Rosary

I am starting a 54 day Rosary novena for a very special cause.  I hope I can have the strength to complete it. 

Their Suffering

I see their suffering, I know how their hearts break. It is this pain and trauma that they endure that causes my spirit to wither. Is my in-unison suffering a cross I must bear? Must I be further burdened by the knowledge that my suffering does nothing to ease theirs? What else can I do to make their load lighter? How else may I end their suffering, replace it with innocence and make it the suffering the sinful person I am surely deserves? How do I endure these things I seek with a smile on my face and joy in my heart? How do I not not turn the blessing that is this cross into sin?

Wondering

Sitting in court listening to the judge rule on a termination of parental rights case on a 17 year old mother who hasn't seen her child except for a few weeks after the child's birth. Sad case, just one of many I have had to litigate today. There was one bright spot. Lets hope God will grace these children and their families with the strenght to work through their problems and be able to reunite them.

A New Calling

After taking some time off from my blog for various reasons, I am changing the focus of my blog and attempting to respond to what I feel is a calling from God to share my struggle to view everything from a Catholic perspective.

I will get more into my fall from being a practicing Catholic as we go along, but the defining moment for my return to being a practicing Catholic was when I realized that I could not consider myself to be Catholic while viewing world events and my relationships in non-Catholic way. Since that time, I have started attending Mass regularly again and have gone back to confession for the first time in many years.

That being said, I have still struggled with viewing the world from a Catholic perspective. The best I can define "a Catholic perspective" is viewing the world, issues of importance and how I interact with people in a way that reflects the Christ's call to love as he loved us.

It is this struggle that I feel that I am called to share on this blog with anyone who is led to these pages.

One day down

My channeling Bono act worked last night . . . no, I didn't pray to the tune of "Where the Streets Have No Name," I used the "hopeless case" inspiration to have a very nice prayer time. As you may be able to tell by the name of this blog, I suffer from what I have diagnosed as Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (and yes I am a doctor, just one a medical one). I have never gone to an MD to have it officially diagnosed (although I am considering it), but I do horribly suffer from the inability to keep my mind on track. I say suffer because it is either pride or fear that prevents me from getting it treated and it causes great stress for me in my profession.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Maybe I do have a little mind but I doubt any statesmen, philosophers or divines will adore it. Then again, who knows, maybe I have my expectations for this blog set too low. :) Anyway, I have foolishly been consistent with trying to deal with this problem without the intervention of medication. I have tried ginkgo biloba and it seemed to offer some relief, but I was inconsistent in taking it. Now I am back on, so let’s see if it pays dividends. If not, who knows, maybe I will venture off and become a pill popper.

Back to the story the point, prayer. I would repeatedly utter the words, "reach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case" anytime my mind would wander last night during prayer and it worked marvelously. That reminds me of my 9th grade English teacher. She used to tell us, a class full of 14 year olds, that if we had writer's block to write the word "sex" over and over and over on our paper until we could think of something to write. Believe me, at 14 it didn't take long for me to come up with something to write about but it wasn't something that was appropriate for my parents to read. In small town Arkansas I guess they had to take what they could find!

Ok, back to prayer. So that little trick worked. I have always found that I have what I would call a two (2) track mind. I could concentrate on something if I had something going on in the background to keep what I would call my "other mind" busy. Some of my law school buddies would pop Adderall during finals while I would O-D on Hendrix or the Blues Brothers. That was always the key, it had to be something familiar, had to be something I knew without concentrating on.

So, maybe if the U2 chants lose effectiveness I can employ my IPOD . . . I wonder if God likes Ben Folds?????

My struggle

After three weeks of various levels of illness, I finally felt like getting out and going running again tonight. Understand running for me isn't like running for a lot of people. Running for me consists of wobbling along, or as John Bingham calls it, being a penguin. I jog, and we will use that term loosely, for 5 minutes, then walk (at about the same speed) for 1 minute. I am up to 1.5 miles, or should I say, I was up to 1.5 miles prior to the forced time off. But my struggle isn't with the running and it is more than the weight. My struggle is with being the kind of person I know I should and could be if I could find more time for reflection and prayer. THAT is what running is hopefully going to be about for me.

