Betrayal

It was October 6, 1978, and the New York Yankees were trailing the Kansas City Royals 5-4 in the bottom of the eighth inning in Game Three of the American League Championship Series. I sat in front of the television set angry at the world, muttering about how the Yankees were going to lose on my 10th birthday. With a runner on base catcher Thurman Munson stepped up to the plate and hit a monstrous home run over “Death Valley” in left field to put the Yankees ahead. The blast was estimated to have sailed 475 feet before landing in Monument Park. It was the greatest birthday gift a young boy could receive. I thank the Lord for wonderful childhood memories like this because thanks to what I have seen since the collapse of our economy, I can no longer look at a Yankees uniform the same.

Unemployment rates rise each month as greater numbers of companies crash and burn. Jobless workers who cannot afford healthcare are forced to avoid doctors whenever possible. Credit card debt increasingly strangles Americans. Food prices haven’t dropped; yet according to a recent announcement Americans net-worth has declined 20%. Nevertheless, as the national economy continued to nosedive over the past year, the Yankees created their own stimulus package by handing over a total of $243.5 million to free-agent pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. Although, the only people stimulated by these obscene payroll figures are the pitchers’ agents. Yes, I know the argument about players’ salaries: “Someone has to make the money. Wouldn’t you rather see the players make it than the owners?”

With our nation suffering as it is, it seems almost criminal for those glutinous amounts of money to be tossed around as a reward for tossing a baseball.

But my disgust does not end there. No, perhaps an even a greater insult to those of us affected by the economic crisis is the financing of the new stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets. Although both teams are paying for the building of the stadiums, according to a November 4, 2008, New York Times article, “the cost to the city for infrastructure — parks, garages and transportation improvements — has jumped to about $458 million, from $281 million in 2005.” The Times also adds that the state is contributing an additional $201 million. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/nyregion/05stadiums.html) If that does not boil your blood, then consider that the same article reports the two teams will receive “an estimated $480 million in city, state and federal tax breaks”.

Oh yes, and they also will not have to pay rent or property taxes even though the city owns the stadium grounds.

Just a week ago Mayor Bloomberg informed NY-ers that there would be layoffs of police officers, firemen, and teachers. Luckily for the mayor President Obama’s stimulus package will negate the need for the layoffs he warned of. But are we to believe that the mayor had no idea of the city’s looming financial problems when he cut these sweetheart deals with our NY baseball teams? That seems unlikely.

The final kick in the stomach to NY-ers is that ticket prices and parking will be so expensive that the average New Yorker should forget about spending a Sunday afternoon with his family at the new “House That City Hall Built”. Field Level Box Seats bought on game day will cost $400 per ticket, meaning that a family of four will pay more to watch a bunch of spoiled millionaires play one baseball game than I pay for rent in one month.

Let’s face it. These stadiums are not for us. They are for the corporate elite and they reveal a total lack of empathy for the average American’s plight. What I feel today toward the Yankees organization is not anger but betrayal. And for that the organization cannot be excused.

They have thumbed their noses at this long-time Yankees fan for the last time.

But at least I will always have my childhood memories.


Donald Tremblay

Off Limits

For those Americans who still doubt that secularism is at war with religion, specifically Christianity, I suggest they review the section of the Pres Obama/Democratic Party “stimulus” package addressing federal financial support and colleges. One provision in this section earmarks federal money for the renovation of existing colleges and universities. However, according to Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law & Justice, “when you read a little bit further into this legislation, there's a specific prohibition on two things. One, if the university itself is a religiously based or faith-based institution, it does not qualify. And if the facility that is being renovated allows religious worship to take place, it also does not qualify." (http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=409082)

Any question as to whether this provision is just the latest attempt to remove religion from the public sector was answered when the Senate rejected South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint’s amendment requesting that the religious worship ban be removed from the provision.

Americans are learning quickly that our new president speaks with a forked-tongue. He has already backtracked on his pledge that officials will be barred from working on issues for which they have served as lobbyists. Now it appears that he is doing the same when it comes to his “openness” to faith. Or as Mat Staver, founder of the nonprofit litigation, education and policy organization Liberty Counsel tells OneNewsNow.com, “President Obama's idea of faith-based initiatives apparently is to remove faith from all initiatives."

Donald Tremblay

Papal Disgrace

Disgrace.

