Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord

Verse 1:
Teach me Thy way, O Lord, teach me Thy way!
Thy guiding grace afford, teach me Thy way!
Help me to walk aright, more by faith, less by sight;
Lead me with heav'nly light, teach me Thy way!

Verse 3:
When doubts and fears arise, teach me Thy way!
When storms o'erspread the skies, teach me Thy way!
Shine through the cloud and rain,
through sorrow, toil and pain;
Make Thou my pathway plain, teach me Thy way!

Verse 4:
Long as my life shall last, teach me Thy way!
Where'er my lot be cast, teach me Thy way!
Until the race is run, until the journey's done,
Until the crown is won, teach me Thy way!

This is a very handy site for learning to sing the hymns in four part harmony. You can select any one of the four parts and just listen to it plunked out on the piano. Pin It

Can We Call Him A Socialist Now?

Via Buzzfeed

Well, maybe.  He spoke at a DSA event.  But maybe the speakers weren't socialists.  Let's see.

According to Wikipedia's entry on William Julius Wilson, Wilson "...identified himself as a Rustin-style social democrat. Wilson has served on the advisory board of Social Democrats, USA" and according to the entry on him he is a long time DSA Affiliate and,

"In 1989, William Julius Wilson, was a member of Democratic Socialists of America. ...

In 1990, Democratic Socialists of America was selling a list of pamphlets, mainly by members, including "Democratic Promise:Ideas for Turning America in a Progressive Direction", by Michael Harrington, William Julius Wilson and Robert Kuttner and "Poverty", by Michael Harrington, with contributions from Barbara Ehrenreich, William Julius Wilson and Mark Levinson.["

Professor Michael Dawson:  it is interesting that in his Curriculum Vitae, he does not include his work with the DSA, not even in the list of 'selected speeches. He's also a founder of the Black Radical Congress, which is a socialist organization.

Toni Preckwinkle: Sodahead (I know) identifies her as a leftist Democrat with ties to Chicago's socialist community.  She did speak at:

The Memorial Service for Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Saul Mendelson was held on Sunday, March 29, 1998, at the First Unitarian Church, Chicago^[7].
The service was MC'd by a retired colleague, Bob Clark. Carl Shier of DSA, spoke first and was followed by Saul's friend Deborah Meier, "a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient who is now starting a new school in Boston". Amy Isaacs, National Director of the Americans for Democratic Action, spoke of what "Saul had meant on foreign affairs to the ADA".
Other speakers included Communist Party USA aligned Senator Carol Moseley Braun, Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, State SenatorBarack Obama, Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie and "a good friend from New York", Myra Russell.
The concluding remarks were made by an old friend, Harriet Lefley, a former Trotskyist with Saul Mendelson in the 1940s, who was then Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami Medical School.

Eulogies also came from Quinn Brisben, (Socialist Party USA presidential candidate 1976, 1992) and David McReynolds (Socialist Party USA presidential candidate 1980, 2000).
Both Brisben and McReynolds are also members of Democratic Socialists of America.

That's an awful lot of socialists in one place.

Professor Joseph Schwartz, identified in New Ground 45, March - April, 1996 as "a member of DSA's National Political Committee."

There is a lot of well documented dot connecting here. I would call it must reading

So what did Obama have to say?  According to the New Ground 45 issue   his theme was three areas state government should be doing more:

The first is "human capital development". By this he meant public education, welfare reform, and a "workforce preparation strategy". Public education requires equality in funding. It's not that money is the only solution to public education's problems but it's a start toward a solution. The current proposals for welfare reform are intended to eliminate welfare but it's also true that the status quo is not tenable. A true welfare system would provide for medical care, child care and job training. While Barack Obama did not use this term, it sounded very much like the "social wage" approach used by many social democratic labor parties. By "workforce preparation strategy", Barack Obama simply meant a coordinated, purposeful program of job training instead of the ad hoc, fragmented approach used by the State of Illinois today.

The state government can also play a role in redistribution, the allocation of wages and jobs

However,  The Democrat Socialists of America say that Obama is not a socialist. 

Hmmm. Would they have any reason to say this if it wasn't true?  I think we know that they would.  I also think that even supporters of Obama would have to agree that this is not how he portrayed himself during the last election.  Also interesting- somewhere in that list of links, Obama was endorcing gay marriage in the 1990s.  So we know his position on the issue did not 'evolve' as he has attempted to portray it, but rather, his revelation of his actual position has been a carefully orchestrated, long, slow strip-tease. This methodology, btw, is, IMO, obviously his strategy for other hard-core socialist policies.  Obama care is meant to be a failure, because then he can step in and 'reform' it by further government intervention.

