Smoky Mountains Sunrise

Saturday, October 30, 2010

From the Pastor - "The Feast of All Saints"

A Weekly Column by Father George Rutler

The greatest saints could have been the worst people who ever lived if they had misused their native gifts. St. Augustine’s intellect could have created a convincingly false religion. St. Louis IX could have used his rank to ruin his kingdom. St. John of Capistrano could have invoked his charismatic charm to persuade the Christian soldiers to surrender Western civilization, and St. Ignatius Loyola could have used his organizational skills to destroy the Faith in foreign lands.

By the same logic, the worst villains in history could have become saints if they had used their political power, rhetorical talents, and energy to spread the Gospel. Herod the Great might have become a Christmas hero; the faithful might now be lighting candles at the tomb of Lenin as at a reliquary, and churches might have been dedicated to saints named Mao Tse-tung and Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler if . . . On that “if” hangs all human destiny. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3: 20).

The Feast of All Saints celebrates those who opened their doors to Christ. On All Souls Day the Church prays for those who have offered their free wills freely to the Lord and who now prepare, with the help of our suffrages, to enter into his glory. St. Paul said that God "alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16). The same saint, who was blinded by the perceptible light of God in Christ on the Damascus road, later assured his friend Timothy: “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance” (2 Tim. 4: 6-8). Last summer I ran a few miles in the Wall Street Race and at the finish line I received a T-shirt. I was not ungrateful for it, but Our Lord did not do all he did for us, showing us the face of God both battered and radiant, crucified and risen, just to give us a T-shirt.

The crown of righteousness is offered to all those who take off their masks, for we cannot see God if we are disguised by pride. A culture of death does not make the transition from All Hallows Eve to All Hallows Day. St. John never disguised his love for his Master, and he assures our confused world: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).


Fr. George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections, is available from Crossroads Publishing.


MYSTERY: Why Are So Many Political Operatives Moving to South Carolina After November 3rd?

From Hillbuzz

Here’s something strange: political operatives have suddenly gained massive renewed interest in the 2008 South Carolina Democrat primary.

We’re starting to coordinate the anti-Rahm Emanuel campaign here in Chicago starting November 3rd…that is where we thought all eyes in Chicago would be on Wednesday of next week.

We’re also going to be working on a campaign against the Cocktail Party GOP establishment…to stop their plan to attack Governor Palin. The 2012 GOP nomination fight essentially begins Wednesday too. We are all-in for Palin.

But we’ve been talking to everyone political we know here in the Midwest to see what they are going to do after November 2nd…and a lot of people are planning on focusing on SOUTH CAROLINA.

“Big things are going to be happening there…things that will take this White House down”.

We have a suspicion of what’s up.

It has something to do with things Obama did in the leadup to the 2008 Democrat primary in South Carolina.

It is the big mystery on the radar.

It’s going to be very busy here for the next several days, but start helping us fill in articles written about the South Carolina Democrat Primary in 2008 and how Obama made up a 20-point deficit to Hillary Clinton to end up winning that contest on Super Tuesday.

SOMETHING overlooked at the time keeps Obama up at night today.

This connects to what Ulstermann and his Democrat insider were saying about something bigger than Watergate that could bring Obama down.

Stay tuned.

Start digging through old South Carolina reporting.

Let’s team up to bring down the worst president in history and burn the Democrat Party to the ground.

Daniel Hannan on America vs. Europe


Daniel Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament and journalist, has written an important and thoughtful book on the United States, The New Road to Serfdom.

Hannan first became known to many Americans for his speech on the floor of the European Parliament where he said to then Prime Minister Gordon Brown "You cannot spend your way out of a recession." Daniel discusses why a Tea Party movement can occur in America and not in Europe, and why the European social-welfare model, toward which Obama and other socialists are moving America, is diseased and unsustainable.


Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Democrats' Final Recourse: Massive Vote Fraud

Obama Poll Workers

From American Thinker
By Selwyn Duke

The reports are rolling in from all over the country. A Craven County, NC resident attempts to vote a straight Republican ticket but his choices come up straight Democrat four times, despite receiving assistance from poll workers. In NC's Lenoir County, registered Democrat Ervin Norville also tries to vote straight Republican but finds that his ballot has the names of several Democrat candidates selected. Boulder City, NV resident Joyce Ferrara says that when she and several others went to vote for Sharon Angle, they found that Senator Harry Reid's name was already checked off. In Dallas County, TX' congressional district 30, Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson's name was the only one on the ballot in a few locations (no, she isn't running unopposed). And some states have been late in mailing out military absentee ballots, whose recipients, interestingly, are known for their Republican leanings.

These happenings are generally referred to as "mistakes" and "glitches," but if that's all they are, then we're witnessing a truly historic anomaly. Because either the mainstream media is now suppressing stories of mistakes and glitches benefitting Republicans, or the laws of probability have suddenly been rescinded and tossed coins are coming up donkey tails every time. Welcome to American elections, Venezuelan style.

I have long said that this election would see vote fraud of unprecedented magnitude. And it does seem that a perfect storm of such criminality is brewing. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just struck down an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship to vote, a treasonous act that facilitates vote fraud. Of course, some liberals are more forthcoming about their intentions; in Portland, ME and New York City, there is a push to allow non-citizens to vote. Not to be outdone, San Francisco seeks to allow even illegal aliens to cast ballots in school elections. Hey, why not? They're not illegals - they're undocumented Democrats.

