The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace

What must our enemies be thinking?

By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

AP

According to recent Gallup polls, the president’s average approval rating is below 30% — down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.”

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president’s original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country’s current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, “We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.”

To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman’s low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman’s presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years — and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty — a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry’s legal team during the presidential election in 2004.

Time flies

My little girls are just growing up so fast, before my very eyes.  I’m constantly amazed by the grace and blessings God has given to our family.  Leah just seems SO intelligent and so sweet (while somehow still garnering the title of “little monster” more than a few times, lol) and Lily is also sweet beyond compare and a beautiful little - not so little – friendly & happy baby.  This past weekend we were blessed to be visited by my brother, and Leah & Lily loved meeting their Uncle Paul for the first time finally.  I think Leah dragged him around by the hand all weekend long    Here are some recent pictures.  Hope you all are having a great day.

Power to the PEOPLE! :-)

The ladies love their Uncle Paul.

Freudian Slip

Indeed.  Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Tennessee to Sanction Mixed Martial Arts

Way to go Tennessee!  Last week, the TN state legislature passed laws that call for the official sanctioning of mixed martial arts events in the state of Tennessee, opening the door for the Ultimate Fighting Championship and other major organizations to host events in Memphis, Nashville and other cities.  There’s no question this campaign to saction MMA – which was of course heavily supported/led by the UFC – is ultimately about profit for their organization, but I still have to give them props for lobbying lawmakers and making the general public aware of the benefits and positive aspects of MMA despite some recent heavily biased stories by high-profile national mainstream media.  (For the record, I rarely disagree with Bill O’Reilly, but he’s way off base on this one.)

UFC fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, who until this past Saturday was the UFC’s  light-heavyweight champion, and Marc Ratner, the UFC’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs,  were especially prominent in the process. Both met with lawmakers to describe the benefits of MMA, and Ratner even wrote guest columns for local media.

“Stateside, Tennessee is a hotbed for MMA,” Ratner recently wrote in The Tennessean. “‘Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, our light-heavyweight champion and one of the sport’s true superstars, is a proud native of Memphis, and once the new Tennessee Athletic Commission is formed and has all the rules in place, we will be looking at Tennessee as a state to host a fight. We believe that with their beautiful arenas and diehard fan base, Memphis or Nashville would be great hosts for a UFC event.”

The next thing that is supposed to happen in the process is that Tennessee will create a state athletic commission to regulate the sport, after which I’m sure events will begin to pop up in our area, much to my delight.  The campaign to sanction MMA in Tennessee began this past October.  State Rep. Curry Todd (R-Collierville/Germantown) was the key legislator in the process, and he received help from Sen. Doug Jackson (D-Dickson).  Events will most likely be held in Memphis venues The FedEx Forum and the Pyramid Arena, and in Nashville at the Sommet Center and possibly Memorial Gymnasium.

Worth your time. I would not lead you astray.

Wesley Layton Walters.

Listen here.

Fathers

This father’s day, with my own interests now deeply entrenched in the tumultuous but heavily rewarding world of fatherhood due to my two young daughters, I’m compelled to write down a few scattered thoughts regarding dads and their role and importance in our society. Special thanks to Mark Alexander at The Patriot Post for his insightful article on this subject, quoted and paraphrased in the smaller font.

“And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World.” —Benjamin Franklin

“It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness.” —James Wilson (1791)

It is quite amazing to me the cause & effect correlation between the overall welfare and quality of development of a child (and society in general) and whether or not that child has the good fortune to benefit from the love, affirmation, discipline and protection of both their mother and father (preferably together under one roof as a family). This correlation is the subject of an article written by the Patriot Post’s Mark Alexander, in which he writes: “Marriage is the foundation of the family, which in turn serves as the foundation for society. “

Broken marriages lead to broken families, which lead to broken societies. The most successful fathering is rooted in a healthy marriage. Therefore, to be good fathers, it becomes obvious we must first be good husbands.

