Some Tea Parties Across The Country...

Although I was unable to attend the many tea parties going on yesterday due to my continued but precarious employment, I attended all of them in spirit.  Some online friends of mine were able to take part in person and report on the events:

Urban Infidel attended one last night in Manhattan which went "overall, well."  Though there was a "troll" or two who tried to disrupt the events (with no luck), a good time was had by all, including Sirius-XM radio host Andrew Wilkow.  Check out Urban's blog HERE for all of her pictures and videos of the event.

Donald Douglas at American Power attended two of them yesterday in Irving and Santa Ana, CA.  He has several photos of the tea parties there, one of which I snagged for this post (see above left).

In Fayetteville, AR, Freeman Hunt was on hand to photo-document the events, and estimates the crowd at around 1,200.  

Robert Stacy McCain and blog sidekick, Smitty, of The Other McCain were on hand at The Mall in Washington D.C. (where I would most likely have been had I not been working) and took several pictures and video of the events, including a few of SNL alum, Victoria Jackson.  I'm turning green with envy here.

If you attended a tea party yesterday and took pictures, send me a link!

A.B.C.'s Of Planned Parenthood: Always...Be...Closing!!!

Here is another video from the Rosa Acuna Project (the second one from Milwaukee's Planned Parenthood clinics) in which the councelor gives the expectant mother misleading information about when arms, legs, the head, and the heart develop.  

But what is even more unconscionable is the sales pitch that follows.  With the style and methods of a sleazy used car salesman, the "councelor" attempts rather aggressively to "sell" the idea of abortion to the young lady ala Glengarry GlenRoss.  

After seeing the above video, one must wonder what was at stake for the "councelor."  Was it a choice between a Cadillac Eldorado, a set of steak knives, or "you're fired!"???  Listen carefully to the lies emenating from her mouth as she attempts to rope another victim into killing an unborn child...  Does anyone really believe that it's difficult to find someone willing to adopt a newborn child today?  They're waiting in long lines for the privilege!

Planned Parenthood makes a boatload of money every year as the number of abortions increases dramatically.  With Obamacare they stand to collect a huge windfall from the government, ensuring the proliferation of their abortion mills.

I know we have a long fight ahead of us, but someday I hope to hear cities across the nation say the following to Planned Parenthood:   "Hit the bricks pal and beat it 'cause you are going out!"

Plane Crash Takes Life Of Polish President And Several Other Polish Leaders

Tragedy has hit the nation of Poland and hit hard.  A plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, commanders of all four branches of their military, the head of the central bank, and many other top political leaders, after 4 attempts to land at the airport at Smolensk in Russia in fog, lost altitude and crashed killing all on board.  The circumstances, however obviously accidental, have left many with feelings of suspicion.  Read more about that HERE.

No doubt, Poland needs our prayers this Divine Mercy Sunday.  Get out your Rosaries.

President Kaczynski was a staunch anti-communist, a very devout Catholic, and a social conservative who was very pro-life on abortion.  He also had an identical twin brother who joined him in his political battles.

From the UK Telegraph:

The Smolensk plane crash brings to an end the life of one of the dominant forces of Polish politics.

Lech Kaczynski, as either president or party politician, stamped his name on the Polish political scene to become one of the most influential and powerful men in the country, earning a reputation for being a sharp and shrewd political operator. 

He was also a man happy to court controversy. 

Exhibiting a prickly sense of nationalism that brought him into frequent conflict with Donald Tusk, the prime minister, the 60-year-old president also faced accusations of siding with his identical twin brother Jaroslaw, the leader of Poland's main opposition party, to foil the government's reform programme. 

Along with his twin, President Kaczynski cut his political teeth by joining Lech Walesa's Solidarity trade union in the fight against communism. With the fall of the socialist state in 1989 he briefly served in the office of then president Lech Walesa, before Mr Walesa fired him.

His sacking sparked a long and bitter battle with the former Solidarity leader that tainted the rest of Lech Kaczynski's political career. He became convinced that the Nobel Prize winner had, by striking an agreement with Poland's last communist government, sold out the Solidarity revolution, and allowed elements of the socialist state's security apparatus to live on. 

It was the belief that Poland needed to clean its house of the remnants of communism that led to Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski to form the Law and Justice Party in 2001. Along with trumpeting a socially conservative agenda, the party promised to crack down on corruption and purge Poland of the unwanted traces of the socialist state. 

After serving as mayor of Warsaw for three years, in October 2005 Lech Kaczynski triumphed in presidential elections to become Poland's head of state. When Law and Justice won the Polish general election a month later, ushering Jaroslaw into the prime minister's office, Poland found itself in the unusual situation being run by identical twins. 