The DSA did endorse Obama in the state election of 1996, the same year he spoke for them.  If you've studied the way Obama won that election, you'll find this sentence a bit ironic:

Luckily, Mr. Obama does not have any opposition in the primary. His opponents have all dropped out or were ruled off the ballot. But if you would like to contribute to his campaign, make the check payable to Friends of Barack Obama, 2154 E. 71st, Chicago, IL 60649. If you would like to become involved in his campaign...

He ran unopposed because sealed divorce records of at least one opponent were inexplicably leaked to the media and Toni Preckwinkle had "successfully challenged the signatures of Obama's opponents in the Democratic Primary for the Illinois Senate, allowing Obama to run unopposed." (her entry on Wikipedia)




It's obvious that discussing his socialist leanings is effective to some degree, because Obama's comedy team Jon Stewart did a segment on it.  It's funny, because Stewart and his team are funny people, but Once you get done laughing, there really isn't anything substantive there.


Obama was a member of the Chicago Socialist Party in the 90's.

Let's change things up for a moment. Let's swap out all the above references to Obama to some Republican candidate.  And let's swap out all the references to the DSA or other socialist groups to, say, a Libertarian group.  Would it be unfair or a 'smear' to suggest that candidate had definite libertarian leanings based on his long time association with libertarian politics and people?  No, it would be fair.  So what's offensive about pointing out Obama's long time associations and connections with socialists,and socialist meetings?

I wish we had such a candidate as my hypothetical one, somebody with libertarian leanings, btw. 

But we don't have that.  We have a socialist President and yet another 'pragmatic' Republican "who will trade away principle for temporary power and expect my gratitude for the privilege."


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Weekend Plans

Last night we had a family with four girls between the ages of 18 and 12 over for dinner, along with their parents and grandparents.

Remember these chairs?

After dinner the teen-agers went upstairs and played with the chairs. They tell us they were playing trains- each sitting in a wheeled chair, holding on to the one in front, and then all rolling in a line as fast as they could around the room.

It sounded like they were playing bumper cars.

The grownups sat in the living room and talked about when, where, and how we met, when we became Christians, where we'd lived, and told funny stories about the kids.

Then they all left, taking our boy with them. He is spending teh night at his married sister's house north of us (where our friends live), so that he can go off to play at battles with whackings and thwackings and freakishly large weapons, like this:

His brother-in-law will be playing as well, along with several other of his male friends and even a few girls. 

Meanwhile, the HG is loading up her two babies and coming up here.  We shall probably dabble in the pool:

Presuming the Striderling has the go-ahead given his recent determination to rid himself of his g-tube without waiting for any silly old doctors to remove it the medically approved fashion.

The HM and possibly the FYG will go play volleyball at a friend's house.  The rest of us are invited, it's a big Shabbat shindig of some sort, but it's including a lot of people and I need to unpeople myself for a bit.  So I'll be here with the two married girls, Pip, and the grandbabies, and I know you are thinking "Are they not people?" but no, not in the same way.

Some of them, really, really not in the same way:

 

We will visit, sing, read, maybe play, mostly sit, do some swimming, or rather, floating, and probably cook something.  I will study sign language.

Then the Happy Warriors will come back up north together, we'll all get cleaned up and nosh a bit and head off to the three dollar movie theater to see October Baby.

Striderling and Fam are spending the night.  Actually, I thought we were supposed to have the Little Boys, when they left on Tuesday they asked when they could come back, and I said Friday- but they never showed up.

Anyway.

Sunday- we leave for church at 7:30 in the morning, or we try to.  My deaf friend shows up at the taile end of class, and I interpret the rest of class for her and the church service, and I do that very, very badly, but fortunately, our preacher makes an awesome outline.  Unfortunately, my requests to get the list of songs sometime Saturday so I can look them over generally falls on the somewhat unresponsive ears of some 20 somethings who do not do a good job of putting themselves in anybody else's shoes and yes, I am kind of in a crabby mood about that right now.  Sometimes...... 

Sunday afternoon, we will go over the HG and STrider's apartment and help them pack.

Sunday night it's church, more interpreting, and after church the same people we had over for dinner Friday night are having everybody over for a cookout and a movie which they will be showing on their barn wall.

Then we head back home- this time with the STriderling family still in tow, AND my deaf friend, who is coming out to spend a couple days with us.  I'm a little nervous about this and also excited. that's a lot of signing.  Gulp.

Monday we have a cookout and Karaoke over at Shasta's house.  Until you have heard the Dread Pirate Grasshopper sing You Are My Sunshine with his father and Oh, John the Rabbit wtih me, you just don't know how beautiful life is.  Okay, maybe you do.  But you should still see it.

