Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Colored Towels

Mrs. Calla Lilly always knew that watching TV could cause one to develop a nasty case of envy, but it has now become an apparent by product of blog reading. *eek!* I love reading about other people's lives, their routines, and their thoughts. I love looking for ways to improve my own life, routine, etc. But today, at WalMart, the green-eyed monster had a showdown with Mrs. Calla Lilly. I found myself buying white finger tip towels for my daughter's bathroom to replace her blue and yellow ones - which are perfectly good. Also hopping into Mrs. Calla Lilly's basket were white dish cloths that can be bleached to replace her usable green ones that match the kitchen. These near purchases were the direct result of reading various blogs regarding said products. *oy!* Mrs. Calla Lilly places the blame solely on herself. I am so grateful that the Holy Spirit nudged me before I actually purchased these items, asking me if I really wanted to drive my husband to an early grave by causing him to have to work more hours. :) I can only hope to partially blame this lapse of budget awareness on a sugar low as it was around 10:30 am, and I had no protein for breakfast. Please if you are reading my blog, do not let it lead you astray from your budget. :) Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

On Second Thought....

...if you,or anyone you know of, is raising a young knight, please raise your hand high enough so that I can see that you are out there. :) ~Thank you. Posted by Picasa

Applications Now Being Reviewed




Just kidding, of course. :) Our daughter has now reached the age where waiting for her "knight in shining armor" is not so much the problem as is wondering if there are any Knights left. Sometimes I wonder myself. When I met my own dear knight 19 years ago, I knew he was a rare find, so how much more rare will it be today. My daughter and I kidded about placing an ad on her blog as a joke, but we were afraid of what kind of responses she would get. Of course the ad only included character traits that were "knightly", so it is not all we desire for her. Here is our pretend ad for your enjoyment:


Wanted:

Knight in Shining Armor/ Warrior Poet
(those with tarnished armor need not apply)

Must display the following qualities:

pure in heart
brave - willing to slay dragons and rescue fair maidens
chivalrous
noble
loyal
honest
generous
have fire of intellect
a servant-leader
kindhearted
ability to woo fair maiden through poetry or music

Job Requirements:

must love fair maiden

Knights-in-training (i.e. squires) may apply

Applications may be sent to the gate keepers of the Princess' tower via e-mail. Posted by Picasa

WHAT?????!

This is from Slice of Laodicea:

Focus On the Family Supports Domestic Partners Bill
I received a disturbing press release from the Family Research Insitute's Dr. Paul Cameron. Cameron is a researcher and scientist who was the first to coin the term "second-hand cigarette smoke" years ago in his study of the harmful effects of smoking. For several years now, Dr. Cameron has been documenting scientifically the horrific effects of the homosexual lifestyle. He comes to the issue as a scientist who believes in the Word of God and who simply documents the terrible physical and relational results of this kind of sin. Dr. Cameron is raising the alarm over Focus on the Family's new position on domestic partnerships. Here is a link to a news article on this new position along with Dr. Cameron's press release which will follow. Compromise is everywhere these days.

Researcher Questions Dobson's Endorsement of Pro-Gay Bill
COLORADO SPRINGS, Co., Feb. 6 /Christian Newswire/ -- Dr. Paul Cameron -- Chairman of the Family Research Institute, a Colorado-based think tank -- has challenged Dr. James Dobson's endorsement of a bill before the Colorado legislature that would grant to gay partners many of the legal rights currently reserved to married couples. These rights would include property-sharing, decision- making powers over funerals and organ donations and, potentially health-care policy benefits. If adopted, the proposed legislation could force employers to cover gay partners -- no matter how ill.

Cameron said, "This is madness. Currently there is one voluntary relationship that immediately confers these benefits - marriage between a man and a woman. Married couples receive these benefits because they make substantial contributions to society. They are more economically productive, provide the best environment in which to raise children, and are the least likely to commit crimes. Homosexuals, on the other hand, are less economically productive, seldom produce children or raise them well, and are more likely to commit criminal acts. In addition, society should not reward relationships that tend to spread disease."

