The Holy Innocents Matthew 2:16-18

16 Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi. 17 Then what had been spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:
18 “A VOICE WAS HEARD IN RAMAH,  WEEPING AND GREAT MOURNING,  RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN;  AND SHE REFUSED TO BE COMFORTED,  BECAUSE THEY WERE NO MORE.”

"Just a few days ago, billions of Christians around the world celebrated the birth of an infant who was born to a young, impoverished, and unmarried woman. This weekend, many Christian churches also recognized the feast day of the Holy Innocents - the day when King Herod, fearing he may lose his political power, ordered the death of all the male infants in Bethlehem and its surrounds. Historians and historical representations of the numbers of children lost vary - from 15-20... infants . . .to 64,000, and medieval writers liked to use the number 144,000. The exact number is immaterial. The reality is that our modern sensibilities cannot fathom a world in which political leaders order the death of countless innocent infants in order to secure their own political power." (Columbus Right to Life)

But they do, don't they? Or at least they are complicit in the killing through laws, insurance and cultural pressure. It is estimated that 85% of women who abort have been pressured by parents, boyfriend, husband, or "friends" who convince her carrying to term would ruin her life, his life, her education, their economics, etc., and allowing the baby to live and be adopted by another family--well, that would just be too difficult. In Texas, home of the popular blonde politician in pink tennies, 63% of abortions were for black or Hispanic babies.

There’s a clawback feature in Obamacare

“The government has long been permitted to seek reimbursement for healthcare services by attaching the assets of deceased Medicaid enrollees. But before ObamaCare, an asset test was mandatory for Medicaid applicants and only those with few or no assets could qualify for government provided care. As a result, there was little of value which the state could attach after death.

ObamaCare, however, has done away with the asset test. Eligibility for Medicaid is now dependent only upon income. And at 138% of the federal poverty mark, that eligibility level is much higher than in previous years. Therefore, countless Americans who have accumulated valuable assets yet show little income will now qualify as Medicaid recipients.

So if parents have been placed on a state Medicaid roll, the house, car or other assets they had intended leaving to their children will be attached by that state upon their death. A lien will be filed and full payment for those “free” healthcare services provided from the date of enrollment until the time of death will be confiscated from any available estate holdings.”

http://www.westernjournalism.com/obamacare-shock-strip-assets-dead-seniors/#!

http://www.cjr.org/the_second_opinion/covering_an_obamacare_clawback.php?page=all

http://hoofin.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/the-obamacare-clawback-provision-a-trap-door/

http://www.thelundreport.org/resource/poorest_oregonians_could_be_hurt_by_obamacare

Racists are upping the ante

This is what GLAAD and NAACP are trying to call racist. Phil Robertson, unlike some ivory tower academics, poverty pimps, and civil rights careerists, worked along side blacks in the fields. In the GQ interview he said,

"I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.  They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word! Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

He didn't say no black was ever mistreated; he was talking about his fellow workers. He said they were godly people. Now Democrats think it's just great to keep poor people on welfare instead of working (but it's OK for "undocumented workers" to be in the fields). Who is the phony looking for trouble? And "Jim Crow?" Those were regulations and laws put in place by Democrats.

 http://www.newsninja2012.com/racist-naacp-agenda-to-paint-phil-robertson-as-racist-starts-to-become-weak-argument-to-many/

Crockpot-Tamale-bake

http://crockpotladies.com/recipe-categories/entrees/crockpot-tamale-bake/

Ingredients

1 Lb. lean ground beef or ground turkey

1/2 cup finely diced onion

1 teaspoon minced garlic

3/4 cups yellow cornmeal

1 egg

1 1/2 cups milk

1 (15.25 oz.) can corn, drained

1 (14.5 oz.) can diced tomatoes, undrained

1 (1.25 oz.) envelope taco seasoning mix

1 (2.25 oz.) can sliced black olives, drained

1 Cup shredded cheddar cheese

Minced green onion, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. In a large skillet brown and crumble your ground beef with the onion and garlic until the meat is no longer pink.
2. Drain ground beef to remove excess fat.
3. In a large bowl combine cornmeal, egg and milk and mix until smooth
4. Add to the cornmeal mixture the corn, tomatoes, taco seasoning, olives and ground beef mixture and mix well.
5. Dump mixture into the bottom of a 4 quart crock-pot.
6. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 hours or HIGH for 3 hours.
7. Sprinkle with cheese and cover again and cook for an additional 15 minutes until cheese is melted.
8. To serve, spoon into bowls or onto plate and garnish with chopped green onion.

