Month: January 2012

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday 2012

There is not much more than I can really say about the man who simply believed that freedom applied to all.  Most of it has been written by those who are better educated, and write better than I ever will.  All I can truly say, is that Martin Luther King Jr’s commandment to those fighting for freedom to “Stand up for what you believe in,” in 2012 should be our mandate.  As it has been observed by Martin Luther King Jr’s niece, he was a registered Republican and would be considered a social Conservative today.

In 2006, after seeing President’s George W. Bush pathetic handling of the Iraq War, I started a blog called “The Populist”— mainly because I was tired of yelling back at the TV.  On December 21, 2007 my blog was hacked and on December 30, 2007, I started “Political Byline” with the idea that neither of these political parties were political or moral absolutes.

For six long years, I stood for what I felt was right; I made enemies, some of which hate the ground that I walk on today.  I could quite honestly care less.  Because frankly, as the lyric of Steve Camp says in “Judgment Begins in the House of God”, “Sometimes you’ll stand alone to live a life that’s true.” I have, in my day stood for what I simply thought was right.  Sometimes, I stood along with the rational people who stood against injustice; and sometimes, I stood alone.  I have been doing that for 29 years now, on that day —- June 7, 1982 — 29 years ago, I took a stand for the one who died on the cross for my sins, — and so, I think I know a little bit about fighting.

On October 31, 2011, my old blog “Political Byline” had some problems with the hosting provider and seeing that Barack Obama announced that the war in Iraq was, for the most part, over.  I decided that the blog’s original purpose had been fulfilled and I pulled the blog.  I had originally planned to hang it up and quit.  However, there were people e-mailing me, asking, “Where is the blog?” and “Why did you quit?”

On December 31, 2011, I bought some hosting from a very nice person named Paul in Florida.  He is a Ron Paul fan, but I will not hold it against him.  I spent $120.00 for a year’s worth of hosting, with any luck; I will make business out of it.  I also brought the old blog back up and imported the Blogspot site to this domain, thoughtsnadrantings.com.  This blog, Thought and Rantings is simply a continuation of the old blog.  I am going to try to much better on this blog than I did on the other.  I will try to avoid conflict and ignore my detractors.  I also hope to blog about policy and less about other people.  I hate having to rip on the President constantly.

However, I will continue to keep whoever is in the White House honest, Republican Party or Democratic Party.  There will be times when I will simply disagree with the Right.  There will be also times when I sharply disagree with the left.  Sometimes, standing for what one feels is right, goes well beyond partisan politics.

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr’s legacy should be done, by carrying on his vision — of standing for the principles that fueled his campaign for liberty.  This is what I hope to do this year in 2012 with this blog.

 

Jon Huntsman quits the Republican presidential race

To be fair to the man, he really had no path to the nomination.

Via The NYT’s Caucus:

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Jon M. Huntsman Jr. will announce Monday that he is ending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and endorsing Mitt Romney, narrowing the field and erasing a challenge to Mr. Romney from the moderate wing of his party.

Mr. Huntsman, who had hoped to use the South Carolina primary this week to revive his flagging candidacy, informed his advisers on Sunday that he was bowing to political reality and would back Mr. Romney, whom he accused a week ago of putting party ahead of country.

Mr. Huntsman, who had struggled to live up to the early expectations of his candidacy, was to deliver a speech Monday morning in Myrtle Beach, where the five remaining major Republican candidates will gather hours later for a debate. His endorsement of Mr. Romney is indication of the party establishment getting behind Mr. Romney and trying to focus the party on defeating President Obama.

“The governor and his family, at this point in the race, decided it was time for Republicans to rally around a candidate who could beat Barack Obama and turn around the economy,” Matt David, Mr. Huntsman’s campaign manager, said in an interview Sunday evening. “That candidate is Gov. Mitt Romney.”

But Mr. Huntsman’s decision was unlikely to have any particular influence where Mr. Romney needs it most, among social and religious conservatives who remain wary of Mr. Romney’s ideological inconsistency. With the withdrawal of Mr. Huntsman, who despite his efforts to portray himself as more conservative than Mr. Romney was often viewed as the moderate in the race, the South Carolina primary is now Mr. Romney against an array of opponents coming at him from the right.