Noting the Christian dimensions of Dobson's Focus on the Family organization, Cameron pointed out that conferral of any part of marriage benefits to homosexuals is without precedent in the history of the Church. "Moses and St. Paul condemned homosexuality. As soon as the Church gained political power in the Roman Empire it outlawed homosexuality. Now Dobson tells society to give gays 'marriage lite' benefits. During the confirmation fight over Harriet Meyers, Dobson, in a somewhat ambiguous manner, told his radio audience that he was in favor of gay rights. His support of this 'marriage lite' bill removes the ambiguity. When the Denver Post, one of the most anti-family, anti-traditional newspapers on the planet, says it is "pleasantly surprised" by Dobson's support for "expanded legal benefits for same-sex couples," you know that a betrayal has occurred."

Dobson and Cameron were both prominent in getting Amendment 2 passed in Colorado in 1992. The Advocate, the premier gay rights magazine, listed Dobson #1 and Cameron #2 on the gay "enemies list" (1/31/06).

Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R carries the bill; the Denver Post celebrated Focus on the Family's new position in its lead editorial, Feb. 6., see: A Fresh Focus on Domestic Partners.



Posted by Ingrid on February 6, 2006 @ 02:58 PM

Monday, February 06, 2006

Betty Friedan Dies

&nbs Posted by Picasa

What Betty Friedan Didn't Want You to Know
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
August 15, 2001

"Comrades, you will remember the ancient tale of the capture of Troy. . .The attacking army was unable to achieve victory until, with the aid of the famous Trojan Horse, it managed to penetrate to the very heart of the enemy camp."

George Dimitrov , the General Secretary of the Comintern (Communist International) speaking to the Seventh Meeting in August, 1935. Cited in Paul Johnson, Modern Times, (New York, 1983) p.323.

If I said Stalin was a Communist, would you accuse me of Red-baiting? No? Then you won't mind if I say Betty Friedan, the "mother of modern feminism" hid the fact that she was a Communist activist. I will provide the evidence in a moment.

As a former leftist-liberal, I am a typical example of how citizens of free countries have been brainwashed to underestimate the danger of Communism. I believed that Communism was basically an idealistic philosophy of public ownership. I wasn't concerned that it was a brutal dictatorship that murdered and enslaved millions. It didn't matter that the people weren't "free" because freedom was something I took for granted. I no longer take freedom for granted. A couple of years ago, although innocent, I was imprisoned by feminist domestic violence laws. Then, I was silenced at a feminist controlled university. Again, the feminist dominated media ignored my book, "A Long Way to go for a Date," a serious work of social protest. For me, it has been a slow and wrenching political and psychological awakening.

Communism was and is a worldwide movement. Although it has failed in Russia and China, its legacy in the West is alive and well. I am referring to the modern Feminist movement which is a child of the Cold War "Old Left," represented by Friedan, and the 1960's "New Left" represented by the Woman's Liberation Movement. The progeny is a radical, totalitarian party, which has gained incredible power by pretending to seek "equal rights" for women, by masquerading as "the women's movement." Feminism is a Trojan Horse. It has already inflicted incredible damage to our social fabric, culture and to our freedom. It has made us dysfunctional.

Communists, just like the Nazis, wanted totalitarian domination of the world. Their plan included a huge program of so called "Popular Front" organizations (of students, women, workers or artists) which, in the 1920's and 1930's, sought to subvert democracies. These groups invited non-Marxists to combat evil and creating a better world, thus satisfy a quasi-religious craving for meaning. Willi Munzenberg, an early confidante of Lenin, organized and controlled these fronts, and referred to them as "my Innocents' Clubs". He served Stalinism by expanding the range of propaganda to include protest marches, socialist publications, arts festivals, ad hoc committees and newspaper ads signed by celebrities. In the words of historian Stephan Koch, Munzenberg "was amazingly successful at mobilizing the intelligentsia of the West on behalf of a moralistic set of political attitudes responsive to Soviet needs. In the process, he organized and defined the "enlightened" moral agenda of his era." (Koch, Stephen, Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West, New York, 1994, p.14.)

An essential ingredient of this campaign was a large network of prominent "opinion makers" (scientists, academics, artists, filmmakers) who raised money and spread the hidden Soviet message. These "fellow-travelers" included such writers as Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Dashiell Hammett, and Lincoln Steffins. These non-Communists were controlled and managed by Comintern agents; in the case of Steffins, his own wife. They were a smoke screen for ideas which would not have been accepted if their origin were known.

