Don Roach

A few people have had a profound effect upon my life. One of those people is Oswald Chambers. Chambers was a minister whose collection of sermons were encapsulated within My Utmost for His Highest, a little book that provides a daily nugget of inspiration. A friend of mine gave me the book when I graduated high school, and I was a skeptic, Christian books weren’t ever (and still aren’t) high on my list of must reads. I often feel they are too cliche, over the top, and not thought provoking.

This book? A completely different story. For example, the passage from today’s text (the book has a message of each day of the calendar year) asks, “Am I carnally minded?” Going back to cliches, I’ve heard this question put to many a young teen and young adult with the ensuing message of abstinence. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but talking about abstinence without addressing the issue of young love, hormones, and peer pressure leaves young people without a lot to hold onto when they find themselves in tricky situations.

Oswald changes the script a bit and doesn’t necessarily focus simply on sexual carnality nor in the insistence upon stopping the act of carnality itself:

If the Spirit of God detects anything in you that is wrong, He does not ask you to put it right; He asks you to accept the light, and He will put it right. A child of the light confesses instantly and stands bared before God; a child of the darkness says – “Oh, I can explain that away.”

Indeed, it is not up to us to put it right but to trust God to put it right. It’s a power shifting and one I don’t think often is talked about when talking about carnality. In any event, Oswald often went to the heart of the matter ignoring surface issues.

From time to time, I’m going to write my thoughts on his sermons as I believe they are very inspiring, challenging in many ways for Christian and non-Christian alike.

As an aside, one of the best things about being a Christian is that I’m a perfectionist. I’ll never attain it, no, but serving a God whose number one requirement is surrender and not perfection leads me ever closer to it, nonetheless.

William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal wrote a powerful piece regarding the compromise pro-life Democrats made with the president over the issue of federal funding of abortions in the recently passed health care legislation.

Amid the recriminations it’s easy to overlook what Mr. Stupak had cobbled together. His amendment restricting federal funding for abortions, passed in November, marked the only bipartisan vote in this whole health-care mess. For the first time since Roe v. Wade, pro-life Democrats had seized the legislative initiative in the teeth of their leadership’s opposition—and brought the party of abortion to heel.

Now Mr. Stupak has thrown it away. By caving at the last hour, he discredited all who stood with him. (What does it say about Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur and Pennsylvania’s Chris Carney that they had already agreed to vote yes even before the fig leaf of the executive order had come through?) In addition to undermining an encouraging partnership with pro-lifers across the congressional aisle, Mr. Stupak signaled that, in the end, you can’t count on pro-life Democrats.

Here in Rhode Island, we have our own pro-life Democrat who also caved – far earlier than Stupak – on this issue. By now many of you have read about the e-mail Rep. Langevin sent out to his constituents stating his support of the health care bill. It was very discouraging to read as a member of the pro-life community. And Langevin stood with other pro-life Democrats and decided that it was not worth the fight, and that’s a tough pill to swallow.

Stupak and others caved, passing a massive bill and leaving behind the very stipulation that stood in their way of supporting the measure by accepting “fool’s gold” in the form of an executive order. An executive order isn’t law and if anyone challenges the executive order it’s likely they would win in court. Stupak and others must have known this, no?

Sad day indeed.

Maybe I should have posted this song a few days ago, as Congress did not wait “before we [Congress] go too far”.

By a vote of 219-212, the healthcare bill passed last night.

Here are a couple of images that say it all.

Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer yucking it up.

Rep. Stupak with an executive order aborting (lol) federal funding for abortions.

Last night, I watched as a little known school, the University of Northen Iowa, took on college basketball juggernaut, Kansas, and whadya-know UNI won. Did UNI have better athletes? No. Did they have as many McDonald’s All-Americans? Uh, no. Were they the tournament’s overall No. seed? Come on!

What they did have was a collective group of players who acted as one. It was amazing to watch UNI impose it’s will against the best team in the country. They slowed the pace down and worked the shot clock. They hit open threes and even opened up a 12 point lead mid-way through the second half. I thought to myself, “this team isn’t going to implode. Kansas is going to have to take this game.” And they almost did, turning up the pressure.

But in the end, a dude named, Ali Farokhmanesh, hit a “I’m going to win this for us” shot that was the dagger. Great game to watch and it got me thinking…there is still hope for the little guy in America.

The game showed that hard work pays off and even if you don’t have the most talent, you can still win by working together.

Cheesy concept? Idealistic nonsense? Maybe. But for one night, I got to believe again, and that was a nice break from everything that’s going on in America today.

One of the numbers Obama touted throughout his campaign was no tax increases for people making under $250,000/year. I was reading today on a blog written by the “Healthcare Economist” that seemed a bit troubling:

Tax credits for Health Insurance Premiums.  This will do nothing to change how much health care costs, it will just change who pays the premiums.  For middle class individuals, these subsidies will help make health insurance more affordable.  Because the wealthy won’t receive any subsidy (the maximum family income to be eligible for the credit is $88,000), they will simply pay higher taxes.

Is that right? If you are a family making more thant $88k/year you’ll pay extra in taxes? If that is the case, that’s a direct contradiction of one of Obama’s main campaign promises. The site Politifact gives him a pass saying:

Obama’s promise on the campaign trail may have been a bit of rhetorical excess based on his income tax plan, which seeks to exempt lower incomes from tax increases. [...] Still, it’s a tax increase. People who smoke will pay higher taxes under the measure that Obama signed. We added this promise to our database and rated it a Compromise.