Dr. Jim Lee, director of Living Free ministries, writes that the Christian marriage paradigm is built on a foundation of five principles: “First, God is the creator of the marriage relationship; second, heterosexuality is God’s pattern for marriage; third, monogamy is God’s design for marriage; fourth, God’s plan for marriage is for physical and spiritual unity; and fifth, marriage was designed to be permanent.”

When this pattern is broken, the example we set for our children can and often is gravely and irrevocably damaged or corrupted, leading to staggering consequences. Mr. Alexander provides these statistics, from the United States Centers for Disease Control, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services and the Bureau of the Census:

Children who live apart from their fathers will account for 40 percent of incarcerated adults, 63 percent of teen suicides, 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions, 71 percent of high-school dropouts, 75 percent of children in chemical-abuse centers, 80 percent of rapists, 85 percent of youths in prison, 85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders, and 90 percent of homeless and runaway children.

About eight percent of children in married-couple homes live at or below poverty level, while almost 40 percent of children in homes without fathers live below poverty level. The latter group risks a much higher incidence of serious child abuse or neglect.

Not included in the above is the very common and very severe emotional damage children can suffer from rejection, parental separation due to divorce, emotional abuse, and/or a broken or dysfunctional relationship, (or non-relationship, as it were) with parents during their crucial developmental years. Their emotional development is impeded, resulting finally and ironically in more adults and parents without the emotional faculties to deal with the pressures of adult life, and without the ability or desire to connect, love, nurture, support and actively raise their children as functioning members of society.

It is no small irony that divorced parents were, in all likelihood, themselves the child-victims of generational patterns of familial dissociation and dissolution. Daughters bear a particularly difficult burden in the absence of fathers. A broken father-daughter trust bond can disable the formation of a trust bond with a husband in later life.

As I grow older, and my children grow up, it has become extremely obvious to me that the job I do being a daddy to my wonderful children and seeking God’s guidance in their upbringing may very well be one of the most, if not the single most important part of the work that God has put me on this Earth to do, and a job that I truly relish the opportunity to carry out, despite all my fears and apprehensions regarding my performance at it so far.

The Jeep

I’ve decided to avoid writing anymore about the process of buying a car and what not -at least for now.  I may come back to it, but the bad taste is still too fresh in my mind.  Don’t get me wrong, I got what I believe to be a good deal and absolutely LOVE the vehicle I chose, but it was a LOT of work to carefully find and choose a vehicle.  My brother would most likely say I capitulated too early and gave in to the dealer, but I was in a quandary for someone with my particular outlook on life and things that take a great deal of effort:  when faced with the vehicle one wants at the price one had prepared one’s self to pay, what, exactly does one do?  This “one”, my friends, makes the deal and drives home in this:

The (@$%#) Art of Buying an Automobile, Part One

So. The Wife and I have decided it is time to get a slightly larger auto, what with our new addition to the family and the immense amount of stuff that seems to simply “come with” girls of any age. (It may also be largely due to the fact that our 12 year old Maxima, the only car we have that can fit all of us at once, has over 200K miles on it, has no A/C, no radio, won’t pass emissions testing and has tags that expired in April…) ANYWAY…We do things a little differently in our family, though it all seems to somehow make sense to us. What with gas prices being astronomically high these days, many people are trying to cheaply offload their SUV’s in favor of these fancy hybrids and smaller autos that get much better gas mileage and are desperately trying to avoid larger, less gas-miserly vehicles. These people are certainly smart. However, some other also smart people that don’t get talked about a lot are those people who go out at times like these and look specifically for autos others are trying to get rid of and thus end up getting superb deals and finding themselves able to afford ALOT more car than they originally imagined. That’s right, The Wife and I are looking for SUV’s. You may think this is odd, but it makes sense to us to pay a few thousand dollars less for a car that will cost us a little extra in gas prices. Most importantly we really don’t drive all that much TBH, with church being about the farthest we regularly drive. To make a long story short, I hope to be driving a 2002-2004 Jeep Liberty Sport by the time I sit down to write another blog. My next blog will chronicle my journey through the maze of financing, credit, car dealers and raw desire for things simply out of my price range…