Davie Bowie & Bing Crosby /Little Drummer Boy

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

LA Times Positive 4 Sara Palin

Look at this! Positive reporting about Sarah Palin in THE LA TIMES! Will wonders never cease. You know, this is way past the election--no one at the Times had to write about the Palin Power that you still find breaking out all across the Country.

But, it did write about her and the legions who still are enamored by her. There must be a market for a straightforward, honest, tcb (take care of business) type politican out there--perhaps the only one who refused a $25,000 raise in recent memory.

How refreshing when Congress just voted itself another big raise--no matter that only its immediate families find Congress' performance anywhere near satisfactory. Maybe even the Times has had enough of business as usual in the obviously corrupt Capitol. Everybody must have a limit. Refreshing and hopeful!

The first article follows and here's the link for a second article in the same edition--also positive about Sarah Palin coming in runner up for Time magazine's Person of the Year. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/
la-na-ticket21-2008dec21,0,6304223.story

The Alaska governor drew a lot of women into the political conversation, and they're trying to keep it going.

By Laura Olson
December 21, 2008

Reporting from Washington -- Across Shannon McGinley's hometown of Bedford, N.H., this fall, women were talking about politics.

At school gatherings and Bible study groups, women who had never followed political affairs were talking about a woman like them -- a conservative mother trying to balance family and career.

It started when the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate.

Now, more than a month since the political spotlight has turned away from the failed GOP ticket and the running mate who rallied so many conservatives, some of those whom Palin drew to the political arena are seeking to keep a conversation going. This includes TeamSarah.org, a social networking site launched in September.

Palin's emergence in national politics touched a group of women who hadn't connected with other female politicians, who usually were Democrats, said Barbara Burrell, a researcher at Northern Illinois University who focuses on women and politics.

One of those women is Jackie Siciliano, 45, a New Jersey mom who calls herself conservative-leaning but open-minded. She hadn't paid attention to the election until Palin's nomination.

"When I heard her speak and I realized she's my age and was a member of the PTA, I thought she's a different kind of person and brings different experiences into the political arena," Siciliano said.

Organizers stood ready to rally Palin fans.

TeamSarah.org -- boasting more than 60,000 members and hoping to top 100,000 by Inauguration Day -- was started in part by a mother of five, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group that promotes the involvement of women in politics. She and Jane Abraham, chairwoman of the group's board, started the site as a place for followers to network and promote Palin.

The website grew quickly, the organizers said, with membership increasing after each burst of critical news coverage of the controversial Republican running mate from Alaska. On the site, members created profiles, browsed blog postings, found volunteer activities and met other supporters.

Some identified with Palin on social issues. Some, despite differences on the issues, found life experiences in common. McGinley, a Team Sarah member who coordinated outreach in New Hampshire, said a friend of hers who supports abortion rights got involved in the campaign.

"She said to me that, of all of the things that she might disagree with Sarah Palin about, the other things outweighed" the issues in dispute, McGinley said. "She felt Sarah Palin understood those things better than other women in politics."

But with the election over, will Dannenfelser's "vast army" stay engaged?

"It's extremely difficult to sustain any movement over an extended period of time," said Karen O'Connor, director of American University's Women and Politics Institute. "And it gets really difficult to sustain momentum as a vice presidential candidate down the road."

lolson@tribune.com

Merry Christmas

Amazing Grace by Il Divo. Perfect together!

Saving Free Speech for Christians

Below you will find a link to the first episode of a series sponsored by AFA that will be shown on TV. Our Lutheran Church doesn't seem to be sympathetic to the AFA or its cause to save freedom of speech and the right to assemble for Christians. In fact, it doesn't seem to feel those things are even in jeopardy.

Rather, it tends to side with those who want to change the US Constitution in order to give greater rights to the everybody-but-Christians who want to set a new set of values for the rest of us. The video depicts a systematic undermining of allowing Christianity, and especially Jesus, into public language and the public square--all the while embracing everything but Jesus.

That this is being done on purpose in an organized attempt to take hostage another of our beloved American institutions (the family, public education, the media, political arena, organized religion) and their core values is beyond the pale. That the greater "we" appears unaware, and willing to follow blindly down this path, rather that take self-preservative action is a sad commentary of our current mindset.

We've been living in Bizarro World for some time now. That place where everything we KNOW to be true and good is depicted as wrong and bad. That place where ending inconvenient babies and senior citizens lives is good and sending murderers and terrorists to their death is bad. That place where a teenager has the right to wear a T-shirt with the real F-word on it walking around in public (of course, no one has the right to be offended by this), but where another teenager cannot use the word Jesus in a speech about what inspired her to be successful in her academic life.

The place where more and more of our churches refuse to defend themselves against the attack on Christianity, Jesus, and God. Yeah, that world. The one where too many of us are not standing up for our beliefs because we don't want to "offend" someone who is only too happy to make us and our beliefs imprisioned felons for having them.

The link below will take you to the AFA home page where you will find all the episodes. I have just finished viewing the first one and recommend it highly. Of course, I've gone on way too long. Please look at this video, though, and give its premise some serious thought. The AFA has given us a very sobering series. (I wish the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches would join them. Not gonna happen.)

AFA Saving Free Speech series