Happy Thanksgiving

This morning in the Upper Room devotional I read that Thanksgiving Day is not considered a religious holiday. Maybe it is because most religions don't have special services to commemorate the day but what else could it be? Who else should you give thanks to other than the one that is responsible for our good fortune? I believe the saddest part of Thanksgiving is that it serves as a reminder of how little we remember to give thanks for everything that we have been blessed with. In a time when we tend to dwell on what we don't have I pray that I will stop to remember my many blessings more often.

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17 (NIV)

I'm Just Saying - Thank GOD!

More on the Elephant

Excellent point on the Democrats and UAW by Mark Alexander in EDITORIAL EXEGESIS over at the Patriot Post.

....there's a system in place for dealing with crises such as this, even at the scale of massive corporations. It's called bankruptcy, and it should not be written off as unthinkable. Filing for Chapter 11 protection under bankruptcy law is the normal way a company stays in business when facing an unmanageable financial situation. It keeps creditors at bay while the company reorganizes under court supervision and settles its debts. In recent years it has served as a refuge for major airlines (Delta and United) which, you may notice, continued to fly while in Chapter 11 and, post-bankruptcy, fly today. Bankruptcy protection also frees companies from union contracts. Could this be why it seems to have been taken off the table as an option, at least among Democrats? We can only surmise, but it's clear that a bankruptcy process would be rough going for the United Auto Workers." --

I'm Just Saying - these elephants aren't talking peanuts!

The Elephant in the Room

No, not me. I'm talking about the union complicity in the bankruptcy of the big three automobile makers. Not satisfied with the $25,000,000,000 of OUR money to "retool their factories so they can make more fuel-efficient vehicles" they are now demanding that we throw ANOTHER $25,000,000,000 into their coffers.

Schemes such as the UAW program, called the Jobs Bank at GM have contribitued to their downward spiral. This program provided nearly full pay for laid-off workers while they waited for new jobs. Great work if you can not get it.

High labour costs are part of the reason for the problems. "UAW members' generous pay and benefits have gained them a reputation as the aristocracy of the US labour movement. Much of GM's debt was taken on in the early part of the decade to finance its blue-collar pension plan."

They have also refused to allow the auto industry any flexibility to change and have been with the manufactures in a fight against moves to increase mileage on newer models.

Union production workers are paid around $27 an hour (skilled tradespeople make evenmore), but non union workers do the same job for $14 an hour.

I will admit the auto executives are not totally blameless in this mess as George Will points out this morning.

Nothing," said a General Motors spokesman last week, "has changed relative to the GM board's support for the GM management team during this historically difficult economic period for the U.S. auto industry.

Boy that pretty much sums up the reasons for not helping them out.

Now the Democrats insist that we help them out!!!!

I'm Just Saying - they made their own bed.

Never Mind

Surprise, surprise, another debunking of the global warming hysteria is getting very little press. Last week it was reported "On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record."

During this same time period Tibet suffered its worst snowstorm ever and a previously reported "hot spot" in the Arctic actually shows sea-ice recovering 30% faster that last year. Oops!

Well it turns out the "alarming" statics were not from October but were just a duplicate of September's numbers.

from The world has never seen such freezing heat

I'm Just Saying - people still believe this crap?

Not Gun Control?

He may have duped the masses into believing his rhetoric about being against gun control while campaigning but the chosen one states it quite clearly on his web site. Scroll down to CRIME AND LAW ENFORCEMENT

Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.

Remember that loophole they are talking about will prevent you from selling a gun in your collection to another individual. This type of buying and selling is quite common at gun shows and used by many as a hobby to enable trying different types of guns at a reasonable cost.

I'm Just Saying - and you wonder why I bought an AR-15?

VETERANS DAY

From todays Wall Street online journal

Soldiers of the Great War

The guns fell silent 90 years ago today. Between the time that the terms of the Armistice were signed in the predawn hours of November 11, 1918 and the moment it came into effect at 11 o'clock that morning, the Western Front registered as many as 11,000 casualties, including a conservatively estimated 320 Americans killed and 3,200 wounded.

I'm Just Saying - thank a veteran today!

Diversity

Today President elect "The Chosen One" has announced that his new cabinet will be diverse and include both Sunnis and Shiites.

