Wednesday, January 01, 2014
The Benghazi 15
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
Virginia 2013, Thanks to Jefferson, Madison, & Mason - A thankful Draw... Amen
Thursday, September 26, 2013
The BPOL Tax Pledge
Monday, September 09, 2013
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@PutinRF_Eng #Russia 's
Role in #Syria http://t.co/BEE4MlP6a9 @BarackObama @whitehouse @whpresscorps
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http://chrisfilby.blogspot.com
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Saturday, August 31, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2013
Our Most recent incursion into Libya where we "led from behind" left us with a country in chaos and a consulate in flames with four dead including our Ambassador. Our ability to affect constructive change in Syria is very limited. In war, you are all in or you aren't; if you are not you lose. Our Military is not trained to lose. The President is not willing to commit us to a full on war with or without allies to take over Syria, let the United Nations set up a new democratic government, and then provide enough troops for enough time to insure that government is a success. Neither Russia or China would be willing to go along, and Iran would constantly be interfering like it has in Iraq. Sometimes it is better to quit while you're ahead, right now, even though he might look really bad, he's still ahead. Leave this one to RUSSIA!
Monday, July 16, 2012
My Very Racist Rant
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Throughout our lives we meet people, some are simply just folks we see in passing, a glance, a tip of a hat, or other less friendly gesture, and some become acquaintances who weave themselves in and out of our lives for myriads of reasons, some good, some not, but from time to time much less often than not you meet someone you can call a friend. We all have friends. We have friends from childhood, friends from high school and college, friends from work or professional relationships, and social friends.
When a person becomes your friend or you become theirs as a rule a bond forms that last a lifetime. Of course this bond might simply be an indelible memory of the person, but a bond forms nonetheless, assuming that the friendship was in fact a real friendship, one that was based on mutual respect, trust, admiration, and in many cases love. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a deep love of my friends. There are times that I don’t particularly like certain friends, or that a friend may fall out of favor for one reason or another, but as a Christian I would like to believe I love them in some meaningful way, and hope they do the same regardless of their momentary status.
When I grew up there were no cellular telephones, no personal computers, no internet, life was pretty simple. I man a met recently that lives down in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia said, if someone wants to get in touch with me, they know where to find me. I have a phone at my house, and if I’m not home someone knows where I am. Wow, did that somehow make a whole lot of sense. That is the way it used to be before technology became our way of life and before the age of instant gratification settled in on all of us. Here and now has to be better right? It makes me wonder sometimes… but I digress. Social Networking works for a reason. It works because it takes the effort out of doing what I just described, staying in touch, or going to find someone. That’s not evil, it is however our reality, and an evil we should be at least somewhat weary of when we lay our heads down at night.
So what’s my point in babbling on about all of this with friendship stuff and old and new. It’s a sad point and one I am not very proud of frankly. I suppose there’s an app for it, but since I don’t have an iPhone along with most of the country, I’ll just come out with it… It sucks to lose someone and not find out about it until months or well several years later. Yes, that’s right people die and people don’t know that they died and it sucks when they find out. There I said it. It sucks more when they realize how bad they feel for themselves that they didn’t do what they should have done to keep in touch, to be a better friend. It’s guilt, its remorse, its sadness, and it’s grief, but it’s also fact. We all have lives that are busy and we all lose track of folks we care about. We don’t stop caring, people grow apart and go their separate ways from time to time; that’s no one’s fault, but it does happen all too often. Then there are people that move away, you might be one of them. I’m one of them. I moved and I left a forwarding address to some, to others I didn’t but I certainly wasn’t unable to be found, “someone knew where I was”.
Now that Facebook, its predecessor MySpace, and the much more thrifty Twitter are available, along with the many Classmate and Reunion websites, it’s possible for most people who want to be found to be found. In some cases it’s impossible not to be found with all the data available online. There are new entries to the market as well Google’s Google Plus with Circle’s is fast growing amongst the more tech savvy crowd, and with those who want a more private environment than Facebook in which to wonder about . I’m on all of them, but I prefer the Twitter arena personally. Google Plus remains largely unexplored however.
Anyway, back to the point, the point being that I’m sad. I’m sad that I sucked as a friend to a couple of people who in some way I could have benefited, I’ll never know. I was too involved in my own life doing unimportant things that didn’t change the world, or even my world, but seemed important at the time, too important to take time to find out what was happening in the lives of those I cared about. Perhaps I am being too hard on myself here, perhaps a little melodramatic. I’m trying to drive home a point, and that is that as Christmas approaches and you send out your “CHRISTMAS CARDS” (Okay I send out some secular cards too) that a once a year remembrance of people just isn’t enough. They might not be there in January, or March, or June. Next year when your Christmas card comes back return to sender you may not have enough money to buy postage to get it to the forwarding address, I hear that Heaven is a long way off, and well paper doesn’t keep well at the “other address”. The bottom line is we all need to do better. We all need to be better, and we should try to find ways to appreciate the friends we have. Of course Social Networking is a great way to keep in touch, but it’s not really the end all be all. If you’re close, you should do some face time.
I stopped reading newspapers some time ago because they were too depressing and well for the most part beyond the front page and the sports section I really didn’t get much out of them. Even when I did buy them I rarely ever looked at the obituaries. Sadly enough to say I did that more often when I was growing up having lost so many friends in those formative years. Perhaps now that should be the one section I should read, certainly it’s one I’ve missed at least twice in the last several years. Forgoing that I will turn to Google e-mail alerts for news, at least then at least I won’t miss an obituary. The holiday season gives us much to reflect upon, but nothing more important to ponder than our relationships with others. They are more precious than any dollars we spend at any store, more valuable than any gift we can give or receive. We only get one life, we only get a few friends, let’s all try not to forget that long past the day the decorations get put back in the boxes after New Years.