In a 1989 interview, Babette Gross, the wife of Willy Munstenberg, described the Popular Front modus operandi:

"You do not endorse Stalin. You do not call yourself a Communist. You do not call upon people to support the Soviets. Never. Under no circumstances.... You claim to be an independent minded idealist. You don't really understand politics but you claim the little guy is getting a lousy break. You believe in open-mindedness. You are shocked, frightened by what is going on here in our own country. You are frightened by the racism, by the oppression of the working man. You think the Russians are trying a great human experiment, and you hope it works. You yearn for international understanding. You hate fascism, You think the capitalist system is corrupt. You say all of that, over and over. And you say nothing more." (Koch, p. 220)

One of these Communist controlled "Popular Front" organizations was the "Congress of American Women" which was founded in 1946 and reached a membership of 250,000. It was disbanded in 1950 after being required to register as a "foreign agent" by the U.S. government. The feminist historian Ruth Rosen writes that the "CAW's agenda prefigured much of the modern women's movement that emerged in the sixties." (Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America, New York, 2000, p.28.)

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) which sold more than five million copies, is considered the manifesto of the modern feminist movement. Friedan and Simon de Beauvoir, are the pioneers of modern feminism. In the book, Friedan describes herself as a typical suburban housewife and mother who had a revelation. She realized that women like herself are being exploited and dehumanized; and, she actually compared their plight with that of Nazi concentration camp inmates. She pointed to career as a woman's only path to identity and self-fulfillment.

What Friedan didn't say is that she wasn't a typical housewife. Rather, she had been a Marxist activist since her undergraduate years at Smith College (1938-1942) where she wrote for the college newspaper. She dropped out of grad school to become a reporter for a radical left wing news service. From 1946 -1952 she was a reporter for the union newspaper of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, (UE) "the largest Communist-led institution of any kind in the United States."

Daniel Horowitz, a Professor of History at Smith who has impeccable Liberal and feminist credentials, reports all of this. His book, published in 1999, is entitled Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War and Modern Feminism (University of Massachusetts Press). The essence can be found in a 1996 article in American Quarterly which is available on the Internet. (http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/aq/48.1horowitz.html). There, Horowitz writes: "Her writings of the 1940's and early 1950's reveal that... Popular Front ideology shaped the way Friedan viewed American society and politics (11)."

Horowitz cites an anti-Communist union member who described how a Communist minority "seized control of the national office, the executive board, the paid-staff, the union newspaper and some district councils and locals" (12, emphasis mine.) In 1947, the U.S Congress, the Roman Catholic Church and large corporations, targeted the UE as a Communist front. Afterward its membership began a steady decline.

Betty Frieden didn't want anyone to know about her radical antecedents. Throughout her career, she perpetuated the myth that she had no interest in the condition of women before her "revelation." She refused to cooperate with Professor Horowitz and accused him of "Red-baiting."

Why? Because The Feminist Mystique would not have the same impact if her revolutionary agenda were known. Communists operate by subterfuge -- infiltrating, propagandizing and pretending to be like us. Friedan could not tell us who she really was. The same tactics are used by "feminists" whose very name, and claim to be "the woman's movement" is a smoke screen for a fanatical anti feminine, anti social crusade.

The radical "Left" stalled on the political/economic front in the US, but reinvented itself as a Popular Front-like social movement. Radical women, tired of their second-class status in the New Left, split off to form the "Woman's Liberation Movement." They applied "Marxist analysis" to their own experience, deciding that inequality and injustice was based on gender instead of class. By denying and eliminating gender differences, they would create a new utopia. Thus, feminists made women the oppressed proletariat and they made the destruction of the capitalist "patriarchy" their revolutionary agenda.

Communists used the chimera of a "just" and "classless" society to seek totalitarian power. Their feminist progeny is using the equally spurious promise of a sexless society to take power. Feminists do believe the destruction of heterosexuality will bring social justice.

The FBI kept tabs on the Women's Liberation Movement throughout the turbulent seventies but found no direct connection with Soviet subversion. Feminist historian Ruth Rosen, herself a veteran of the New Left, finds this ironic.

