J's Cafe Nette

Archive for November 26th, 2007

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has notified the governor of Illinois that he is resigning his House seat effective at 10:59 PM CST Monday night.

Hastert says in a resignation letter to Governor Rod Blagojevich that he chose today so a special primary election to pick people to run for his seat could be held February Fifth. That’s the day Illinoisans go to the polls in regular primary elections to cast early votes for president and other offices.

The seat must be filled within four months.

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I think it’s wonderful that we live in a country where two men can fight tooth and nail for something they both desperately want and still have respect for one another in the end.

It appears the visit to the White House by Al Gore to be honored as a Nobel Prize recipient went off without a hitch.

Al Gore slipped out the side door of the West Wing.

In his private Oval Office meeting with President Bush, the former vice president insisted that they had spoken about global warming “the whole time.” It wasn’t clear if the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who shared the honor for his work on climtate change, was serious.

“Of course,” they had spoken about global warming, Gore said, strolling down a rain-slick Pennsylvania Avenue with wife Tipper Gore after a private session with the president. For Gore, who had gone into the White House for a reception for the American winners of the 2007 Nobel Prizes, this was his first return to the Oval Office since leaving office.

But Gore, calling the meeting with Bush “very cordial” and “substantive,” declined to elaborate on their meeting. “I’m not going to do an interview here,” Gore said in his walk down the streets outside the White House. “I don’t want to comment more.”

This was the first private meeting of Gore and Bush since the Tennessee Democrat won more of the popular vote than Bush in the presidential election of 2000 but lost in the Electoral College – following a 36-day court fight over Bush’s disputed 537-vote margin in Florida.

This may have been a cordial reunion of erstwhile adversaries from a contested election, but it was kept discreetly private, within the confines of the Oval Office – where photographers and pool reporters arrived near the end for “a photo-opportunity.’’ The two appeared relaxed, smiling and in good moods, the pool reported.

You don’t have to like Al Gore or his policies or his theories on Global Warming. You don’t have to believe he should have won an Oscar for his documentary. Regardless of those feelings, he was a sitting Vice President and he did receive those awards. What would have been said if the President ignored Mr. Gore and proceeded with this ceremony in his absence?

I for one am glad that the class of this President once again came to the forefront, (through his White House Press Secretary):

“The president didn’t make a calculated decision to invite Al Gore to the White House… He invited him because he’s one of the Nobel winners,’’ said Perino, pressed about the purpose of the additional private meeting. “I didn’t psychoanalyze the president to find out why… It was a presidential, gentlemanly thing to do.’’

Darn right. I am by no means a Al Gore fan but I do respect his former position and he had every right to be at this ceremony and enjoy his visit with the President.

HT:Drudge

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According to this report Trent Lott is expected to announce he is going to resign his senate seat before the end of the year.

He was not an effective Majority/Minority leader but is an excellent number two man for the party in the Senate.

What happened to him when he was tossed under the bus for being kind to a 100 year old man who used to be a segregationist, but claimed to have renounced it, was a shameful day for our party. Robert Byrd, anyone? A former member of the KKK? He’s still there and no one ran him out of anything.

If this story is correct I wish Mr. Lott happiness in his future endeavors.

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Late last night I was reading a story written about an interview given by Tony Blair in which he said his faith helped him to make hard decisions when he was Britain’s Prime Minister. He said if he had mentioned it the people in Britain would have thought he was nutty.

This shouldn’t strike me as strange since last week I read that in Great Britain only 42% of the people say they pray.

I have frequented a blog hosted by someone in France with readers from several countries, including the United States. One says she is a Catholic, but it sounds as though she is non-practicing. The rest are agnostics or atheists.

The agnostic has told me if I could scientifically prove God he would admit God exists. Look to the earth and the heavens and try to figure out where the Big Bang started and who started it.

Look at the intricacies of the human body, or any living being, and try to convince me there was not Someone Who created it all. Happenstance is happenstance and doesn’t repeat itself forever.

There is a Christian woman who frequents the same blog and is prostelytizing on there. It hasn’t worked and has turned them even more against a belief in God than before. Yet she persists to the point of causing them, in their rage to not hear it anymore, to blaspheme the very Creator of all.

This wounds my spirit and I am going through a turmoil as to whether or not to continue to read that blog. I have become friendly with the owner and we have talked over the internet and he will not be moved. So maybe it’s time to shake the dust off my feet as I leave the town.

This is something I pray about constantly and have not yet felt the Spirit telling me to stay away, but when I see blasphemy I have to call them on it and say why it wounds my spirit.

If they want me to be tolerant of their views they also need to be tolerant of mine, but the other woman is making it so difficult to be a Christian on that site by her constantly judging and condemning.

It is not her place or my place to judge the state of anyone’s soul, but Jesus’s.

Our own country is becoming more secular and the more secular we become the less blessing we get as a nation.

We need to be in prayer for the world as a whole and our nation in particular. We need a revival of the Holy Ghost in our world and stop being so secular.

But God told us this would happen towards the end times. Again, I have no idea certain if we are in the end times or when it starts how long it will take before the Church, the believers, are lifted from the wickedness that continues to grow stronger every day.

Pray for us all.

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If you are following Michael Yon’s newest dispatches, he has now posted Men of Valor Part II.

In truth, the British have kept faith with their pledge of partnership, and much more because by overstaying, they jeopardized men, women and mission in order to buy us time and keep the exits covered. America has no truer ally, always there, through bad and worse. Of course, almost none of this mattered to the men of 4 Rifles on May 21, who’d been out more than 13 hours in stifling heat.

This series is shaping up as a reference to the fact that the UK has always been and will remain a strong ally of the United States.

Well done once again!

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If someone were to ask you, which would you choose as the “greatest generation” in American history?

Walter Williams has a perspective on this question which I found quite interesting.

The “greatest generation” is a term sometimes used in reference to those Americans who were raised during the Great Depression, fought in World War II, worked in farms and factories and sacrificed for the war effort while maintaining the home front. Following the war, these Americans, many of whom were born between the turn of the century and 1930, went on to produce a level of wealth and prosperity heretofore unknown to mankind.

There’s no question that this generation made an important contribution. Let’s look at what else that generation contributed that might qualify them for the generation that laid the foundation for the greatest betrayal of our nation’s core founding principle: limited federal government exercising only constitutionally enumerated powers.

I believe that each generation has made significant contributions to society which have made us “great”, however, I do agree with Dr. William’s thoughts in his final paragraph.

If there’s an American generation that can justifiably be called the greatest generation, it’s that generation responsible for the founding of our nation — men such as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington and millions of their fellow countrymen. This is the generation that threw off one form of oppression and laid the foundations for unprecedented human liberty. That is not a trivial achievement, for most often in mankind’s history, one form of oppression has been replaced with another far worse, as we’ve seen in Russia, China and Africa.

Just some food for thought!

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