1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Holiday spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they’re serving rum balls.
2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. It’s rare.. You cannot find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It’s not as if you’re going to turn into an eggnog-alcoholic or something. It’s a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It’s later than you think. It’s Christmas!
3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That’s the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.
4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they’re made with skim milk or whole milk. If it’s skim, pass. Why bother? It’s like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.
5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Holiday party is to eat other people’s food for free. Lots of it. Hello?
6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year’s. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do.. This is the time for long naps, which you’ll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.
7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don’t budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They’re like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you’re never going to see them again.
8. Same for pies. Apple, Pumpkin, Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or if you don’t like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day?
9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it’s loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.
10. One final tip: If you don’t feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven’t been paying attention. Re-read tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner. Remember this motto to live by:
“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate and wine in one hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!”
1. Make Government Open and TransparentJust so you don't think I'm kidding, here on you tube is BHO proclaiming this to be the case.
2. Make it "Impossible" for Congressmen to slip in Pork Barrel Projects
3. Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public (republicans shut out)
4. No more secrecy
5. Public will have 5 days to look at a Bill
6. You'll know what's in it (Republican Senators didn't know)
7. We will put every pork barrel project online
The Democratic Party is not so much a political party anymore as much as it is a public relations firm whose primary target audience is that of a remedial civics class.
Why with 60 votes are Democrats so ineffective, but with 50 votes Republicans excel?
...
It's not about the votes, people. It's about leadership. The current occupant of the White House doesn't like to fight, and the leadership in Congress has never been as good at their jobs, at marshaling their own party, as the Republicans were when they were in the majority. The President is supposed to rally the country, effectively putting pressure on opposition members of Congress to sit down and shut up. And the congressional leadership is supposed to rally its members to hold the line, and get the 51 votes necessary for passing legislation in a climate where the minority is too afraid to use the filibuster. When you have a President who is constitutionally, or intellectually, unable to stand for anything, and a congressional leadership that, rather than disciplining its own members and forging ahead with its own agenda, cedes legislative authority to a president who refuses to lead, you have a recipe for exactly what happened last night. Weakness, chaos, and failure.
We lost real health care reform not because we don't have a "real" filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. We lost health care reform because we don't have a real leader anywhere in our party.
"How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?" (Ps 13:1-2).
Have you ever heard someone jokingly say, "It's not easy being me?" This expression is poking fun at their unique personality or challenges they face in life. Well, it wasn't easy being King David.
His life was a life of extreme highs and extreme lows. He was a shepherd, a political leader, a builder, a prophet, a businessman, a warrior, a lover, a giver, a murderer and a worshiper. He must have been criticized by others as being hypocritical in his early career. In each of these roles he achieved things for God but he also failed God on many occasions. He had a creative-type personality, which is often very passionate with many mood swings. We see this side of him when he unabashedly danced before the Lord in front of his subjects almost naked (2 Sam 6:14).
When David wrote his psalms he was honest about what he was feeling. When he feared his enemies he expressed it. When he could not understand why God was silent, he expressed it as in the psalm above.
However, David never stayed in the place of despair. He often ended his psalms like this one. "But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me" (Ps 13:5-6).
David chooses to focus on what God has done for him, not what He has not done. If you are waiting for a breakthrough with God, be honest with Him about your hopes and dreams. However, also affirm your faith and trust in Him to accomplish His purposes through your life. Be an overcomer.
First reported by American Family radio and Fox News. Thank God for Watchmen on the Walls.
In Indiana a "christmas" program was presented that the children sang no actual songs about Jesus. His name was never mentioned.
BUT
GUESS WHO'S NAME WAS? ALLAH. These are impressionable Second Graders. This is not a mistake or political correctness gone amock, this is EVIL. Let's call it what it really is.
From this report (read the whole thing)
Here’s what the children were assigned to sing:
“Allah is God, we recall at dawn,
Praying ‘til night during Ramadan
At this joyful time we pray happiness for you,
Allah be with you all your life through.”But when it came time to perform the “Christian” part of Christmas, children were assigned to say:
“I didn’t know there was a little boy at the manger. What child is this?
I’m not sure if there was a little boy or not.
Then why did you paint one on your nativity window?
I just thought if there was a little boy, I’d like to know exactly what he (sic) say.Micah Clark, executive director of the Indiana AFA, launched an Internet protest once he heard about the allegations. “What surprised me here is that we’ve had a secular scrubbing of Christmas for so long and the school apparently didn’t see the problem with kids singing to Allah,” he told FOX News Radio. “You won’t even mention Jesus and you’re going to force my child to sing about Allah?
If you wonder why American newspapering is dying, consider this sign-off:
AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.