Monday, August 29, 2011
FULL MEDIA DISCLOSURE - SHOW US THE MONEY!
As we enter into a new campaign season, why don't we ask our media to do something new and refreshing? Why don't we demand a little transparency on their part for a change? We don't need to require them to disclose their closely held sources, that would jeopardize their journalistic ethics, but we do need to know who is paying their bills. What campaigns or outside interest groups are funneling money to them? Full disclosure to the American people all the time, at the beginning of every broadcast, on the front page of every newspaper, and on the cover of every publication should be a standard the media lives by. We deserve to know how the political money is being spent without having to dig through a mountain of paper over at the FEC. If they can report what's going on in a campaign, they can sure as hell report what they are being paid to run advertisements by campaigns. If it runs on their air or in their publication, we need to know what they received for it and where it came from, period.
Why has no one has demanded this on a Sunday Talk Show in the past. Why this is is so inside politics that it beyond the reach of average American's who truly deserve to know. Who is afraid for this information to become public? Are the advertisers ashamed of their handy work? No one is asking for disclosure from the advertising agencies. This is simply a call for who is paying to put it out there on the air waves and in print. Is the media afraid? Is the media ashamed? Whether the money comes from, Union members, Special Interest PACs, Political Parties, Candidates Campaign Funds, Corporations, or Individuals, media outlets have an obligation to report who is spending what, and no one knows better than they do because they are sending out the bills.
So here is a challenge to all the media… conservative and liberal media alike, are you true patriots or are you afraid a little of the scrutiny you happily dish out? The real campaign is about to begin, can we the American people count on you to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about how much is being paid for what we see on your air and in your publications and from whom you receive payment? Yes we hear and see the FEC disclaimers… this ad is paid for by… but who is that really? Are you really going to share that? America is waiting….
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Defending Emily Fields
When Non Profit groups like the Florida Family Foundation pressure advertisers like General Mills to pull their support from quality programming like ABC Family’s show “Pretty Little Liars” we all suffer. First Amendment issues notwithstanding; the real issue here is whether we as a people are prepared to accept reality and deal with situations that at times can make us uncomfortable; in this case two young women kissing. One would have thought that Norman Lear crushed that barrier with his cutting edge 1970’s series “All in the Family” on CBS when America was force fed the reality of bigotry in Prime Time. From that point on it became clear to everyone that the television industry had more than token black and strong dominant participation. A whole host of programming was born and for the better. It did not take long before barriers fell for the homosexual community as well, albeit in predominantly male roles.
Here we find ourselves some four decades after a bigoted Archie Bunker came to the realization that he had to accept the first successful human heart transplant operation was from a black man to a white man, and somehow as a nation we cannot get passed the image of two young women sharing an intimate moment coming into our living rooms. Never mind the fact that the argument to used to get the advertisers to pull their support from the program had very little to do with the mission statement of the organization promoting the action. Pretty Little Liars is not a show about children; it is a show about older adolescent teenagers. Emily Fields the subject of all the Ire is one of four main characters and of many story lines of the program. Emily has come to discover that she is not attracted to young men like her friends (Spencer Hastings, Hanna Marin, and Aria Montgomery), learning to kiss with her murdered friend Alison DiLaurentis and she begins to experiment with young women, finally realizing her sexuality. Emily also had to deal with the threat of being exposed by a mysterious nemesis “A” a yet undiscovered character causing chaos and mischief for all four of the Pretty Little Liars.
This matter was handled tastefully and in a serious way. It was not extraneous frivolity strewn across the small screen for the delight of perversion. Emily faces serious dilemmas within herself, her closest trusted friends, and finally her parents. Her mother initially rejected her as broken. Emily’s father away in the military and a very conservative man returned home to face a household in disarray and a daughter confused and in distress. At the same time Emily was falling in love with a girl, one who used marijuana, and who was whisked out of her life almost as quickly as she had entered. Emily continues to meet new people into the second season, but still burns a candle for her first love.
This is not about Promoting Traditional Biblical Values or Christianity. This is about wholesale abuse of the First Amendment by radical extremists who claim to represent a Godly view. Any decent self respecting Christian with a cursory knowledge of the four gospels of the New Testament would be able to tell you that Christ did not preach judgment to the masses, nor did he preach disassociation due to differences. He healed the sick including lepers, the blind, the deaf, the crippled and the possessed. He forgave the prostitute and the adulteress woman and sent them on their way to sin no more. He turned the other cheek at his own crucifixion. These are not the values that persecute a little girl who finds herself dealing with her sexuality. These are not the values that demand advertisers run away from a series telling a story that deals with issues which are prevalent in our society and require thoughtful and sincere discourse. These are quite simply displays of bigotry, cowardice, and most importantly ignorance that have no place in a society that prides itself on being open and forthright. Shame on them!
All of the advertisers knew when they signed on to this project exactly what they were getting. The show has never been billed as a Disney style G rated feel good series. The basis of the show is about telling lies and keeping secrets between friends, and all the havoc that goes along with keep that up. All of the girls date and each have seen sexual situations presented in the show, but certainly nothing flamboyant in nature. Of course having a few murders and some great fashion thrown in as a bonus can’t hurt the marketing, and the stars are all attractive. The producers, writers, and cast are committed to delivering outstanding programming. Excellent veteran actors, among them Holly Marie Combs, Laura Leighton, Chad Lowe and Nia Peeples backstop the main cast.
While I do not believe in retaliatory boycotts, mainly because the retailer is the one that suffers, not the advertiser, our voices do need to be heard. Call and Write General Mills, Call, Write the Florida Family Foundation, and let them know how you feel about the show and how they have conducted themselves regarding this miscarriage of justice. Tweet and e-mail your friends, because pressure works both ways.