Then there is the matter of the fox guarding the polling house. It has now been learned that the technicians who work on the Nevada voting machines that have been checking off Harry Reid's name are members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a leftist organization that has given tens of millions of dollars to Democrats. (By the way, do you remember all the complaints about "antiquated" paper ballots after the 2000 election? I knew that all the talk about "hanging chads" and the need for modern technology would lead to vote fraud. After all, now elections can be swayed by a well-placed, skilled hacker and there's no paper trail.)

Add to this the fact that the left is more brazen than ever. For one thing, laymen liberals, like their judges, are very influenced by precedent. And the liberal delusion that George W. Bush stole the 2000 election - thus drawing first blood - gives leftists a handy rationalization for actually stealing elections. Second, Barack Obama's DOJ's refusal to prosecute the Philadelphia Black Panthers - despite videotape evidence of their voter intimidation - sends the message that the left has almost carte blanche to sway elections by any means necessary.

Most of all, though, we have to remember that leftists are, well, leftists. They are simply much more corrupt than those on the right. I know, this sounds like blind partisanship, so I'll explain.

I'll introduce this with a point once made by former military-intelligence man Ralph Peters about how you could understand the Taliban: You have to view them as aliens. His point was that most people have trouble conceiving of mindsets radically different from their own and, consequently, often mistakenly assume that others operate by the same principles they do. Even liberals recognize this phenomenon - when they warn of "ethnocentrism." I, however, am more concerned about conservocentrism.

If you're an average bright-eyed conservative and you really want to understand leftists, begin by viewing them as aliens. Because they really aren't like you, and the difference isn't simply ideology, either. They truly are far more dishonest, deceitful and manipulative than conservatives.

In explaining why this is so, I'll again draw an analogy to Islamists. Many have pointed out that Western and Islamic thought dictate very different things with respect to honesty. While the West's formative religion, Christianity, teaches that lying is a sin, period, Islam states that lying to an infidel for the glory of Allah is a good. In other words, Christians can lie, but they must commit what they consider a sin to do so. Muslims can do so with what they view as divine approval.

Another difference is that Islamic thought includes a concept known as "dual truth," which basically states, writes American Thinker's Patrick Poole, "that what may be true in the realm of religion may be contrary to what is true in nature." Thus, even if an action is forbidden in Islamic texts, Muslims may be able to take it in the "real world." It's always convenient when you have more than one "truth" with which to justify behavior.

This brings us to liberals. Like Islamists, they have more than one "truth" from which to choose, something they readily admit to with pronouncements such as "That is your truth; someone else's might be different." To be precise, however, they use the word "truth" loosely, as a synonym for taste, and don't actually believe in Truth, properly defined (i.e., divinely ordained morality). They are moral relativists.

What does this mean? It means the sky - or perhaps I should say the netherworld - is the limit for behavior restrictions. Unlike Islamists, they don't have to find their justifications in medieval texts or complex philosophical contortions, as their credo is simple: "If it feels good, do it." Without belief in anything that transcends man to use as a yardstick for behavior, they ultimately have nothing left to use but the "god within," which is just a gussied-up name for emotion. And their emotion-driven ends really do justify their means. If they feel conservatives are "evil," conservatives must be. And if they feel that any tactic necessary to vanquish that evil is fair game, it must be. Understand that beneath the light of their deified feelings, lying, cheating or stealing to win elections is not merely justifiable - it is a "good," and one they do with the only approval they need: self-approval. They are aliens from a planet much like the Hell described by the Devil in an old comic strip (in The New Yorker, I think) when he said, "There's no right or wrong down here. It's whatever works for you." It is a place where there is a wall of separation between man and Truth.

And the truth is that in this election, as in every one, some races will be close enough so that vote fraud can be a factor. So how should we proceed once results are in? First, conservatives need an attitude adjustment: They have to understand the nature of their enemy (as outlined above) and become warriors. We mustn't for a moment entertain the notion that the best thing for the nation after a suspicious loss is to concede the race graciously. Rather, the best thing for the nation is to oust the alien vote-snatchers from power by any moral means necessary.

Second, we must recognize that razor-close races almost always go Democrat for a reason (think: Al Franken in Minnesota) and view every such loss as a probable vote-fraud scenario. Then we must analyze exit polling - which has become a very precise science - for discrepancies between its findings and election results. And when they are found, the matter must be sifted to the very bottom.

Alien vote-snatchers are worse than murderers. They not only steal votes but also our future; they undermine the rule of law and threaten the republic itself. In a saner time, they would probably be hanged. And if it becomes apparent that the government - the Eric Holder DOJ, judges and others - has become so corrupt that it will preserve its power by negating the votes of the people, then we should consider our Founding Fathers' words: "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...."

Let's see if the attempt at alteration works this November 2.

ACORN Whistleblower Anita Moncrief on Obamunist Voter Fraud





Is Obama Mentally Ill?

For weeks there have been rumors from "inside sources" that a massive White House scandal is about to be revealed. In light of some of the most un-presidential comments ever uttered, his racism, talk of Republican "enemies," the large number of White House resignations, criminal voter fraud, the trashing of the United States Constitution, his constant vacations and travel, his detachment from the job, the sidelining of the United States in international affairs, and endless basketball and golf games, we wonder if Obama is undergoing a mental breakdown.

It appears to us that hope and change depend more and more on the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 4.