While it is the idealistic goal, it is also the tricky part. While contemplating this post I was sitting between my dog and cat petting them listening to U2. I was specifically listening to Beautiful Day (from All That You Can't Leave Behind) and some specific lyrics struck me, "Touch me, Take me to that other place, Reach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case." This is one thing I really enjoy about Bono's lyrics, 15 different people can listen to them and get 30 different meanings. At that moment I knew God was talking to me through that song. That is exactly how I feel when it comes to my prayer life and improving it; like a hopeless case.

I suffer in all areas of my life from letting life pass me by. Each day I intend to do something, call my father, pay a bill, post something on my blog. Seems the rudimentary tasks of life: work, cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc., take over and I never do the things I should do, only seem to do the things I have to do. I don't want prayer to be that, to be something I have to do. Then again, could praying because I "have to" be any worse than not praying like I want to? Would the burden of prayer being a task or a chore be any worse than the guilt of failing to pray like I think I should? Maybe I will start with “reach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case,” and see where that leads.

"For conservatives, these are times of economic uncertainty and political weakness"

As always, there are just too many things for one man to write about. I would write about Nancy Pelosi



Nary a day goes by when you cannot write something both poignant and obvious about her. Let’s just say, I wonder where her concern was prior to January 20, 2009?

Rather, I would like to do a little breaking down of the split personality piece written by David Von Drehle for time.com on Glenn Beck. We can break it down by web page, as each seems to have its own little personality.

Pg. 1 -- HUMAN INTEREST
David Von Drehle starts off with a few jabs at the 9/12 protesters highlight two of the more extreme signs that I have seen reported on from the protests. Then he goes into human interest mode writing about a particular woman who seems to really like Beck. I will give Mr. Drehle credit, his piece does highlight the fact that what you think of the protests may depend on your political point of view.


Pg. 2 -- HIT PIECE
Mr. Drehle basically attacks Beck, spins things to make Beck look like a fear mongering opportunist. Who knows, maybe that is all Beck is (I don't watch his shows or partake of his other media offerings), but in true neo-journalistic style, you don't get to hear that side of his story. Mr. Drehle has a mini-caption titled "Fears of a Clown," and says that these are hard economic times for conservatives. Little did we know all it took to not suffer from this recession was becoming a liberal?

Pg. 3 -- LEFTIST COLORS FLYING
This page Mr. Drehle does say some good things about Beck, but goes back to the liberal well of evil capitalism. He points out the money Beck makes, as if this should discredit him.

Pg. 4 -- THE REAL STORY
It is the talking head industry on both sides that is the true story here, but Mr. Drehle only takes swipes at Beck in his calling out the talking heads on TV. This, in my opinion is where Pelosi's comments and this story meet.

Nancy Pelosi and Mr. Drehle are correct; there is a large bit of anger out there. I share that anger. However, both would incorrectly tell you that it is one sided and only started shortly after January 20, 2009. This sentiment has had ebbs and flows, but really started back on its current upward trajectory in the late 90's with Whitewater and the Clinton sex scandal. It hit a new level after the 2000 election. Lets be real, the animosity today is nothing like it was 8 years ago prior 9/11. Liberals truly thought that W. Bush had stolen the election in Florida and not matter what the media recounts showed, would not let go. That hatred flowed out from there. It may have dipped some in the wake of the terrorists’ attacks, but went even higher in the fall-out of the War on Terror in Iraq. It went up again with the supposed torture memos, and Nancy Pelosi saying the CIA lied to Congress. T

Nightly Congress and talking heads-TV (my apologies to David Byrne) battled for supremacy over the political hate game. Just when Keith Olberman or Sean Hanity looked to be galloping ahead, a party whip would get on a Sunday morning news program and ratchet up the bar. It was a never ending 24-hour news cycle of who could be the loudest, who could talk over each other the best and who could slander the other the most. What started out in a thoughtful professional manner on Crossfire all those years ago has sunk that medium and seemingly brought political discussion down with it into an abyss of shit.