Wow. That's ten "AP writers" plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That's eleven writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
No, the Associated Press assigned eleven writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book
Now we have this. From the AP's article covering (up) ClimateGate:
The AP studied all the e-mails for context, with five reporters reading and rereading them—about 1 million words in total.
That's less than half the reporters they assigned to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's book.
"The question here is only whether the Constitution allows Congress to declare that a single, named organization is barred from all federal funding in the absence of a trial," Gershon wrote in a 21-page decision.
Matthew Yglesias: “The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it’s not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it’s the fact that the country has become ungovernable.”
Funny, that dumb cowboy Bush seemed to get a lot done with fewer votes in Congress. . . .
Plus, from the comments: “There have been no major institutional changes in the United States government in recent history that have caused it to ‘become ungovernable.’ There just isn’t enough political support to enact various news laws and policies that you favor. Tough. If you hadn’t become seduced by the delusion that Obama is a ‘progressive’ and that last year’s election represented some kind of historic realignment in favor of ‘progressive’ policies you might have seen this coming.”
Or, as Ed Morrissey noted a while ago: “Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.”
I hope he begins to figure it out. And I hope he soon gets a congress made up of adults.
I'm starting to root for him, we need him to be competent soon. I can only hope.
Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama's declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they'd rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that's somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country's difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited. The closeness in the Obama/Bush numbers also has implications for the 2010 elections. Using the Bush card may not be particularly effective for Democrats anymore, which is good news generally for Republicans and especially ones like Rob Portman who are running for office and have close ties to the former President.
In recent weeks we have witnessed liberals in the highest level of government sanctimoniously defend terrorists who kill us, while persecuting those who defend us from murderous attacks. In an effort to understand this reversal of good and evil, it has become a cliché to call liberals crazy. But while supremely hypocritical, liberalism is not insane. It is a highly adaptive ego device that enables people to violate commitments, vilify those who are true to their faith, and avoid personal sacrifice while feeling great about themselves. The only defense against hypocrisy is self-knowledge; the politics, spirituality, and morality of liberalism are well-constructed firmaments of self-delusion.Please read the whole thing, particularly if you are a Liberal. And then, Please tell me where the author goes wrong. I want to know.The United States was founded in a Judeo-Christian theocentrism that is informed by scripture and assumes a personal God who hears prayers and grants forgiveness for sin. Theocentrism provides stable laws and settled moral codes.In the mid-twentieth century, an unorganized, reactive spiritual orientation arose, egocentrism, which has become the dominant moral framework in our nation. This orientation says there may or may not be a God, so each individual must follow his or her own conscience and ethical values. Theocentrism has been promulgated by traditional religion. Egocentrism has mainly been introduced through mass media, educational power structures, and more recently by reoriented religions.
Part of what’s happened also among a lot of companies, is they figured out how to squeeze more productivity out of the workers that they’ve got. They’re working people longer hours, they’re doing more overtime… or not, but either way, they’re producing the same amount of product or providing the same services without hiring more people. That’s something that we really going to have to work on.
Spoken like a man who’s never had to meet a payroll! In fact, in nearly every company I ever worked for, as they were growing, there were times when our customer base had expanded, but not quite enough to justify hiring new people (profitably) to take up the slack, and until that happened…mirabile dictu some of us ended up working longer hours or overtime…or not… to provide goods and services to our customers! What a bumpkin! How naive can you get???
If Obama is really serious about “working on” the problem, he can lower taxes on corporations so that they can hire more people to provide better goods and more services and still maintain a margin of profit. Also, he can stop threatening to tinker with the American healthcare system, to give employers the confidence to be able to rationally calculate what it will cost to hire those additional workers, over time, as opposed to wondering what new government regulation or requirement might bankrupt them!
Oh, yeah. And while you’re at it? Drill here. Drill now.
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Rom 1:19-20).
Have you ever had someone say, "I don't see any evidence of God. How can a person believe in someone you can't see or see any evidence even exists?"
The Bible tells us that God is revealed in His creation everyday. Look at the human body and consider the likelihood of how thousands of body parts that must work together. Someone created it to work this well. If it were a manufactured product, it would be in the repair shop all the time because of all the moving parts required to make it work.
Consider the wonderful order and balance of nature and how the seas know their boundaries, the beauty of the mountains, and the balance of rain and oxygen needed to balance the ecosystems. Consider God's signature, the rainbow.
The 12th century Scottish Christian mystic, Richard of St. Victor said, "The whole of this sensible world is like a book written by the finger of God." Look at nature and wonder at the creative design of the hundreds of thousands of species of animals like the tiger, the elephant, the great whales, and the millions of species of birds, just to name a few.