No other word does justice to Pope Benedict XVI’s inexplicable decision to lift the excommunication against Holocaust-denying Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson. Among the more disgusting comments made by Williamson is that historical evidence is “hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers. I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers.”(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5585738.ece) Williamson has also said that “the Vatican is controlled by Satan and that the Jews are bent on world domination”.

Williamson was welcomed back into the fold along with three other bishops from the Society of St. Pius X–a schismatic group led by former French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre that rejects the changes installed by Vatican II. In 1988 Pope John Paul II excommunicated the society. An Associated Press article reports that the Vatican refers to Williamson as “a recently rehabilitated bishop.” (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gpbkisgs-EZ40shoCodJd4rfBNwAD95V35RO0) There is nothing rehabilitated about this man. According to the Times of London, the comments cited above were made just one week ago on a Swedish television station.

Word is that Pope Benedict XVI lifted the banishment as a way to heal the separation in the Church. But no desire to heal rifts within the Church can justify accepting a member of the clergy who espouses these antisemitic views. This is a man who claims to have devoted his life to the Lord Jesus Christ? If his views weren’t so evil, the irony of him recognizing a Jew as God-incarnate while believing this filth would be laughable.

You would think this Pope more than any other would understand the implication of accepting Williamson back into the clergy. As a German who knows first-hand the atrocities committed by the Nazis, it is inexcusable for him to ignore the hurt his actions have caused. Pope Benedict XVI’s actions are an insult not only to Jews everywhere today, but also to the memory of Holocaust victims and even to those who liberated the concentration camps and personally witnessed the inhumanity inflicted on much of European Jewry.

The Church has been accused of antisemitism for centuries. How can it deny this charge when actions like these are taken? Pope Benedict XVI could have easily lifted the excommunication against the Society of St. Pius X while leaving Williamson exiled. It would have sent the dual message that the Church wants to reconcile with its own but will not accept those who are unrepentant.

Shame on you, Pope Benedict XVI..


Donald Tremblay

Our “Culture of Death” President

President Obama is adding his stamp of approval to our “Culture of Death”. Our new chief executive has already overturned President Bush’s eight-year ban on using U.S. taxpayer dollars to support overseas family planning services (read abortion). Now there is word that he is expected to loosen the federal funding restrictions against embryonic stem cell research, restrictions that have been in place since August 2001. Few Americans realize that his actions are placing this nation on a slippery slope which will lead to scientific perversions, perversions that will make Huxley’s Brave New World look like Mister Roger’s Neighborhood.

Along with the other arguments against embryonic stem cell research–such as its failure to produce any positive results–is the long term damage it will inflict on efforts to ban, or even limit, abortions. Why? The more funding this research receives, the more test subjects will be needed. Although limited numbers of test subjects are not a problem at present, they will be at some point. Embryos will need to come from somewhere. What better way of guaranteeing a steady supply of test subjects than by allowing abortion mills to continue their grisly procedures? Do not be surprised if the government eventually solicits volunteers to undergo impregnation for the sole purpose of providing embryos for research. It will be eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s directive that Nazi women deliver as many children as possible, a directive that even rewarded medals to women who bred at least five children (Medicine in the Twentieth Century, Roger Cooter and John V. Pickstone, Harwood Academic Publishers p 562). Just as women in Nazi Germany were rewarded for selflessly giving birth for the Fatherland, so will American women be praised for selflessly conceiving for science.

Supporters of cloning will also benefit from the lifting of federal funding restrictions against embryonic stem cell research. After all if an embryo is not considered a human being and worthy of rights, why would anyone argue differently for clones? Americans will argue that cloning is an extension of the Roe vs. Wade “Right to Privacy” ruling. People will kick and scream that they have “the right to do what they want with their bodies”, including cloning them for the purpose of harvesting organs and stem cells. Picture Robin Cook’s Coma or the film “The Matrix”. That is where we are headed.

Pretty frightening, isn’t it? And you don’t need to be Nostradamus to envision it happening.

Thank you, Mr. President.


Donald Tremblay

The Destruction of Judeo-Christian Morality Reaches the White House

Well, that didn’t take long.
It has been less than 48 hours since President Obama was crowned, excuse me, inaugurated. Yet, he has already begun his attack on the traditional Judeo-Christian values that have shaped this nation since its inception. Thanks to www.massresistance.org I was alerted to the administration’s recent postings on the White House website (http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/). Among these entries is our new president’s “civil rights” agenda. Below are several of the items listed on the site:

$ Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: President Obama and Vice President Biden will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation, expand hate crimes protection by passing the Matthew Shepard Act, and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice's Criminal Section.