Legalized gambling and recreational pot

The push to legalize pot and various state government’s agreeing to that and other dissipating activities like casino gambling (now legal in Ohio) bring to mind what Frederick Douglass said in his autobiography about why slave owners gave slaves a week holiday between Christmas and New Year’s and encouraged drinking and all manner of evil activity—for them it was a taste of “freedom,” enough to convince them they were better off as slaves. He wrote that by making this concession the owners were assured of obedience and the slaves were less likely to revolt.

“They do not give the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk.”  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-marijuana-colorado-20131228,0,6459410.story

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-marijuana-laws-map-medical-recreational.html

Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution; the Alinsky Model

Most revolutionaries never had a plan writes David Horowitz in "Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution." They have a vague idea of the kingdom of heaven they propose to create. . . Marx's "kingdom of freedom," Alinsky's "open society," or the current left's "social justice." Otherwise they never spend two seconds thinking about how to make an actual society work. How to keep people from committing crimes against each other; how to get them to put their shoulder to the wheel; how to provide incentives that will motivate individuals to produce wealth." p. 51.

                         

Both Obama and H. Clinton are fans of Alinsky. http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/articles/rules%20for%20revolution%20(2).pdf

Hillary Clinton’s 1969 Thesis

David Horowitz's parents were members of the Communist Party USA; and he was a Communist as a young man, until he began to see their ruthlessness. Now he is a Conservative.

“When Obama announced a paltry $100 million in budget cuts, and insisted this was part of a budget-trimming process that would add up to “real money,” he clearly understood that the public processes these numbers very differently from the way budget wonks do. Alinsky wrote: “The moment one gets into the area of $25 million and above, let alone a billion, the listener is completely out of touch, no longer really interested, because the figures have gone above his experience and almost are meaningless. Millions of Americans do not know how many million dollars make up a billion.”” National Review online

Obama has not kept his oath of office

We know how he has shredded his own legacy—Obamacare. Supposedly, it is the law of the land, but you’d never know that from the way he has worked around and violated it.  But it isn’t the first time, or the last.

One of Obama’s first acts as president—only a month since he took the oath of office—was to announce his elimination of the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste. He flouted decades of scientific study and countermanded the explicit decisions of Congress set forth in duly-enacted laws over many years. In 1982 Congress directed the government to assume responsibility for commercial nuclear waste. In 1987 it singled out Yucca Mountain for evaluation as the repository because of its remote and dry location. After years of research, Congress in 2002 endorsed the Yucca Mountain site.

Between 1987 and 2009, when Obama put himself above the law by effectively revoking it, $13.5 billion was spent on the program; a five-mile tunnel was bored into the mountain, and hundreds of studies determined the safety of the site for thousands of years. The nuclear industry was also forced to pay $22 billion to the Energy Department for establishment of the repository. Obama is not a scientist, and his decision was not made from a review of the scientific research. But that is not the point, nor is the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that went down the drain.

http://blog.heartland.org/2013/12/obama-vs-the-constitution/

Cat hair

Today I bought a "Fur Be Gone," a tools which is supposed to work on the carpet and the cat. Usually I just use a roll of masking tape. Anyone ever tried this?http://www.petbuddies.com/prod_details.php?cat=35&p=204

Green is for cats; blue is for dogs. I now expect pet tools to start appearing on my Facebook page and along the side of any page I visit on the internet; I’ve been getting ads for coconut oil since I blogged about that.

There is no alternative; why Margaret Thatcher matters

Our January book club selection is the above title about Margaret Thatcher, written by Claire Berlinski, published in 2008, before her death in April of this year, but after the amazing economic turnaround of Britain and before the whole globe was experiencing a recession.

“When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, Britain was in economic crisis, and had been for some time. From 1974, the top rate of income tax had been 83%, in some cases rising to an incredible 98%, killing growth, job creation and economic prosperity,[i] while inflation was dangerously high at 27%. In addition, powerful trade unions had taken control of the country’s many nationalized industries.” American Thinker 

The left both here at home and in Britain still demonize her. 

I’m enjoying the author’s writing style—a bit like following her around as she searches the archives and interviews people who knew her. She’s no lap dog, and it’s not hard to spot the areas she dislikes about Thatcher.

Your politics will decide whether you think Obama snubbed the British with the delegation he sent to her funeral (similar to those he sent to Chavez’ funeral which happened in the same time frame).  Of course, compared to the hoop-la of Mandela, there’s just no comparison.

My New Year’s Resolution 2013

I did this.  Only put 4 slips of paper in it.  But I looked at it today.  I had forgotten all 4, so it’s still a nice plan, if you can keep up with it. I guess this is what blogs are for: web logs, a log you keep on the world wide web.