Then you had the white night (figuratively speaking), "the one" who was supposed to (if you believed his campaign rhetoric) come in and transcend the hatred and political fighting and unit the nation and the world in peace and love. He campaigned much as President George W. Bush did in 2000, as someone who could bridge the political gap. And just like President Bush, he has not only failed to fulfill this promise, President Obama has become the lightening rod.

Like Glen Beck (at least according to this story), I fear. I fear that this nation is falling from its perch as the greatest nation in the history of the world. I fear the America I grew up knowing will only be a memory in a few years. And like Glen Beck (according to this story), I don't know what to do about it. The only thing I know to do is to pray, pray that God will protect me and my family. Pray for the peace that only a relationship with Jesus can provide. Pray for, as Pope John Paul II said, the ability to be still.

DISGUSTING

I almost vomited after watching this piece of "journalism" from CNN.





Jim Spellman is reporting from the 9/12 protests. Clips are shown of ten (10) people about why they were at the rally there and show dozens of signs. Then he goes on and says, "there's some heaviness out there with this." Jim goes on to say that the message from the podiums is different from the crowd, that the crowd is saying, "much darker things." When prompted to explain what he means by "darker things" Jim says, "its sort of the death panels thing taken to several degrees past that, where the president is going to set up these death camps and they are going to do forced sterilization," and "the government is taking over the internet to stifle speech and that there are going to be forced vaccinations." He goes on to say that "these are things we heard over and over and over and over again."

If he heard it over and over and over and over again, why was there no tape of it played during that report? If such "misinformation" is so prevalent, whey didn't they expose the people who were saying such things. Why? Because it was all made up. It was a hit-piece taken directly from the playbook of the Democratic leadership. It was a hit-piece aimed at the American people.

Why must Obamaist try to demonize the American people? Why must Obamaist talk down to and marginalize the people that disagree with them? As an attorney, I know that my job it so convince the finder of fact that my client is right. I cannot go into the courtroom and bully the other side. I cannot belittle the opposing party to win the day.

Lets get real, if their side is so much better, as they claim, it doesn't seem that it would be hard to convince us ignorant non-Obamists of how great their path is. I mean, if we are nothing but ignorant rubes that are easily fooled, why can't the Obamists fool us into buying into their plans. I have a sister who is 6-years younger than me. I remember when I was 12 and she was 6 it was pretty simple to fool her into doing almost anything I wanted her to do. If the Obamaist are such an intellectually superior class, why do they result to dogging us out and trick us into seeing “the light”?

I'll tell you why, it is because they are the ones that are ignorant. They are the ones that are stupid. They are the ones that don't realize they are the ones being duped and fooled into thinking that the government is the answer to all of their problems. The governmental demigods have exhausted that trick and they don't know what to do with the rest of us. They don't know how to convince us of something that is not true. They saw in Obama someone who could maybe be their used car salesman, their traveling evangelists, their snake oil salesman. They hoped that he would be able to smooth talk us into letting down our guard just long enough for them to do their dastardly deeds. But alas, my fellow Americans have proven once again why we are the greatest nation in human history. The resourcefulness and creativity that it took to organize that number of people should surprise no one. That the federal government, its bureaucrats and most of its elected officials were surprised should only reinforce that it is time to throw the bums out and elect good people of both parties that respect the Constitution and appreciate American citizens!!!

Must be feeling better

After been sick for over a week, I must be feeling better. While fixing my wife some tea I was thinking about President Obama's leadership style and how to describe it. That he does not have an eye for details is evidenced by his putting his full faith in Congress to draft and pass the "stimulus" bill without input from his administration. The same "stimulus" bill that Obama said would define his presidency, he left to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Now, what he is calling the centerpiece of his presidency, health care reform, is being handled in the same manner.

I was thinking, is President Obama like a musher, whipping Congress like a pack of dogs along the frozen ground. Then I thought of how he handled the health care issue in August, that despite repeated calls for leadership by Congressional Democrats, he let that bill flounder and die in August and his own self-imposed deadline pass. Clearly that is not the case.

No, President Obama is like a drunken 1600's sea captain who gathers his men aboard his ship and cries out that they must reach the new world, then leaves it to the deck hands to figure out where that is and how to get there.