Do you know John the Rabbit?

Tuesday morning sometime one of us will drive my deaf friend back home.

I will sit down at the laptop, slack jawed, drooling, and numb of brain.  Not sure how long it will take to recharge my drained batteries, but I think it will take a whole lot of doing nothing and then resting afterwards.

I will look kind of like this for at least a day (I hope):

I have to do school with the teens, though.  And I have to do several other things, so at some point I will get up and trudge away at life.

There's a laptop in her basket, you know. Pin It

Blynken, Nod, and Photography

The Little Boys and the FYG had fun taking pictures the other day.

Blynken wanted pictures of their hands on the globe- he loves maps.  Here's the pic the FYG took:

Here's the picture Blynken took- the FYG said it was annoying because it took her several tries to get the picture focused the way she wanted, and Blynken got his right on the first try:

He's learning about maps in school- they do the K-12 charter school at home program, which I think is a fabulous fit for them.


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Scary Stuff in the Blog World

Only for many, it has spilled over into the real world. People have lost their jobs, had to flee their homes, and had swat teams called to their homes via hoax phone calls. Ugly. Here's some longer background information on the Speedway Bomber. Conservative blogger Aaron Worthing, actually Aaron Walker, details his claim that the subject of the above video attempted to 'out' him for the purpose of making his name and home address known to those who might object to his 'everybody Draw Mohammed Day," and then frame him for a crime he didn't commit. It's long, but well documented. Apparently, a new harassment technique is to call the local SWAT team from an anonymous phone, claim to be the person you wish to harass, give that person's number, and then tell the SWAT team you've just killed your family. The sort of psychopaths who do this like to be on the phone with their victims when the SWAT team arrives. This happened recently to Patterico, or Patrick Frey. Guess who was on the phone with him, even though it was kind of late at night? Now he heads a 501C3 nonprofit, and guess who donates? Michelle Malkin writes:

Over the past eight years that I’ve been blogging and operating Internet media companies, I’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand some of the most unhinged behavior against conservatives — from individual harassment and intimidation, to e-mail bombs and e-mail hackings, to troll infestations, distributed denial of service attacks, coordinated spam block attacks, and death threats. Over the past twenty years that I’ve worked in daily opinion journalism, written books, and traveled across the country speaking in every type of venue, I’ve always believed that the most effective response to attempted censorship of conservatives is more speech, not less. More. Louder. Bolder. For conservatives online, it is also a time-tested truism that there is great strength in numbers. When bloggers, activists, video content creators, and Twitter users on the Right unite behind common principles — fighting jihadi propaganda, exposing corruption, calling out media bias, following the progressive money trail, holding the Republican Party’s feet to the fire, etc. — we can accomplish uncommon things.

There's a comprehensive read here. Here's a newspaper report at the time- note that according to the report, while still in jail, he attempted to hire one man to kill the assistant US Attorney who handled his prosecution and a witness. He attempted to hire another man to commit a 'copycat style' crime while he was still in jail, so that police would be convinced he wasn't the killer. And he attempted to hire somebody to lure the attorney and a witness into a compromising situation and video tape them. There is so much more. Here Stacy McCain outlines a very ugly campaign against Tea Partiers. It's vile. It's by Neal Rauhauser (“Stranded Wind”). Patterico explains his understanding of the connection between Kimberline and Rauhauser here. Now note this from Protein Wisdom= 'Stranded Wind' authored post titled "Organized Intimidation? Ambush Time." (it's been removed, you can see it through the Wayback Mchine), and this excerpt:

I carefully considered publishing the particulars of how I am handling this and I feel openness has merit. The right has a core of calculating leadership but their most vocal supporters are quite often prey to all sorts of conspiracy theory. Planting the idea (quite true) that some of their not so crazy sounding second and third tier players may be Progressive agents will amp up the paranoia and drive the entire community further to the fringe as they seek to weed out our people.

People engaged in provocative online conduct feel insulated; they’re in the comfort of their own home, if they’ve engaged in a little bit of caution they may feel completely anonymous, and this emboldens them. Specifying the strategy we’ll use to break their anonymity won’t permit any mitigation on their part without adjusting their behavior, which counts as a win for us. We’re dealing with people who have likely had no interaction with the court system beyond a traffic ticket; the potential for a pro se litigant to force them into expensive, long distance, lengthy, discovery laden litigation doesn’t seem to cross their minds. The reality of travel, or frightful expenses, or summary judgments needs to be made real. We probably need to make a very visible example of at least one of them before the rest understand.

Keep in mind that for many Progressives, confronting them with facts is provocative conduct that must be punished, or at least shut up.