In an attempt to downplay the fact that twins occupied the two most powerful posts in Polish politics, Lech and Jaroslaw, who many had trouble telling apart, were rarely seen together in public, and bridled when people referred to them as a single political entity rather than individuals. 

After Law and Justice was defeated in general elections in 2007, President Kaczynski found himself in a bitter battle with Donald Tusk, the new prime minister. A series of very public clashes between the two men over who controlled Polish foreign policy prompted the prime minister to suggest changes to the Polish constitution to limit presidential power. 

The government also complained of President Kaczynski's frequent use of the presidential veto, which stalled a series of key reform programmes. 

President Kaczynski was due to fight for re-election this year in October.

He Is Risen!!! GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!!!

I have always loved Vivaldi's Gloria In Excelsis Deo, but YouTube has removed the video for some reason.  So I replaced it with this chant version, which is actually quite good.  Give it a listen!

Good Friday Means The Passion Of The Christ On DVD

The last time I went to a movie theater to see anything was back in 2004 for The Passion Of The Christ, which I felt was the most inspiring movie I had seen to date in the after-effect it had on me.  It deepened my faith and pushed past the point of no return ---no return to agnosticism, no sustained return to ways of the flesh (I'm not perfect and do slip at times, but have a great impetus to leave sin behind me), and no return to endless grudge-holding for the transgressions of others.  

I think it had to be the effect of observing the true harshness of the agony Jesus endured for our sake that got to me.  With all the horrific and unjust punishment He received at the hands of the Romans after being turned against by His own people, with his closest apostle turning his back on Him by denying Him three times, and while his human form was going into shock from blood-loss, exhaustion, and mutilation, He still managed to forgive his tormentors.  And before I saw this played out on screen, I thought I would never be able to  forgive people in my own life.  But the inspiration took hold and eventually I did; and I did it to a long list of people from my past.  Once I was a slave, but I am a slave no longer.  Thank God.

Each Good Friday I sit and watch it all played out again, thanks to Mel Gibson and to several good actors and actresses.  The story is timeless and now a tradition in my life.

Mel Gibson said in an interview that the painting to the left inspired his choice of Maia Morgenstern to play Mary, Mother of Christ.  You can see why in her final scene after Jesus is lowered from the cross.

Have a meaningful Good Friday and a great Easter!

MSM's Attempt To Crucify Pope Certain To Backfire

Things have really been heating up lately regarding the sex-abuse-scandals of certain priests in the Catholic Church, but not in the direction that the secularists had hoped for.  

In their effort to fatally stab the Church in its 1-billion-member-heart, the MSM (led by New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd ---a documented catholic basher) falsely accused Pope Benedict XVI of enabling a pedophile priest to molest over 200 deaf boys.  She wrote:

"Now we learn the sickening news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, nicknamed 'God's Rottweiler' when he was the church's enforcer on matters of faith and sin, ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys."

As was reported in the NY Daily News (no friend of Pope Benedict), this was simply untrue.  While the Daily News is of the opinion that the Church could have handled the case much better than it did (I agree on this, too), they reported that then-Cardinal Ratzinger waived a church statute of limitations to bring charges against the priest to have him defrocked.  No looking away here!  Only someone like Maureen Dowd could have jumped to such erroneous conclusions of Papal guilt.  Way to go, babe!

In a follow-up story released today, the NY Daily News reports a number of Cardinals standing up for The Pontiff, claiming he never once covered up, but cleared up cases of abuse.

His Excellency, Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York,  has also weighed in on his own blog.  An excerpt of three key points:

• The New York Times relied on tort lawyers who currently have civil suits pending against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the Holy See, who are aggressively supporting the radical measure right now before the Wisconsin legislature to abrogate the statute of limitations on civil cases of abuse, and who have high financial interest in the matter being reported.  Hardly an impartial source…

• The documentation that allegedly supports these sensational charges is published on the website of the New York Times; rather than confirming their theory, the documents instead show that there is no evidence at all that Cardinal Ratzinger ever blocked any decision about Murphy.  Even a New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, calls this charge “unfair” in his column of March 29.

• We also find on the website a detailed timeline of all the sickening information about Murphy, data not “uncovered” by any reporter but freely released by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee a number of years back, and thoroughly covered at that time by the local media in Milwaukee.  One wonders why this story, quite exhaustively reported in the past, rose again this very week.  It is hardly “news.” One might therefore ask: Why is this news now? The only reason it is news at all is because of the implication that Cardinal Ratzinger was involved. Yet the documentation does not support that charge, and thus they should have no place in a putatively respectable newspaper.

In a possible effort to pull themselves from the likelihood of bankruptcy or perhaps merely due to sloppy, biased, vindictive, baseless reporting...., the New York Times has once again proven it cannot be trusted to get things right.  What a shame.

(h/t:  Brutally Honest and The Anchoress for jump starting me on this)