Communist Party USA Part 1

After reading an article on the Accuracy in Media website by Cliff Kincaid on the Van Jones scandal, I was interested in seeing if I could find a foundational tie between the current legislative agenda of President Obama and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) -- his personal ties to communists are highlighted in Mr. Kincaid’s article. So I decided to do the 21^st Century equivalent of letting “my fingers do the walkin’” and Googled CPUSA (not going to link to it, but I do suggest you read it for yourself, for a good laugh). In perusing their website I sort of got off track of my original plan, something I am apt to do, and was struck some very fundamental contradictions in the CPUSA’s philosophies.

To understand the basic inconsistency in this group’s political ideology, you have to compare and contrast the CPUSA slogan "fight for peace, equality, democracy and socialism" (emphasis added) to Article II of its constitution. Section 1 provides, “that decisions and policies are made through democratic procedures, and that once a final decision is made, all members are obligated to carry it out.” Section 3 states, “After a thorough discussion in any club, committee or convention, decisions are arrived at by majority vote. All members, including those who disagree, are duty bound to explain, fight for and carry out such decisions, as long as they do not conflict with national policies and decisions.” So far this seems fairly benign, that is, until you read Section 2:

Each Party body is subordinate to the next higher body, with central authority vested in the National Convention, the highest body of the Party, which not only has the authority to act on all aspects of Party policy and activity, but elects the national leadership to carry through its will and decisions between conventions.

In other words, you can vote locally, but if the national body overrules you, you must “fight for and carry out” the decisions of the national centralized governing body, even when they oppose your local views. This is a requirement, even though you have no say in what the central governing body decides. The theory of this democracy is that you get to vote, only as long you don’t vote contrary the party bosses. This seems less like a democracy and more like a crime family.

This is too rich! (Pun intended) I will have to do a series of these by picking through the various writings on the CPUSA's website. I will leave you with this - the preamble states:

We are the party of the African American, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, all other Latino American, Native American, Asian American, and all racially and nationally oppressed peoples, as well as women, youth, and all other working people.

Notice who’s missing????? . . . . other than the Muslims I mean . . .

If Republicans are serious about gaining back at least some of the public trust they have lost, they need to be taking serious note of how the mainstream press is dealing with their side of the health care debate. Without having seen polls on this issue, I feel confident in believing that at least 40 percent of Americans have no idea what their plan on this issue is (assuming there is one). Republicans need to develop a 2 prong strategy: 1) have a unified message on issues across the board; and 2) develop a media approach that exposes the mainstream for what it is and gets its unified message out to the public ... Those with a "remote control" interest in politics.

Is reading a news article on the CBO's report on Obamacare. I wonder if it is lost on anyone that the CBO is never accurate on its projections and always under estimate of cost. I guess we have to trust the CBO's assessment more than the poiticians', but we should find little comfort in that.

As I lay in bed on Thursday night trying to think about how to make my blog something that will make people want to read it, something that will help it stand out from the thousands of other blogs out there, I farted. My wife and I had a 10-minute conversation about a fart altering machine like the one that you see on TV when they want to hide someone’s identity. Only this machine would make my farts sound like one of dogs barking or my phone ringing or the guy from the First 48 (on A & E) saying “Dead” (inside joke).

I am just getting over something that hit me yesterday afternoon like a ton of bricks. At first I thought it was the hot sausage I had for lunch. But it soon started making me feel bad all over, not just my tummy. Next think I know, I am taking off of work early and crashing sideways on my bed at 3:00 in the afternoon. Whatever this is/was, sapped every ounce of energy out of me.

Make no mistake, health care reform is a hot button issue for me. There are dozens of reasons why I oppose Obamacare. When the President of the United States appoints people like Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, who believes that health care should be doled out based upon age and whether or not they can be productive members of society, to high ranking positions which will potentially make such decisions it scares me. It scares me a lot. Health care is a big big part of my life. In fact, heath care was the sole driving force behind my decision to go to work for state government. Little did I know at the time that it would be one of the best things every to happen to me, but I digress. The point is, this administration and the Democrats in Congress are trying to shove a government take over of the health care system down our throats. A take over that has failed all around the world. So yes, I am very concerned when the views of Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel predominates a government that will sooner rather than later be forced to ration care. It shakes me to my core to think that the government will decide to not allow my disabled wife to get the necessary treatment because in their view, her life is somehow less worthy of receiving care simply because of her disability.