Consider the planet we live on. "The Earth is a rough sphere about eight thousand miles in diameter, which means that it's about four thousand miles straight down to the center. We're accustomed to thinking of it as a ball of rock, but that's not so: the great majority of the Earth is liquid - molten rock called magma swirling, incredible slowly, beneath our feet. The solid part of the earth that we live on, and in whose hollows the sea sits, is called the crust, and on average it's only a few miles thick - maybe ten miles. That's like a layer a third of a millimeter thick coating a football. We live on that incredibly fragile, thin layer of plates floating on the subterranean sea of magma."*
Yes, God has revealed Himself in His creation.
Folks,
I think Durbin's and Feinstein's amendment is just SWELL! You go GIRLS!
Respectfully yours,
Joseph Goebbels
(Formerly Reichsminister of Propaganda and Enlightenment)
P.S. Could someone please FedEx me three pairs of asbestos underwear and a big roll of duct tape? It's hotter than Megan Fox down here in the Ninth Circle of Hell and I've got to tape Hermann Goering's mouth permanently shut. That fat f***er been running his yap non-stop since 1946 and it's driving me piffy. Vielen Dank!
A musician named Dave Carroll recently had difficulty with United Airlines. United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a flight. Dave spent many months trying to get United to pay for damages caused by baggage handlers to his Custom Taylor guitar.
During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was left with no choice other than to create 3 music videos for YouTube exposing their lack of cooperation. The Manager responded: “Good luck with that one, pal.”
So he posted retaliatory video #1 on YouTube this past July. The video has since received over 6.2 million [now 6.3 million] hits.
United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted settlement in exchange for pulling the video. Naturally his response was: “Good luck with that one, pal.”
Taylor Guitars sent the musician 2 new custom guitars in appreciation for product recognition from the video that has lead to a sharp increase in orders.
Financial Times 10 October 2007
The route to knowledge is transparency in disagreement and openness in debate. The route to truth is the pluralist expression of conflicting views in which, often not as quickly as we might like, good ideas drive out bad.
Michael Schrage’s comment on politics and science (FT, 26 Sept 2007) struck a raw nerve: and provoked an extended response from the president of the UK’s Royal Society (FT, 1 Oct 2007). Lord Rees advocates that we should base policy on something called “the scientific consensus”, while acknowledging that such consensus may be provisional.
Father says, I am not impressed with your efforts, your fasts, your sacrifices, your ministries. I am most impresed when you are focused on ME and respond to what I have placed in your heart.
After the rush when you come back down
You're always disappointed
Nothing seems to keep you high
Drive your bargains
Push your papers
Win your medals
mess your strangers
Don't it leave you on the empty side?
All this talk about holiness now
It must be the start of the latest style
Is it all books and words
Or do you really feel it?
Do you really laugh?
Do you really care?
Do you really smile
When you smile?
You criticize and you flatter
You imitate the best
And the rest you memorize
You know the times you impress me most
Are the times when you don't try
When you don't even try
You know the times you impress me most
Are the times when you don't try
When you don't even try
Do less BETTER. Find what God has most anointed you to do. ONE THING. Do that. Local Church. Local area. Connect with ministers and leaders. Be part of what THEY are doing. Stop trying so hard. Let God do his thing. Be steady. Help other people. Don't quit or be discouraged and ONE DAY will find yourself in places and situations you could not have imagined. Embrace whatever God gave you to do and pursue that with diligence. He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek HIM and HIS anointing. Anything pursued in the flesh will fail in the end.
"Where did this man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands? Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house" (Mark 6.3, 4).
Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to spiritually impact your immediate circle of relationships and family? Jesus warned us of this phenomenon. We often relate to family and friends differently because they have a history with us that no one else has. They most likely have not had the privilege to witness the spiritual transformation that you have experienced and is evidenced by others in your life.
The spiritual authority that others may recognize in you is not there with your own family and friends. "After all, you're just my sister or brother, with whom I fought, played, and lived everyday life," is what is thought. Jesus was more qualified to be a carpenter than the Son of God in his own family and community's eyes. It was too difficult to change old perceptions of someone they knew so well. So too, is it for your family members.
The sad result of this mindset is that we often do not experience the same fruit of ministry in our family's lives that we do outside this circle. It is an unfortunate truth. "Jesus still healed a few sick people," meaning there is still a remnant of faith that can receive from you and I. Ultimately, God determines the fruit of our lives. Do not allow spiritual pride to prevent you from freely giving to your family and friends when they do not receive you in the way you think they should. You don't know which "few" God will choose to touch through your life.
Many did not receive Jesus. Therefore, many will not receive you. Nevertheless, allow God to touch the few in your circle He chooses to touch through you.
