Colts Neck- The majority of Monmouth County Republican County Committe members are present at Colts Neck High School for the Title 19 convention to elect Assemblyman Rob Clifton’s replacement on the Board of Freeholders.
Chairman Joe Oxley announced that there are “at least” 487 comittee members present. 386 would have been a quorum.
With 46% of the votes counted, former Senator Rick Santorum has pulled narrowly ahead of Mitt Romney in Iowa Caucus balloting. Santorum has 25%, Romney 24% and Ron Paul 22%, according to the real time data feed at FoxNews.
Brian McFarland, twice a Democratic candidate for Holmdel’s township committee, died from head trauma after falling from a ladder at home today, according to a report at the Holmdel Patch.
He is survived by his wife Karen and their 13-year old twins.
May those that love us, love us.
And those that don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles
So we will know them by their limping.
~Irish Blessing
Whether you celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Festival of Lights, the Winter Solstice or nothing at all, MoreMonmouthMusings wishes you a joyous holiday filled with love and the warmth of family and friends.
If you’re traveling this weekend, be safe. If you’re flying United, avoid seat 29E.
The 1,219-page, trillion-dollar omnibus spending bill that will fund the government through fiscal year 2012 appears to be the usual mix of compromise and compromised. But out of the mire of horse-trading and half-measures there is at least one bright light: bright light itself.
As we understand it, the omnibus contains a rider defunding Department of Energy efficiency standards that would have effectively killed the incandescent light bulb on January 1. The reprieve is temporary — instead of repealing the relevant regulations, it merely stalls their implementation through next September. But riders are sticky things, often renewed automatically, and this rider marks an important win for House Republicans, consumer choice, and Edison’s fine old filaments.
Breaking liberals’ usual rule about government not intruding in the bedroom, Stephen Chu’s DOE would have insinuated itself into your bedroom and into every other room of your domicile, casting the pale pall and dreary buzzing of compact fluorescence over every home in America.
And why? For our own good, Chu says, to “tak[e] away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money.” What a splendid mission statement for the DOE, and a pithy summation of the case for abolishing it. Call us old-fashioned, but we think that if government interventions into a market are ever justified, they are justified on the grounds of giving consumers more choice. Regulation undertaken in the name of Green piety inevitably offers less. One need look no further than the contemporaneous, and so far successful, move by the FDA to ban arguably the most effective asthma inhalers because they contain CFCs. In Bureaucraworld, Freon in the atmosphere trumps oxygen in the lungs.
In a way, the damage done by the promise of the incandescent ban is irreversible: GE closed its last U.S. factory making incandescent lights in 2010, as GE chair and Obama crony Jeffrey Immelt counted on a rush of new business for his more expensive fluorescent bulbs. And Democrats will no doubt claim a “compromise” in the rider, as they have apparently managed to insert language forcing the recipients of DOE grants in excess of $1 million to meet the mothballed standards in any event. But DOE grants are not exactly held in the highest esteem these days, and should themselves be continued targets for conservative cuts. The branches have been pruned; next up, the roots.
The obvious joke here is, “How many bureaucrats does it take to screw up the light bulb?” Thanks to this small victory, we’ll have to wait at least until September to hear the punch line.
By Ernesto Cullari, also published in the December 15, 2011 edition of the triCityNews
I don’t know anything about football, except that I like cheerleaders and half-time shows. As for the game, it just gets in the way of my ability to appreciate those gracious and hardworking women on the field. With that said, I’m not even sure who this guy Tim Tebow of the Denver Broncos is. What I am sure of is that he’s quickly becoming a legendary quarterback and, according to Tebow himself, he owes every one of his glorious game performances to Christ Jesus and to his teammates, facts that he is consistently quick to point out.
God is a funny topic, because for too many people in this nation God and His Son Jesus are offensive. Take former Broncos’ QB Jake Plummer for example. During a radio interview in November, with XTRA Sports 910 in Phoenix, when asked about Tim Tebow, Plummer stated:
“Tebow, regardless of whether I wish he’d just shut up after a game and go hug his teammates, I think he’s a winner and I respect that about him,” remarked Plummer. “I think that when he accepts the fact that we know that he loves Jesus Christ, then I think I’ll like him a little better. I don’t hate him because of that, I just would rather not have to hear that every single time he takes a good snap or makes a good handoff….Like you know, I understand dude where you’re coming from…”
In a nation where people are quick to either pat themselves on the back for the smallest of achievements or deprecate (and likely medicate) themselves over their personal shortcomings and where celebrities and athletes wallow in vainglory, Tebow’s expression of faith in Jesus is humbling. When a person with such great accomplishments refuses to take the credit for himself first, but instead thanks God and his amazing teammates, it is a clear indication of where true glory, long-suffering and meaningful victory comes from. It all comes from the providence of God.
But we are a nation at war with God. Nothing is sacred. We have lost our greatness along with our reverence of God. Look at the evidence. We hate and abuse our greatest of His blessings, our children, by killing them in the womb. And those that survive, we degrade them by sexualizing them in our popular culture. In defiance man’s institutions vainly protect child abusers so as not to sully their reputations. Tim Tebow is a man who knows his place in the world and the value of his life’s blessings. By placing God first in his sights his victory on the field has proper perspective. He is careful to point out that God probably isn’t concerned about the outcome of Broncos’ football games, he acknowledges that God’s work through the faithful can accomplish many great things, least of which is a win on the field. Tebow knows that God is concerned with humility and character.
All across America this Christmas season public schools, city halls and other public settings, once adorned with heartwarming reminders of the Lord’s birth are carefully obscuring any indication of it. Schools no longer celebrate Christmas they celebrate the winter festival. We once were a nation that revered God for blessing us with Liberty. However, groups like the ACLU and others have turned us into a nation that fears litigation over outward expressions of the very traditions and practices that made us a great. A nation without its culture is no more. The indivisible has become divisible.
One of the forefathers of Conservatism, Christopher Dawson once wrote, “It is the religious force which supplies the cohesive force which unifies a society and a culture…a society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture.”
Take this from a guy who hasn’t been to church on time in a decade. I sit in the last row, in the seat closest to the door and most of the time I forget my Bible in the trunk of my car. We are a nation of ungrateful, profligate spenders with our hands out looking for a piece of someone else’s glory. From the self-righteous Occupy Wall Streeters to the Wall Streeters themselves who willingly received taxpayer bailout money all the way down to little ol’ me, it’s time we kept our hands to ourselves and thanked God as one nation for what we do have.
By putting God back into our culture, back into our daily conversations and back into our moral fabric all things (a great many wonderful things) will once again be possible.
Howell Mayor Bob Walsh, left, and Holmdel Deputy Mayor Serena DiMaso, second from the right, compete for support in their race for Freeholder, at the Monmouth County Federation of Republican Women's Holiday Luncheon.
Colts Neck- The majority of Monmouth County Republican County Committe members are present at Colts Neck High School for the Title 19 convention to elect Assemblyman Rob Clifton’s replacement on the Board of Freeholders.