I read yesterday where Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, "We're almost reaching a revolution in this country,” when speaking at a town hall meeting in his district. I don’t think he has any idea exactly the scope of the revolution. I advocate for voting every member out of Congress in 2010. Sure, there are men and women from both parties who oppose this plan and who truly believe that big government is not the answer. However, it is time that the American people took back its government. It is time for us to stand up and show who is in charge and that we are not going to take our supposed representatives run rough shot over our rights and our lives with their corruption and their lies. It is time we send a clear message to career politicians that we are not going to accept business as usual.

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mrblogger2.

First Post

On November 2, 2008 I talked to my wife about the presidential contest. I knew who I wasn’t going to vote for, but I wasn’t sure who I was going to vote for. I had gone back and forth on whether or not I could actually bring myself to vote for John McCain. At that point I had convinced myself that it was the only thing to do, the only way to live with myself should Barack Obama get elected, something I was sure would happen. That night I told my wife, whose political consciousness only skims the outer membrane of the political universe. Basically, like many Americans, she reads and listens to the headlines and takes them as gospel. She is, watch it now, I am about to coin a phrase, a “remote-control liberal.” She is someone who will flip through MSNBC or CNN, listen to the talking heads, soaks in their spin and skips on to a reality TV show. This is not to say my wife is not intelligent, to the contrary, she is very intelligent. She just doesn’t have the desire or the attention span (maybe whey we get along so well) to get immersed into politics. She has firm convictions, she just isn’t sure why.

So back to election eve 2008. I was discussing the vote with my wife, actually I was begging her to not vote for Obama. I told her I was scared of what would happen if he was elected. I told her that I wasn’t necessarily scared of what he might do, rather, I was scared of what he would allow Congress to do. Little did I know what lied beneath. I was worried about tax increases and a continuing poor economy. I was either ignorant of the true horror about to unfold or not bright enough to foresee it. Either way, I failed in my attempt to sway her.

Of course back in the present day, we now have people in power who think that common Americans who oppose this administration’s health care plan are: un-American, too well dressed to be real, Nazis, astro-turfers, tea-baggers, political terrorist, racists and the like. Yes, common every day Americans like you (not like me because I don’t have the political gumption to get out and protest like these honorable Americans) are attacked. Mind you, these attacks are not coming from the extreme left wing mouths on radio, tv and the internet, ok, well, not just from those locations. This is coming from the leaders of the Democratic Party. Its one thing for the likes of Ann Coulter or Sean Hanity (or myself for that matter) to call out protestors at anti-war demonstrators. It would be another thing for Mitch McConnell, John McCain or even Newt Gengrich to say things like that. Imagine the fake outrage that would have been coming from the cable news talking heads had Roy Blunt or Bill Frist said something like that about anti-war protestors when things were going really bad in Iraq.

Lets be honest, those two men and the other Republican leaders in Congress during the first two years of the second Bush term are really to blame here. They had the power and the political capital to reigned in and straighten up the Bush administration when it was going off of its wheels. They could have passed legislation that would have reigned in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They could have passed Social Security reform. Rather than do things that would have bettered America, they wanted to ram through mis-guided immigration reform (we will use that term loosely) and get sucked into the pit of corruption the likes of which the Democrats could never have even dreamed of. That lead to the people ousting the Republicans in 2006 and installing Harry Reid and Nancy Peloci and a Democratically controlled Congress for the last two years of Bush’s presidency. This bring me to the highlight of Republican failure, well, at least since the 1992 presidential election. The two years prior to the 2008 election, Congress did nothing, nothing. Congress had approval ratings that were as low or lower than President Bush! Yet, somehow the Republican party could not muster up a fight and lost more seats in Congress and lost the White House to a first term Senator who has the governing experience equal to that of my Chihuahua. Is it any wonder that so many people like me who were Reagan Republicans are pissed because our party left us (pun intended).