I have a theory as to why Huntsman could not win. Partially it is because of his association with President Barack Obama. However, there is another reason too; it is because the man was seen as too moderate, and the GOP had been down that road before. You see, for all of George W. Bush’s great performance during and after the attacks on 9/11; Bush was, for the most part a very moderate Republican. A Rockefeller Conservative, if you will.  No child left behind, the bail out of the banks and other such things were seen by many of the rib-rocked Conservatives, as Big Government actions. The Republican establishment never forgot this, neither did the grassroots. So, they decided against a man, who I felt personally could have made a difference in Washington D.C.

I am not a fan of Mitt Romney, as you already have read here. However, I will concede on thing, he can debate very well and he can also think on his feet. I believe that, if anyone, Mitt Romney will be able to beat Obama in the general election. Santorum is too far to the right; a radical in some eyes. Romney strikes a more measured moderate tone, and I believe that is important. Because as Barry Goldwater found out in 1964, that  extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and  that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue; but it just does not win elections. Americans recoil away from extremist views and beliefs. This explains why people like David Duke or Madalyn Murray O’Hair were never President. 😀

Others Via Memeorandum: Washington Monthly, FiveThirtyEight, Mediaite, Hot Air, Pirate’s Cove, Swampland, msnbc.com, Weekly Standard, Proof Positive, News Desk, The Page, Outside the Beltway, Weasel Zippers, Firedoglake, Hit & Run, The Moderate Voice, NO QUARTER, The Other McCain, Fire Andrea Mitchell!, The Hill, The Hinterland Gazette, Rumproast, The Right Scoop, Gawker and Ricochet Conversations Feed

Two Instances of Republicans kissing up to black voters

Both of these idiots must be really desperate. 🙄

Instance one, Newt Gingrich sucks up to a black Church in SC:

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich faced a round of tough questions in a campaign event before an African-American church in South Carolina on Saturday.

Gingrich spoke with members of the Jones Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Columbia, S.C. for an hour according to media reports.

Many of the questions focused on a statement from the former House Speaker in December that “really poor children” have bad work habits, a remark which attracted criticism from civil rights groups.

“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works, so they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday,” Gingrich had said at a campaign event.

Since when does a white man, running as a Republican go down to SC and grovel before a bunch of blacks, who will most likely not vote for him anyhow? This reeks of nothing more than USDA choice desperation. I personally do not believe that Newt owes these idiots a thing at all. Gingrich spoke the truth, and if they do not like it — screw em. 😡

Instance number two, Mitt Romney is trying to buy the black vote in SC, I guess:

SUMTER, S.C. — Amid shaking hands and signing campaign posters, Mitt Romney did something he has never done before on the ropeline: He took out his wallet and handed a wad of cash to a woman waiting to shake his hand.

The woman, 55-year-old Ruth Williams, says she has been following the Romney campaign since he arrived in the state on Jan. 11, when she said she received a message from God to track him down.

“I was on the highway praying and said, ‘God just show me how to get [my] lights on,’ and I pulled up to a stop sign and his bus was there,” said Williams, who has been unemployed since last October. “And then God said, ‘Follow the bus,’ and I followed the bus to the airport.”

According to Williams, she followed the campaign bus to the Columbia airport on Wednesday, the same day Romney was arriving from New Hampshire. When Romney wasn’t on the bus, aides told her to go to the rally scheduled in Columbia later that day. When she showed up, Romney found her to say hello and pulled over South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to say “hello” too.

“He was kind to me and he made Gov. Haley come see about me,” Williams said. “He stopped doing everything.”

I have a shiny twenty-dollar bill that says that the only thing this woman was thinking is, “I found me a stupid honky that will give me money!” Nice going Mittens. Try to buy the black vote; modern-day slavery, all that is. I figure Mittens does not own a plantation for her to work on and that stuff is illegal now, so he figures he will just buy her vote. 🙄 Smart, real smart Mittens.