I wonder what they’ll say about this, if it is true. Obama’s veracity aside, what do you think about having increased taxes if you make over $88,000? It’s not as if $88,000 makes you upperclass, you’re pretty much right in the middle of middle income.  Doesn’t that make you feel that you’re being sold a bill of goods and that Obama’s primary interest is pushing forth a leftist agenda versus protecting the middle class?

It certainly does to me.

Wow, what a Thursday.

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (aka March Madness) is my favorite sporting event each year. It has high drama, underdogs, blue chippers, background stories, and everything you’d want in a sporting event.

This year’s incarnation started of with a bang as the first three games were very close – 2 went to overtime and one was decided by a point. Later, powerhouse Georgetown was knocked out (at the Dunkin Donuts center no less).

Another 16 games are on tap today with more over the weekend. This event reminds me of the American spirit where everyone has a chance to win. So catch a few games if you can.

There seems to be a theme in my recent posts regarding what I increasingly view as hypocrisy of the left. Make no mistake, there is hypocrisy on the right as well. If it’s something that irks me, be sure I’ll write about it.

Today, I was going through the Projo politics blog and came across this little tidbit:

With controversy continuing to swirl, the president of the largest state employees union has notified the candidates for governor that this Saturday’s gubernatorial forum is off. Over the weekend, the forum morphed from a closed-door event to one open to media coverage, but the invitations to speak — and answer union members’ questions — was still limited to former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee and the two Democrats: Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch and state Treasurer Frank T. Caprio.

There is one name that is conspicuously missing, John Robitaille, an announced Republican candidate for governor. You could also include Ken Block as a notable omission as well. The world’s worst kept secret is that unions in this state only support Democrats. One could argue, “well they invited Chafee” and sure, that’s an argument.

However, the point isn’t that they only invited two Dems and a flopper…err..independent. The point is that they didn’t invite other major candidates. You have to ask why not? Most likely, they didn’t feel Robitaille’s aims fit within their own and Block may be viewed as non-viable.

Whatever the case may be, different groups trying to hold forums, debates, or other functions that help us get to know candidates often trip over themselves as they seek to invite only like-minded candidates.

So while the Council maintains that a later forum will be open to anybody, their initial bias was demonstrated in this short circuited attempt. And time and again, groups like these demonstrate that they do not have the ability to be fair, to respect the right of their opposition to speak, and that’s too bad.

Had they invited all the major announced candidates there wouldn’t have been an issue at all. But their political bias didn’t think in terms of fair, only in terms of whatever furthered their own cause. As we enter this political season we need to hold all groups accountable for being willing to allow all people to participate in the process, even if some disagree with the aims of said groups. Doing otherwise undermines the credibility of such events and only stifles the dialogue we need here in RI as we face a critical decision in November.

On Tuesday, Brian Hull wrote a post titled “Stand up for women’s reproductive rights” where he called on voters to oppose or support proposed legislation at the Rhode Island General Assembly that deal with abortion. As noted by previous postings this past week, I’m pretty fired up. Let’s start with one of the two most egregious bills Hull asks us to support:

Support House Bill 7790 – This would repeal an existing law requiring doctors to notify the spouses of married women seeking abortions that the women seek to terminate their pregnancies.

The logic of this bill is misguided at best insulting at worst. Us married guys know that we take on a life partner when we put that ring on our girl’s finger. Indeed, many of our wives are prone to say, “What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine” placing emphasis on the latter. Of course it then follows that in the decision of whether to abort a child that the husband should be legally locked out of the process. Actually, it makes no sense. I’m tired of the “my body, my choice” crowd minimalizing the role of fathers in their children’s lives. While Hull finds it morally reprehensible to not provide health care to all he does not support the idea that when a husband and wife create a life they both should have say in what happens to that life. Hypocrisy if ever I saw it.

But, this isn’t about Hull really. It’s about a mindset in the progressive movement that as noted before seeks to pummel their concept of morality onto the masses. And I’m sorry, husbands have the right to know if their wives are a) pregnant and b) seeking an abortion. I’d love for someone to argue why men should not have that right.

The other bill that is just as ridiculous is this one:

Support House Bill 7764 – This would permit an internist, family care physician or psychiatrist to determine that if a pregnant woman less than 18 years of age would suffer physical abuse or mental injury if she seeks the consent of parents, guardians or adult relatives to have an abortion then the abortion may be performed without parental consent or judicial authorization.

OK, so physicians are social workers now? Can you say lawsuit? If I were a parent and this bill were enacted and the doctor believed physical harm would come to my child if I were told that she was pregnant, using this law to justify their actions in not informing me of the situation, I’d sue faster than the pen would dry on the consent signed by my underage daughter. It might even be a little faster. Physicians, unless they are also psychologists, have no expert basis to make such determinations and such determinations would always be biased by someone whose very young, very scared, and looking for the easiest way out. In those situations, you need parents and parental guidance. Instead, Hull tells us we should support this legislation. And that’s progressive morality for you.

Again, progressives show their true colors daily. They want two things at any cost.

1. Individual protectionism. Basically this means that you must protect the right of the individual to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it.

Incidentally this is in opposition to their second goal.

2. Government’s purpose is to create a society where individual protectionism is upheld and funded by governmental agencies. Further, government has a responsibility to usurp money from those in surplus and give it to those without.

So an individual has all these rights except one, the right to pursue happiness without government intrusion in the form of taking my hard earned money and forcing me to give it to someone else. Sorry rich person, it’s not “My money, my choice”. And sorry middle income man, your cash isn’t yours either. Progressives, in my opinion, are very underhanded and hypocritical in this regard that they seek a society where anything goes except when it comes to individual pursuit of riches.

With these two pieces of legislation, Progressives are undermining the family concept at its basic levels. What’s worse:  they can neither acknowledge or conceive of it.

Today’s video goes out to my wife…