Apple seeds

From the World’s Healthiest Foods Tips, Dec. 28, 2013

Is it OK to eat apple seeds?

“I don't recommend eating apple seeds, and it is not because a tree will grow in your stomach! Apple seeds, like many fruit seeds, contain compounds called cyanogenic glycosides, such as amygdalin, which act as part of the plant's natural defense mechanism. Cyanogenic glycosides are naturally occurring cyanide/sugar compounds that can release small amounts of toxic cyanide when their sugar groups are removed.

Prune and peach pits, which are well studied in the research world, have far greater concentrations of cyanogenic glycosides than apple seeds; however, the lower levels in apple seeds could still pose problems in terms of stomachache or food poisoning, and a few seeds chewed by a small child could result in poisoning. Although the severity of the problem caused by ingesting apple seeds would depend upon many factors, including a person's health, I don't think that the potential risk here is worth taking.”

Holzbecher MD, Moss MA, Ellenberger HA. The Cyanide Content of Laetrile Preparations, Apricot, Peach and Apple Seeds. J Toxicol Clin Toxicol. 1984;22(4):341-7.

I eat an apple almost everyday, and for the last two years, also an orange.  My favorite apple is the Honey Crisp, which are almost unavailable now. But I’ve never eaten the seeds.  Good to know.  Health benefits of apples.

Military sexual assaults

Most sexual assaults in the military are male on male. NYT made a big step by reporting this, but completely gives gay perps a pass either by referring to them as "self identified" heterosexuals, or not mentioning them at all, and blaming homophobia as the reason it's not reported. Needs a bit more serious research or we'll never see anyone charged, only victims treated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/us/in-debate-over-military-sexual-assault-men-are-overlooked-victims.html?hp&_r=1

http://www.bandbacktogether.com/male-sexual-assault-resources/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2449454/More-men-raped-US-women-including-prison-sexual-abuse.html

Mix equal parts of narcissism and hubris

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now," Barack Obama said the night he won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008, "we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." 

And then came five years of the lies, exaggeration, the narcissism, the snooping, the power grabs, the distain for Americans, and now he looks ridiculous.

Planned Parenthood’s disgusting parody of the 12 Days of Christmas

Tim Welsh, President and CEO of Pregnancy Decision Health Center writes:

“The twelve days of Christmas have a lot of meaning to me.

You see, I was raised in a rather conservative Catholic household and all eleven of us children knew what the twelve days meant. We knew it went from Christmas to (what Catholics refer to as) the Feast of the Epiphany and represented a celebration of the infancy of our Lord.

Indeed, my father (now almost 90 years old) is proud to say that he was born on the Feast of the Epiphany, traditionally observed on January 6th.

So it's painful to write about what the Arizona affiliate of Planned Parenthood did this Christmas season.

They changed the words of the traditional Christmas carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas", to promote the abortion industry.

It's disgusting.

They call it "The Twelve Days of Christmas (the contraceptive version)".

In their version, instead of your true love giving you turtle doves and gold rings and drummers drumming, you're given condoms, birth control pills, and a box of Plan B. Instead of piping pipers, swimming swans, and French hens, you'll get Depro-Provera shots, diaphragms, and NuvaRings.

This is true love?

I don't think so.

True love is kind. It's patient and not jealous. It does not brag, nor is it arrogant. It does not represent a quick fix and it lasts forever.”

I’ll be making a year end contribution to PDHC, and I hope you will too, or help a similar organization in your city or county.

Pregnancy Decision Health Centers | 665 E. Dublin-Granville Rd. | Suite 120 | Columbus | OH | 43229

Which is the future of America?

"I've noticed that there are lot of commercials on television this Christmas season by groups asking for help to stop the euthanizing of animals in animal shelters. They have actors holding pets and photos of abused animals all designed to get you involved in saving the life of an animal. However, I haven't seen one commercial asking for help to save the lives of unborn children. I haven't seen one commercial that shows what unborn babies look like when they've been ripped apart as they were sucked out of their mother's womb. I'm all for helping animals. I love animals, especially Siamese cats and Weimaraner dogs. But, I'm more concerned about saving the lives of unborn children who are even more defenseless than pets. What have we become as a people, a nation, when we see a higher premium placed on the lives of animals than on the lives of human children? Are animals the future of America or are children? Maybe you can answer that question for me." - Mychal Massie (http://mychal-massie.com/premium/category/massiedaily/)

Friday family photo—the George family

           

My mother and aunt used to go to the cemetery in Ashton, Illinois, to place flowers on Memorial Day.  Before them, my grandparents did this.  Now my brother and his wife do this.

