baldilocks

Independence Day

God keep us--especially those who are engaged in battle as we speak.

I'll be at the Fremont Tea Party with many other Left Coast Bitter Clingers, making the case for Liberty.

The Hazards of Having African Relatives

No this isn't about him.

The weirdest thing happened this morning. I received an email from my father--the African one--saying that he was in Nigeria attending a conference and that he was without money or a passport; he said that he had accidentally left them in a cab.  (Most regular readers know that my father is Kenyan journalist Philip Ochieng.)

It was the correct email address. The wording of the letter, however, seemed suspiciously generic as if were a broadcast--or a Nigerian email scam.  But I thought it was my father so I emailed back—“Okay I will help.”  Blessedly, however, I decided to Google the name of the conference.

So when the incipient scammer wrote me back with details I said “will help you, Father, but I need to know that you are who you say you are.”  Two simple questions were asked and the answer to one should have rolled off of the tips of my father's fingers.

The response?

Julieet [sic],
why are you asking such question, i want you to use the information of the Hotel manager and send what you said you have for now. i also want you to call me on this number +*************.
Get back to me with the scanned copy of the transfer receipt.

I don’t think so.  My father’s email address has been hacked.

So now I have to figure out how to let him know this. Suggestions?

UPDATE: An old friend volunteered to look up the headers and they do resolve to Nigeria.  The friend jogged my memory and I remembered that there is still an old email address of my father's lying around so we'll see whether he still has access to it.

I'm not calling there.  Arm. Leg. Firstborn.

New York State's Problem and America's

Leftists.

New York State Senate Democrats refuse to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States. And when one of their number tries to stand, he is pulled down.

So does that mean that this particular group has no allegiance, no loyalty--no Fidelity--toward this country?  Just wondering.  It would be instructive to know.

(Thanks to La Shawn Barber)

California's Problem--and America's (RESTORED)

NOTICE: I don't know what happened to this post but this is the last time that I'm going to compose a post without saving it in Word or some other external word processing program.  Will post it again.

RESTORED POST:

Los Angeles Times:

How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature’s work?

Karen Bass (D-CA), Speaker of the California Assembly:

The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.

(Why is it that the innately tyrannical always whine about “unfairness?”)

The United States Constitution, Amendment One: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(All emphasis mine.)

There’s something happening here, a process I call the “Coconut Treatment” and it most certainly is not a new process.  It’s as old as the Garden itself; a recasting of roles, of characteristics and of characters.  It's where good becomes evil and evil, good. Where exercising one's rights under the Constitution and under the precepts of Natural Law becomes "terrorism."  It’s a pretense meant to undergird a pretext for…something.  Wait and watch.

(Thanks to Ed Morrissey who notes that the LA Times interviewer failed to challenge the Speaker’s monstrous assertion.) 

Idolatry (UPDATED)

Sometimes when you're surfing, you find things that just need posting--a "coincidence," if you like.

Beware of manufacturing a god of your own: a god who is all mercy but not just, a god who is all love but not holy, a god who has a heaven for everybody but a hell for none, a god who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and broad in eternity. Such a god is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible, there is no God at all.

Beware of making selections from your Bible to suit your taste. Dare not to say, ‘I believe this verse, for I like it. I refuse that, for I cannot reconcile it with my views’. Nay! But O man, who art thou that repliest against God? By what right do you talk in this way? Surely it were better to say over EVERY chapter in the word, “Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth”. Ah! If men would do this, they would never deny the unquenchable fire.

J.C. Ryle (1816-1900), Fire, Fire!

(Thanks to Conservative Black Woman)

UPDATE: The "Jesus" described by Liberation Theologies is most certainly an idol, as is the little-g god worshiped by Liberation theologians such as James Cone, prophet of Black Liberation Theology.  Of course we remember Cone's god: the one who will get revenge on the "white enemy."  And of course we remember who BLT's most famous adherent is.

Pay Attention

Don't forget to watch what's going on with our government while attention is diverted by the shell of Michael Jackson.

UPDATE:  The United States won't use force to inspect the North Korean ships suspected of transporting nuclear materials!

Rape the treasury, abandon our friends and leave us prone to our psychopathic enemies--along with countless other transgressions.  A picture is forming--or it should be.

We have one potent weapon and those of you who are inclined, I hope that you are all using it. He who has an ear...

Michael Jackson

1958-2009. Heart attack.  He was exactly three years older that I am.

 I hope that he repented his sins.  Otherwise...

(Click photo for story)

This is how I'll always remember him.

UPDATE:  Holy crap!  Did the Onion predict the future?