I'm Just Saying - get your keffiyeh ready!

Time to come together

A phrase you always hear from the Democrats which means it is time for the Republicans to do what they are told. Funny how they never wanted to "get along" with the Republicans but it's somehow divisive when the Democrats are in charge. I can feel the love already coming from Harry Reid from this article;

Reid was leaning toward removing Lieberman as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. .... "While I understand that Sen. Lieberman has voted with Democrats a majority of the time, his comments and actions have raised serious concerns among many in our caucus," Reid said.

Come together?

I'm Just Saying - Yeah, right!

update - or as Ann Coulter would say;
"For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president."

Treatment of Bush

Here's an excerpt from a column that points out how the pundits have trashed not only George Bush but more importantly the office of the President.
"The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace".
What must our enemies be thinking?
By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004.

I'm Just Saying - it certainly is a disgrace.

Election Postmortem

Taking a look at the wide spread defeat of Republicans in last night's election I see two major reasons - the Republicans and the culpability of the media.

First off the Republicans have strayed far from the conservative principles embodied by the 1994 Republican Revolution that put them in power. What started as a "change" (there's that word again) to doing business as usual has ended in them trying to outdo the unfettered spending spree of the Democrats. Pork barrel spending used to be a trait associated with the Democrats repaying their campaign supporters but has evolved into meaning any politician. So the rhetorical question begging to be asked here is "What happened to the Reagan Republicans?" Well, short of saying they went over to the dark side (no pun intended) they became part of the "where's mine?" crowd and added to the problem instead of trying to solve it.

On top of that the Northeast chose what most conservatives would call a moderate to be the Republican candidate. McCain was not my first choice to be the Republican nominee, in fact not even in the top 3, but due to the skewed primary election process we didn't have a real choice in the matter.

Then we've got the media. OK, before you liberals get your panties in a wad, I'm speaking of the unprecedented advertising money as well as the brown nosed (again, no pun intended) "reporting" of the campaign events and other media denigrating.

Some say that this election was bought with money from dubious sources and while that remains unproven I do believe the election was bought. Although initially agreeing with McCain to the limits of public funding after finding out how popular their candidate was the Democrats shunned public funding. While McCain was limited to $84M in September the chosen one raised $150M that same month. When you outspend your opponent by 3 to 1 in the closing months of the election what else could you call it. As of the last reporting the O campaign has spent nearly $650M.

The second aspect of media complicity helps explain how we got to this point. Never before in history has there been such visceral reaction by the media to a President as there has been toward Bush. This toward a man that inherited an America weakened by the lax policies of his predecessor. They did there best to help the chosen one tie McCain to Bush ever chance they got. It was reported by an independent source that only 14% of stories in which McCain was a significant factor were positive, while 57% were negative and 36% of stories about Obama were positive, and only 29% have been negative. What bias?

Last but not least of the media blame goes to the Hollywood crowd together with late night talk shows, since the mindless throng look to them for guidance. They have moved from making fun of the accent or physical traits of the President to showing contempt and hatred for the man and his policies. It is one thing to make fun of a man because of the way he pronounces nuclear but entirely another matter to dismiss his administration and policies as idiotic. And isn't it odd that those doing the criticizing and calling Bush stupid could not have even been admitted to Yale or Harvard Business School.

Election Update
In Fort Bend County the unexpired term for State Senator in District 17 was filled by a Democrat but there were 2 Democrats and 4 Republicans running. Also Democrat Dora "the explorer" Olivo held onto her District 27 seat. On the brighter side, Texas did manage to reelect Republican Senator John Cornyn and help keep the Democrats from obtaining the 60 votes needed for a filibuster proof majority. In my district Democrat Congressman Nick Lampson was ousted in favor of Republican Pete Olson (who I was less than thrilled with).

I'm Just Saying - It could have been worse!

Great Quote

Check back later for the election postmortem, but meanwhile this is the best quote I've seen in a while coming from Neal Boortz.

Rhetorical ability is so very important in politics. Obama has it, McCain does not. Smooth talkers win at single's bars and in politics .. often with similar outcomes for the listener.

I'm Just Saying - I agree, we're screwed!

Change

I'm Just Saying - NObama!