     

In a series of Job-like disasters, David George's wife, three of his four adult children, and two of his grandchildren preceded him in death. Willy died of diphtheria in 1877; Martha George Sanders and her baby daughter Grace died of childbirth complications in 1888; Susan Reed George died in 1898; Ira George died in 1907 of blood poisoning from a farm accident; and Mary's son Oliver died at birth in 1908. Only Mary lived to an old age, just like her father.

Did sequestration matter?

“While the sequester is an imperfect mechanism to reduce spending, as the brunt of the cuts falls disproportionally on defense, it only amounts to a 2.5 percent reduction in spending over 10 years. This hardly lives up to the President’s warnings that the cuts would be “harmful” to the economy and would decimate government services. As you can see, the U.S. has a long way to go to rein in its growing spending.”

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/12/27/money-pictures-top-5-charts-2013/

Did you notice that the sequester and the government shut down actually helped the third quarter?

Salvation Army is pro-life except when it isn’t

Makes exceptions for disability (over 90% of Down Syndrome babies are aborted); health of the mother; rape or incest. We pulled our check out of the pile today and tore it up.

The position from their website:

The Salvation Army believes all people are created in the image of God and therefore have unique and intrinsic value. Human life is sacred and all people should be treated with dignity and respect. The Salvation Army accepts the moment of fertilisation as the start of human life. We believe that society has a responsibility to care for others, and especially to protect and promote the welfare of vulnerable people, including unborn children.

The Salvation Army believes that life is a gift from God and we are answerable to God for the taking of life. As such, The Salvation Army is concerned about the growing ready acceptance of abortion, which reflects insufficient concern for vulnerable persons including the unborn. We do not believe that genetic abnormalities that are identified in an unborn child who is likely to live longer than a brief period after birth are sufficient to warrant a termination of pregnancy.

The Salvation Army recognizes tragic and perplexing circumstances that require difficult decisions regarding a pregnancy. Decisions should be made only after prayerful and thoughtful consideration, acknowledging the tremendous pressures that occur during an unexpected pregnancy. There is a responsibility on all involved to give the parents of the unborn child, particularly the woman, appropriate pastoral, medical and other counsel. The Salvation Army believes that termination can occur only when

• Carrying the pregnancy further seriously threatens the life of the mother; or

• Reliable diagnostic procedures have identified a foetal abnormality considered incompatible with survival for more than a very brief post natal period.

In addition, rape and incest are brutal acts of dominance violating women physically and emotionally. This situation represents a special case for the consideration of termination as the violation may be compounded by the continuation of the pregnancy.

The Salvation Army affirms and supports professional people engaged in the care of pregnant women who feel on religious, moral or ethical grounds, that they cannot be involved in any way with the procuring or undertaking of an abortion.

We can’t blame Obama for this one

“Beginning January 1, 2014, the federal government will ban the use of 60-watt and 40-watt incandescent light bulbs. The light bulb has become a symbol in the fight for consumer freedom and against unnecessary governmental interference into the lives of the American people.”

Although we know from other power grabs and 20+ changes he’s personally made in the PPACA law, he could have stopped this.  The “energy efficient” bulbs are made in China in coal fired factories, belching black smoke.

"A subsidised and enforced worldwide replacement of unprofitable patent-expired simple, cheap, well known, safe, and easily locally made bright broad spectrum light bulbs in an odd coalition between global capitalist manufacturing executives, left-leaning governments, and environmental organizations." http://freedomlightbulb.blogspot.com/2011/11/deception-behind-ban.html

Coconut oil for skin care

Perhaps one of the best, and cheapest tips circulating the internet is to use pure organic coconut oil for skin care. I had a jar in the cupboard for cooking, so I squished some (it is solid but melts with just skin heat) into an unused pill container and put it in the bathroom. This stuff is amazing. I'd had 2 stubborn spots on my face, and after using it for both removing make-up and a moisturizer under make-up, they just disappeared; last night I slathered it on my hands and put on cotton gloves, and this morning my hands feel like summer; and there is no water or alcohol or chemical lab list to worry about. There are lots of new babies in the family and I see it's good for stretch marks http://coconutoilcooking.com/coconut-oil-blog-posts/top-10-uses-of-coconut-oil-for-skincare/

                                    

I've only used it once for cooking, so have a lot on hand. It seems expensive for shortening, but when compared to a mid-price brand of lotion or moisturizer of a few ounces with all the unpronounceables on the label, it's a bargain.