UPDATE:  One of the Jackson 5's greatest songs, acapella.

What I'm Reading (This Month)

In preparation for a momentous Independence Day...

An excerpt, page 47:

The judiciary today behaves in the manner of an ongoing constitutional convention, unilaterally amending the Constitution almost at will. A majority of Supreme Court justices have, on occasion, even justified the use of foreign law in interpreting the Constitution.The application of customs, traditions and values that attach to foreign cultures and laws provides no legitimate insight into America’s Constitution and diminishes the contemporary role of the state and federal representative branches in writing America’s laws and amending (or not) the Constitution.The arbitrary application of foreign law—which provides and activist justice with an infinite smorgasbord of legal options—is a rejection of the predicate for America’s governmental system.And it lasts only as long as the next opinion.

As the wind blows sand, the basis for these opinions and the opinions themselves will shift in relation to whomever is wielding power and how coercive that power is. That is what will become the law's basis: a person or persons.

Aren't the Iranian people battling their government over such an arrangement at this very moment?

Get Me Out of Here

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa just announced that he will not run for Governor of California in 2010. You know, of course, what that means in Leftist-speak...that he will.

(Thanks to KABC via text message)

The Right Leader

This Father’s Day has me thinking particularly of God the Father—the Good Shepherd who leads his flock down the right path.

It’s obvious that our earthly fathers choose us, whether they are conscious of it or not.  But don’t forget:  our Heavenly Father consciously does the same thing.  But He won’t compel you to follow.   You, the individual, must answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It’s a life-and-death issue to choose whom you will serve—whom you will allow to lead you.

Simply, I’m thankful to have been called and even more thankful for the grace to say ‘yes.’

The Family Hero

Private Quinton Ezeagwula, the young soldier who survived the Arkansas terror attack committed by the Islamist Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is shocked that people are calling him a hero,  but his mother, Sonja Ezeagwula says that he's a good kid who beat the odds in many ways.

She said her son stayed away from gangs and drugs as a youth and was doing something positive. "He was supposed to have been a statistic from a dysfunctional family. Look what happened."

The Ezeagwulas also think the world of the late Private William Long's family and Private Ezeagwula's mother is

"overwhelmed with how much love Americans have for this country. I really am. And I'm glad I got a chance to see it."

She said her family is Christian, "and we believe when something happens, God will turn it around," and good will come of it.

Amen.

The Second Revolution

In the wake of what appear to be a stolen election by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (as if all Iranian presidential election outcomes since 1979's revolution aren’t determined in advance by the mullahs), Iran’s people are rising up against their rulers in favor of the opposing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi.  As with any revolution, it isn’t pretty.  It is, however, breath-taking.

Instead of going on over things about which I have only cursory knowledge (as if that has stopped me before) here are some words you should read and photos you should peruse.

How an authoritarian theocracy puts down dissent (photos and videos).

Totten—Iran’s government is the Foe of the World:

“Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s police and the Basij militia are using violence and terror to suppress the Iranian people at home. His terrorist proxies fire missiles at Israel while torturing, maiming, and murdering Palestinians. He sponsored a violent coup d’etat against the elected government in Beirut last year with his Hezbollah militia. He sponsors a terrorist insurgency against the elected government of Iraq, while his fanatical proxies shoot and kill American soldiers. A car bomb cell belonging to the regime’s Lebanese franchise was recently arrested in Azerbaijan, and more cells were rolled up in Egypt. Terrorists sponsored and encouraged by him and his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, have murdered civilians from Argentina to Japan.

The regime’s only allies in the world are terrorist armies and Bashar Assad’s Baath Party state in Syria. Assad himself, like Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, is a pariah among the Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Azeris, and Israelis who make up the region.

 In Tehrangeles, support for the people.

 Obama Administration: No condemnation for Iran's violent government suppression of protest.  I thought that the president’s “We’re all Muslims now” speech had made things all better in the Muslim world! 

The world waits for the Leader of the Land of the Free.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

Fifteen

UPDATE: Not happy campers: the LAPD.

UPDATE (June 15, 2009): Sigh. For sure did my LAPD motorcycle cop friend have to dispose of another uniform after last night's "celebration."

No Greater Love

D-Day plus 23734.

Could we do it again? Could we sacrifice for the freedom of others? Yes, of course; that question has been answered already. But the number who would do so has grown smaller. That's okay. It's part of the flow of history.

Fading Away

Everyone should be prepared to fight for liberty [...] our laws give us our freedom and I think that's worth fighting for.

-- Charles Donald Albury, co-pilot of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, (1920-2009).