether."

Underscoring the state's significance, Obama toured Virginia last month, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has visited a northern Virginia campaign office, and former President Bill Clinton held a campaign fund-raiser for Democratic state Senate candidates.

The Democrats now control the Senate by a 22-18 margin. Although local issues such as gun control, traffic jams and education dominate the races, some Republican candidates have made Obama and his handling of the sluggish national economy an issue.

 All that to say, keep us and the other teams throughout Virginia in your prayers as we work until election day on Tuesday. And of course, if you live in Virginia, VOTE!

A Little Advice for Cain

While Republican candidates play a game of Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar ("Romney leaked the info to Politico!" "Who me?" "Yes you!" "Couldn't be!" "Then who?" "Perry leaked the info to Politico!" "Who me?" and so on...) one fact is becoming increasingly obvious.

If the allegations against Cain are untrue, and at this point I'm assuming they aren't because They have yet to prove otherwise, there's only one thing the Cain Train can do to get back on track and stay a major contender. And since Herman Cain's such a big fan of nines, I'll even do it that way. Mr. Cain, there are nine letters that are the key to your continued success: F-I-R-E B-L-O-C-K!

Face it. Campaign Manager Mark Block is now just dead weight. We saw his excellent orchestration in the series of wince-inducing missteps by the campaign in the past few weeks. We saw his fantastic press skills as Cain looked more like Anthony Weiner than Clarence Thomas after the Politico story first broke. It took him a day--yes, a day!--to begin vehemently denying the story like he should have all along.

But it gets worse. The Wall Street Journal attached this to the end of their story about the Politico article:

In a separate matter, Mr. Cain's campaign manager, Mark Block, said he had asked the campaign's attorney to investigate a report that Mr. Block may have illegally paid for some early campaign activities.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported a Wisconsin-based nonprofit corporation set up by Mr. Block and a second person was owed about $40,000 for iPads and chartered flights for Mr. Cain in February and March.

The paper cited an internal balance sheet from the nonprofit group, Prosperity USA, that indicated it was owed $37,372.41 by Mr. Cain's campaign. Under campaign-finance law, companies are prohibited from donating money, equipment and services to presidential candidates. Companies are also forbidden from making loans to candidates, though individuals can donate up to $2,500 per election to a candidate.

Prosperity USA was set up by Mr. Block and Linda Hansen, Mr. Cain's deputy campaign manager. Mr. Block, in a statement, said he "may comment, if appropriate," when the review is complete.

 This isn't the first time Block has been called out for using independent organizations to fuel his campaign.

Mark Block was the first 18-year-old ever elected to office in Wisconsin when he was voted onto the Winnebago County Board of Supervisors in 1974.

Yet he was also banned from politics in Wisconsin for three years and forced to pay a $15,000 fine after being accused by the Wisconsin State Elections Board of violating election law in 1997 as campaign manager to state Supreme Court Justice Jon P. Wilcox.

The Wilcox campaign was accused of illegally coordinating activities with an outside group which mounted a get-out-the-vote effort. To this day, Block denies any wrongdoing.

“Politics at times is ugly,” Block, who worked as an official at Americans for Prosperity before becoming Cain’s chief of staff and campaign manager this year, explained during an interview with The Daily Caller.

He claims the state’s attorney general only went after him because it was “decided it would be a good thing not to have Mark Block involved in the next election cycle.”

Block settled with the Wisconsin State Elections Board without admitting guilt.

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel covered the story in depth when the fines were levied.

Block signed a statement acknowledging the board "may be able to prove" violations at a trial, and Pickens' statement said the board "could prove" violations of campaign finance laws. 

"I recognize that my conduct has undermined public confidence in the integrity of the state electoral process. I apologize to the people of the state of Wisconsin," Block and Pickens said in separate, signed statements.

Whether or not Block actually violated election laws doesn't matter at this point. Cain can't have this on his campaign if he created a nonprofit to pay for Cain campaign activities.

Block was great for Cain when Cain was a nobody longshot candidate who didn't have a snowball's chance in you-know-where. But now that he's a national contender, especially now that he's a frontrunner, Block has gotta go. Maybe you could demote him and hire someone else rather than fire him, but either way, Mr. Cain, time to get somebody new.

Occupy Oakland Gets Ugly(er)

Here we go...

RAW VIDEO: NewsChopper 2 footage of huge crowd marching to...

LIFE: The Ten Percent

I was thinking about blogging something along these lines when I came accross this picture. It said everything for me.

The boy's sign reads: I may not be perfect, but I’m happy. I am God’s handiwork and I bear his image. I am blessed. I am the 10% of children born with Down Syndrome who survived Roe v. Wade.
This particular photo of adorable Boaz Reigstad was created by his father, who posted it on Facebook, where it went viral. Andy Reigstad, Boaz' father, told LifeSiteNews:

The idea for the photo of Boaz occurred to Andy and his wife a week ago, after watching the pro-life movie “180” and reading about the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has protesters declaring that they are the “99%” of Americans who are not extremely wealthy.

“In writing the sign we wanted to let people know that though our son is not perfect (nor are any of us), he is happy and his life is worth living,” Reigstad said.

“We had hoped that this photo might be a small part of the tide that is turning against abortion. We wanted to speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves.”

Currently, in the United States and most Western countries, as many as 95% of children who are diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb are aborted. Critics of aborting Down syndrome children say that the practice is simply a resurrection of eugenics, and observe that most people with Down syndrome are extremely happy. One recent study found that 99% of people with Down syndrome say they are happy.

My amazing, fantastic, spectacular, beautiful girlfriend has two incredible siblings with down syndrome, 18 and 14. They are happy and have been a joy to get to know and interact with.

And they gave me a new perspective on the abortion debate. I have always been ardently pro-life, but now, for some reason, it's more personal. And it makes stats like this all the more disgusting.

October was Down Syndrome Awareness Month, but even if you missed it, please keep them in mind and consider getting involved. This is one front of the abortion war we can win.