In short: We….are….so…..screwed. 🙁

What’s next? Perry allows some black man to wash his car? 🙄

Others: Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, The Strata-Sphere, Outside the Beltway, Mediaite, Taylor Marsh, Washington Post, The Lonely Conservative, The Hinterland Gazette and CNN — CNN, The Politico and The Hinterland Gazette

Cross-Posted to Alexandria

Taking Sunday Off!

Seeing I have not done it in a while, I am taking Sunday off.  I need some downtime and would like spend the day in studying the Word and maybe a bit of prayer. I might also try to enjoy my other hobby, Amateur Radio, for the day as well.

So, unless something huge happens; I will be maintaining blogger silence for all of Sunday.

See you all Monday morning.

 

 

Iraq News: Bomb explodes near Basra killing 53

Such as sad story and not surprising for that Country, seeing we left.

The Video:

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The Story via AP:

ZUBAIR, Iraq (AP) — A bomb tore through a procession of Shiite pilgrims heading toward a largely Sunni town in southern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least 53 people in the latest sign of a power struggle between rival Muslim sects that has escalated since the American military withdrawal.

Fears of more bloodshed have risen in recent weeks, with the U.S. no longer enjoying the leverage it once had to encourage the two sides to work together to rein in extremists. Most of the latest attacks appear to be aimed at Iraq’s majority Shiites, suggesting Sunni insurgents seeking to undermine the Shiite-dominated government are to blame.

Saturday’s blast happened on the last of the 40 days of Arbaeen, when hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims travel to the Iraqi city of Karbala and other holy sites. The end of Arbaeen is one of the most sacred times for Shiites, and public processions to commemorate it were banned under Saddam Hussein.

Some might want to blame President Obama for something like this; but I shall not. We did our and we left. It is not our responsibility to police that Country. Things like this will happen in Iraq, as long as there are people who do not like one another.

 

The obligatory cruise ship running aground posting

I guess unless you have lived under a rock somewhere, you have heard about this; but it is news and that’s what I do around here! 😀

Just my opinion here: This is why I do not get on cruise ships. Too many things, like this happening.

Via Fox News and AP:

Video from Fox News:

Video Via the AP:

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PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy – Survivors who escaped a luxury cruise liner that ran aground and tipped over off Italy’s coast recounted a chaotic and terrifying evacuation through the ship’s upended hallways on Saturday, as divers searched the submerged part for any people still unaccounted for in the confusion.

Three bodies were recovered from the sea after the Costa Concordia with 4,234 people aboard ran aground hundreds of yards off the tiny island of Giglio near the coast of Tuscany late Friday, tearing a 160-foot gash in its hull and sending in a rush of water.

Three bodies were recovered and 4,200 people evacuated after luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring through a 160-foot gash in the hull. Passengers complained the crew failed to give evacuation instructions and that a drill was only scheduled for this afternoon. Authorities still hadn’t counted all the survivors, the Associated Press reported.

As authorities and port officials carefully matched names on the cruise ship’s list of passengers and crew with those of survivors getting off ferries or other boats on the mainland, the number of the unaccounted for steadily dropped to roughly 40.

Among those passengers the U.S. State Department estimates 126 to be U.S. citizens, Fox News confirms. At this time the American passengers have not been listed among those missing or injured.

Passengers described a scene reminiscent of “Titanic”, saying they escaped the ship by crawling along hallways, desperately trying to reach safety as the lights went out and plates and glasses crashed around them. Helicopters whisked some survivors to safety, others were rescued by private boats in the area, and witnesses said some people jumped from the ship into the dark, cold sea.

Here is a video of some Americans from the ship, saying the crew reacted way too slow and actually were just flat out wrong:

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Again, this is why you will never catch me on one of those ships ever, and not just from this company either. I mean any of those stupid ships. I just do not trust them at all. Honestly? I could never afford to even go on one of those cruises. However, even if I could; I would stay far, far away from those kind of ships. They are too big, they can sink and I am not a big fan of water anyhow.

Just another good reason to stay safe, stay alive and stay on dry land! 😀