"Ironically, the FBI searched for signs of subversion in the Women's movement but couldn't recognize what was truly dangerous. While they looked for Communists and bombs, the women's movement was shattering traditional ideas about work, customs, education, sexuality, and the family. Ultimately the movement would prove far more revolutionary than the FBI could ever imagine. Feminism would leave a legacy of disorientation, debate and disagreement, create cultural chaos and social change for millions of men and women, and, in the process, help ignite the culture wars that would polarize American society. But at the time these ideas were not what the FBI considered subversive." (260)

By attacking the social fabric, feminists have inflicted more damage to Western society than Communists ever could have dreamed. Domestic violence hysteria has driven a wedge between men and women where none should exist. Heterosexuality and the family have declined. The birth rate has plummeted from 3.9 children per woman in 1960 to 1.5 today.[Replacement is 2.1] The future belongs to people who are having children. Under the guise of fighting "sexism," the nation's schools teach sexual dysfunction. They indoctrinate the young to deny their innate masculinity or femininity and to be open to homosexuality. In the media and universities, obeisance is paid to the feminist party line, or "political correctness." Feminist academics are busy replacing the cultural heritage of Western Civilization with their party nonsense. In the military, the introduction of women as combat soldiers has undermined efficiency and discipline. Soon we won't be in a position to defend our compromised values.

The feminist Trojan Horse has proven extremely effective.

Politicians and the public have been bamboozled. Most people think this movement represents the interests of women. This, in spite of being founded on three outrageous lies. They are:

Except for sex organs, men and women are psychologically identical.
Men have oppressed women.
Women can best achieve self-fulfillment in careers
Feminists --male and female-- believe these lies. They have made a huge psychological investment in them. And they are too ambitious to ask questions. Membership in the Feminist Party is now a prerequisite to advancement, just as Communist Party membership was in Soviet Russia. Politicians and media have also made a huge investment in this socially destructive philosophy. As a society, we are in denial.

Joseph Stalin and Soviet Russia may be dead but the monster it spawned roams the earth. Betty Friedan has done her job by keeping the legacy of Communism alive. Western society has been subverted.

The worst is yet to come.

Friday, February 03, 2006

When the Husband's Away...




...the wife will clean. :) I know that seems strange, but I always want to clean, iron, or do gardening while my husband's away. Today I have mopped the floors, cleaned the bathroom, and am in the process of making a new kind of bread. I will still probably dust and vacuum after lunch. Tomorrow I plan on ironing with Mr. Darcy in the VCR. I would iron tonight and stay up late watching Pride & Prejudice, but we have a congregational meeting at church tonight, and dear hubby wants me to attend - blech. (mental note to self - work on attitude) It would be wonderful if I could wash the windows and dust the walls, but I do have energy limits. I just like to have everything fresh when the King comes home to his castle. :) Posted by Picasa

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Wise Words From the Man of the House



You may have often found yourself wondering whether or not you should pay the higher prices for organic vegetables, dairy products, or meat. Mrs. Calla Lilly has taken different positions on this issue in the past, but her dear sweet husband recently answered the question most definitively with some sage advice which she will share with her gentle readers in a moment. Before we see the bottom line, let us review some facts.

1. In a utopian world, home-grown organic veggies are the best.

2. It is good to support local growers when you are not able to grow veggies yourself.

3. Organic and local veggies are healthier than commercially produced veggies.

4. Hormone and anitbiotic overuse, as well as unsanitary and inhumane environments are all too often the norm.

And now for number 5, my loved one's wise words:

5. Buying and eating healthier is great, so long as your husband doesn't die from working too hard to pay for the higher priced items.

That being said, I have put aside the purchasing of these higher priced goods, will grow a few things myself (Mrs. Calla Lilly has a small yard), and will gladly embrace my husband and enjoy every moment I have with him. So, if you have the money, go ahead and buy organic. If you don't have the money, don't sweat it. It probably will make more of a difference in your wallet than in your physical health. Posted by Picasa

The Clutter Fairy





Yesterday, the Clutter Fairy visited our daughter's desk. Oh, what joy! She did a marvelous job of filing away papers and putting up discs,etc. She also left a little note behind that even Mrs. Calla Lilly could benefit from. It read: "If it's not picked up, it's not finished." What have you left unfinished today? Posted by Picasa