(The Act, according to www.massresistance.org, would allow the federal government to prosecute an individual if his/her criminal actions were ‘"motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived . . . gender, sexual orientation, gender identity" of the victim’.)
$ Fight Workplace Discrimination: President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

$ Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions.

$ Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell: President Obama agrees with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and other military experts that we need to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

$ Expand Adoption Rights: President Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.


So America. Still think you voted for a man who is not a leftist? Still think our president is a man trying to find the center, someone who is reaching out to all across the political spectrum?

Hardly.

But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by Obama’s brazenness considering the demigod status many Americans have bestowed on him. Celebrities are among those who have made the silliest comments sanctifying our new president. Catholic News Services published some of them today (http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=42227) Talk show host/media magnate Oprah Winfrey credits President Obama for making her “want to be a better human being.” Not to be outdone hip-hop mogul Jay-Z confessed that “Obama changed my life in the same way he has changed your life.” Sorry, Jay-Z. But it will take a lot more than a few inspirational speeches for someone to get credit for changing my life, unless of course those speeches were made by the Son of God. And speaking of God that reminds me of the dumbest comment uttered yesterday by an inaugural attendee. This misguided individual asserted that when you listen to President Obama “you feel like God is speaking to you”.

Oh, brother.

Stay tuned, folks. Obama’s assault on traditional values and our nation’s continued worship of him has just begun.


Donald Tremblay

Coming Up After This Commercial Break: The Rapture

We’re only four days away from the anointing of the messiah. On Tuesday, Jan 20 Barack Obama will be sworn in as President of the United States. The mountains will crumble and the skies will open. A dove will descend on Obama’s head or perhaps on the Lincoln Bible that he will use to pledge his oath. If it were June or July our president-elect might even emerge from the Potomac River, symbolizing the nation’s washing away of the Bush Administration.

Well, maybe not.

Sure I am being facetious. Yet, even the most objective observer must confess that the adoration of Obama has reached dizzying heights, even redefining the term “cult of personality”. Think I am exaggerating:

$ After hearing that Obama was a Spider-Man fan growing up, Marvel Comics decided to devote an issue to the webbed super hero and the president-elect. Obama is featured on the cover giving Spidey a thumbs-up. Apparently the two even fist-bump in the issue.

$ Masonry, a society condemned by the Catholic Church, is holding an inaugural ball in honor of our president-elect. According to a press release announcing the event, on Jan 20 The William R. Singleton-Hope-Lebanon Lodge #7 of Washington D.C. will host the “first-ever Masonic Inaugural Ball in honor of President-elect, Barack Obama and Vice-President Elect Joseph Biden.” Considering that Freemasonry has existed in the U.S. since our nation’s inception, it is surprising that this is only D.C.’s first Masonic inaugural ball. (Incidentally, among the reasons the Catholic Church demands that its flock not join Freemasonry is that “theoretically and practically it undermines the Catholic and Christian faith, first in its members and through them in the rest of society, creating religious indifferentism and contempt for orthodoxy and ecclesiastical authority.”) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09771a.htm

$ The Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league baseball team that plays in Coney Island, will rename itself the “Baracklyn Cyclones” on June 23 to honor our president elect. The team will dress in a red, white, and blue uniform with the name Baracklyn Cyclones spread across the jersey. Fans who attend will receive an Obama bobble-head doll. What connection the president-elect has to Brooklyn to warrant this adulation is unknown . . . at least to me.

In truth, although I did not vote for Obama and I disagree with him intensely on certain issues, I feel sorry for him. With the expectations heaped upon him he cannot help but fail. The number of Americans, including those in the media, who expect him to lead us out of this “recession” is staggering. This global financial collapse has been brewing for decades and experts are as clueless as the average person as to the direction the world economy is headed. Yet, people still expect Obama to shepherd us to the promised land.

Our new president appears to be an intelligent man who will work diligently as president. In light of the executives he has selected for his administration, he seems to want a diverse group that reaches across the political spectrum. That is a welcome sign and we wish him well.

But let’s remember Psalm 145: 2-3:
“Put not your trust in princes: In the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.”


Donald Tremblay

IN NAME ONLY

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