And note that this is guy has been defended by so-called Progressives, funded by them, often allowed themselves to be led down a very dark path by him:

Kimberlin was convicted as the so-called “Speedway Bomber,” who terrorized the city of Speedway, Indiana, by detonating a series of explosives in early September 1978. In the worst incident, Kimberlin placed one of his bombs in a gym bag, and left it in a parking lot outside Speedway High School. Carl DeLong was leaving the high school football game with his wife when he attempted to pick up the bag and it exploded. The blast tore off his lower right leg and two fingers, and embedded bomb fragments in his wife’s leg. He was hospitalized for six weeks, during which he was forced to undergo nine operations to complete the amputation of his leg, reattach two fingers, repair damage to his inner ear, and remove bomb fragments from his stomach, chest, and arm. In February 1983, he committed suicide.

He left a bomb in a gym bag in a high school parking lot? Updated to add- see Popehat's excellent post where he explains once again that free speech isn't free speech if it's only for people we like. Then scroll down to Ted Francis' comment that no, basically, people he doesn't like do not deserve free speech, and anyway, he paid his debt to society and Kimberlin's victims deserved it. And remember that Kimberlin blew a leg off a man, a total stranger. He has refused to pay off the civil suit judgment against him filed by that man's widow- to this day. Pin It

Random Updates

101 Answers to the Summertime, "Mom, I'm Bored" Blues

My sweet friend the Church Mouse reviewed my summertime activity book on her blog- check out what she said!

Sherry at Semicolonblog has a review and  a give-away: http://www.semicolonblog.com/?p=17964

The 4 Moms, 35+ Kids parenting e-book has received positive reviews everywhere, really, and it's very gratifying to hear how much it's helping other moms. It's not too late to get your e-book copy or your Kindle version of 4 Moms of 35+ Kids Answer Your Parenting Questions .=)


I really enjoyed these fifty uses for everyday things- like using the Twister mat for a tablecloth; using rubberbands on coat hangers to keep clothes from slipping, Using an old mitten for sunglass protectors, using a colander over a bowl to hold ice at a party....


Simple Chinese Homestyle Cooking (Chinese Homestyle Recipes): Free4Kindle- today. Probably won't be free tomorrow.

My weekly Frugal Hacks post- changing your attitude, the one dollar car, grocery shopping, and good sources for coupons for healthy products and more.

Company coming for dinner tonight- making this and this.

Just over a week left before Jenny comes home.  The day after she gets home, Pip and I are off to North Carolina for a few days- an educational conference we planned a while ago.

The Striderling downed 4 ounces of milk on his own without prompting a couple mornings ago, and he loves yogurt drinks and can slurp them without choking, so that's cool.

Here's another free Kindle book, and it will probably stay free: Walks and Words of Jesus A Paragraph Harmony of the Four Evangelists. The editor combined the four gospel accounts, put them in chronological order, removed the verse references, and added chapter divisions, making a life of Jesus that reads, as much as possible, in narrative form. I've only read the first four chapters, but I am impressed so far. I think we'll be reading this for school Bible reading when we finish our current read (Give Attention to Reading, a study with some excellent open ended questions).


And, lastly, as you know, the HM lost his job a few months ago and quickly found another one as a teacher's aide. We managed, thanks to some kind donations, freezers full of meat from our own cows, careful budgeting, and of course, the Grace of God, to make it thus far without touching the emergency fund, even though his new job paid something like 35% of his previous job. However, in the summer months, it pays 0%. We do have things lined up for July.  We do have that emergency fund. Obviously, I've stepped up on the Kindle publishing, and we have some blog advertising money and the AF pension coming in.  I am confident, however, most of all in the Lord's grace, and while we do not sit on our hands, we do trust the Lord and look expectantly to what he will do.

One very cool result of all this- in the past, our youngest two, born and raised during the most prosperous portion of their parents' lives,  have been a bit casual with their spending requests.  But lately, they have turned tables and told me, "We don't need to buy that, it can wait. We can do without dessert (something they were loathe to do before)..."  That has been fun to watch.  The FYG, who hated cooking last year, this year has come up with some very creative variations on cooking ground beef using what we have in our hands instead of asking for extra trips to the store for pasta, sauces, and special ingredients.  Last night we had an amazing stir fry which included a turnip here, a couple of radishes, and other odds and ends from the freezer, AND she is excited about her discovery of a wild onion patch in the woods:

Okay, I guess that wasn't the last thing- I have blossoms on my tomatoes and peppers, and several other green things are growing better than I expected in our various containers- old wash tubs, five gallon buckets, and an old horse trough.

And the boy explains he can always shoot a squirrel or two if we need extra meet for the stew pot (actually, he can't, did you know there's a season for squirrels?).=) Pin It