You might interpret this as the bishops are tired of short and skinny presidents.

That's a quote from Archbishop Timothy Dolan, new president of the USCCB.  God bless him in his work.  We are blessed to have him.  More later....

Perparing for the Silencing of the Little Guy

As Williams starts his new full-time job on Fox and Olbermann is suspended from MSNBC, I can't help but be drawn into a conspiracy theory.  I know, conspiracy theories are bad, we did land on the moon, after all.  But the truth is that people do sometimes conspire.  Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, but people conspire.

This is evident in a brief selected history of television journalism in the last 50 years:

• Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and David Brinkley (among others) subtly led the American public to left-leanings throughout their time on the air waves.
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• "News magazines" like 60 minutes, 20/20, and Nightline expanded the role of opinion laced 'investigative' journalism on T.V.
• The expansion of Talk radio began a backlash among liberal t.v. news broadcasters to provide more venues for opinion, particularly as 24 hour news cycles were created by cable news networks.
• Fox News was created by Murdoch with a unique commitment to fairness that sheds light on the radical left leanings of other news networks.  This development reveals the 'conspiracy of silence' that had existed among the intellectual elite in journalism.
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• When they can no longer deny their own bias, networks and politicians begin to attack the Fox messenger.  George Soros provides the funding, and the President of the United States provides the credibility for these ad hominem attacks.

The latest action of the conspirators seems to be to fire/discredit  employees who are not popular with the general audience of  their primary employer.  In  order to discredit Juan Williams, NPR had to fain shock at him expressing concern about flying with Muslims.  In order to distance itself from Keith Olbermann, MSNBC has to pretend that it, and it's parent corporation GE, as well as it's many employees, don't spend lavish sums to promote the very candidates Olbermann supported.

Why discredit and distance yourselves from some of your most visible warriors?  This is an obvious trick used by those who wish to establish their credibility.  You sacrifice some of your own in the name of ethics, just before you make false charges of ethics violations against a real innocent.  They say, "You see, we have taken action against those who were misusing their power.  Now you must do the same to... (fill in the blank) ... in order to prove your credibility."

Of course, whomever 'they' choose to hang will either be a meaningless puppet of theirs, or a someone completely ethical and therefore abhorrent to them.

Now we can only wait and see.

Why Voting Matters

One last thought on voting:  My sister (#3 of 7 or #4 of the 8 girls) has worked for a seller of electronics to industry for almost 20 years.  She recently coordinated the sale of wind turbines to a U.S. energy company that were to be made at a plant in Columbus, Nebraska.

Unfortunately, Obama's stimulus money went to wind turbines produced in China, so the Nebraska company laid off 200 workers.  Equally unfortunate was the sale of my sister's electronics company to a British consortium. 

She is now faced with the loss of her job.  Go green.  Go global.  See what you get.

Voting for the Little Guys

We just went to vote.  My husband and I sat at a table together, with our son near by, while we consulted a list of candidates that I had prepared.  Local judges, school board members, sheriff, you name it I read the bios and wrote down the names.  The research took about two hours.  It was worth it.

The first reason that it was worth it was because we knew what we were doing.  The second reason is that the result of the School Board races, the result of the Learning Community race (yes we have extra education bureaucracy here!), and the result of the results of the other races dealing with education determine what kind of people our home schooled son will meet as an adult.  The third reason was we ran into a neighbor who is new to the area and didn't have any idea who to vote for.  I asked her if she would like a list of conservative  pro-life candidates.  She said yes, and now she has the list. 

In Nebraska it is still possible to find conservative pro-life Democrats.  Not all of them are what they claim, but many are.  The Dem running for Congress in our district is member of our parish who claims to be pro-life.  He unfortunately support fetal stem cell research, which is a cash cow for grants to The University of Nebraska Medical Center.  Since that is non-negotiable, we voted for the rhino republican.  It's hard for me to realize that Lee Terry is a rhino, because he's younger than I and grew up around the block from me.  He does have a solid pro-life record, so there you go.

On our way home, our son said, voting is very important this year because of the horrible things that will happen if the wrong people get into office.  I said, it is more about stopping the slide into socialism that has begun.  My husband said it is about being sure that we stop new entitlements before people become accustomed to them.  It is nearly impossible to get people off of the dole once they are used to it.

All of these statements are true.

Just be sure that when you vote, you know who you are choosing.  The time is long passed when we could choose based on name recognition.