'Tis the Season..."
But having just undergone open heart surgery 9 days ago, I'm not yet ready for "Ho,Ho,Ho."
Instead, I note that the secular regressives, the anti-Americans, the air-heads, the STUPIDOS, the immoral "amorals", and their far-left Democratic fellow-travelers ("articulate, arrogant, asinine"), have returned to their yearly Christmas-bashing. This is as always done under the ruse of "Separation of Church and State". But it is really a pang of conscience - yes, even in them - that they are really on the wrong side of history, Natural Law and life itself - and that they will soon be called to account for it.

Meanwhile, I offer two books as evidence of the depth of ignorance that large swaths of our fellow travelers have descended to during the last 30 years of disruption of our family life and total failure of our "education system".
The contents of the first are nearly impossible to believe.
The research supporting the second should get us all back to our individual studies of history, unpolluted by the rantings of college "professors" with agendas.

Now, don't get me wrong. America is a free country. Each of us can live, within limits, in our own way. And America is now certainly a divided country in so many ways. In fact, it's a very good thing that we have the safety valve of diverse individual States.

But a word of caution: GET OUT OF MY FACE with your life-style and your attitudes. Leave me alone...or I will not let you alone.

Judge sides with company on contraceptive coverage

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday temporarily prevented the Obama administration from forcing a Christian publishing company to provide its employees with certain contraceptives under the new health care law.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton granted a preliminary injunction sought by Tyndale House Publishers, which doesn't want to provide employees with contraceptives that it equates with abortion.

At issue are contraceptives such as Plan B and IUDs. If a woman already is pregnant, the Plan B pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg, and according to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn't begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. The Plan B pill may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. IUDs mainly work by blocking sperm but may also have the same uterus effect. To Tyndale, these methods are not morally different than abortion.

Tyndale, based in Carol Stream, Ill., says it provides its 260 employees with coverage for some contraceptives. The company and its president and CEO, Mark D. Taylor, filed the lawsuit against the Health and Human Services Department last month.

"The contraceptive coverage mandate affirmatively compels the plaintiffs to violate their religious beliefs in order to comply with the law and avoid the sanctions that would be imposed for their noncompliance," wrote Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush. He said that if the company doesn't comply with the mandate, it is subject to government fines and lawsuits.

Walton acknowledged that the government has broad, compelling interests in promoting public health and ensuring that women have equal access to health care, but he said the question "is whether the government has shown that the application of the contraceptive coverage mandate to the plaintiffs furthers those compelling interests," underlying "to the plaintiffs" in the text. Nothing in Walton's order applied to anyone other than Tyndale.

Walton said that the government hasn't offered any proof that mandatory insurance for the specific types of contraceptives that Tyndale objects to furthers the government's compelling interests.

Walton ordered the parties to appear on a date yet to be determined for arguments on whether to make the injunction permanent.

Matthew S. Bowman, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, which brought the suit on behalf of Tyndale, said in an email that Bible publishers "should be free to do business according to the book that they publish."

He added: "The Obama administration is not entitled to disregard religious freedom."

The Health and Human Service Department declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

As far as political parties are concerned, a pox on both their houses. As a former Democrat for over 30 years until 1990, I read with interest the article whose title I have been using to explain my change for years: "I Didn't Leave The Democrats. They Left Me", by Sheldon G. Adelson, in WSJ Monday, Nov. 5, 2012, Opinion pA17. And as for the Republicans, STUPIDO, STUPIDO, STUPIDO.

As far as those centers of today's Society that have become coarse, self-centered and even depraved are concerned:

ONE LAST COMMENT ON THE ELECTION.

A few months ago, I stated in this section that I would have less to say personally in view of the Great Debate then taking place as part of the election process. I am not into re-inventing the wheel.
Similarly, I can now point you to three excellent articles...one posted on Election Day and two posted after the results were in. The Day (www.theday.com) is to be commended for its choice of these articles in summarizing the message sent by the American electorate. I endorse them all, as describing the way forward...for the Republican Party and for the nation.

On the "Today Show", Matt Lauer interviewed one of the wives of one of the Navy Seals killed along with the US ambassador in Libya. He asked, "What she would say to her children about their dad and how she would want them to remember him."

Her answer, and I quote, "His love for Christ" and then continued on with a few other things.

Throughout the day and on MSN homepage, replaying the story they have edited the "Love of Christ" part out. Why? Because using the word Christ might offend someone!

Well, I am a Christian and I am offended! I'm offended that they would edit it out. Offended that we as Christians are asked to tread lightly so as not to offend someone of another religion.

I think anyone who missed the original broadcast that morning should know what NBC has done. This man loved his country and loved his God and gave his life for both, just as Christ gave His life for him.

Please feel free to copy this and forward it to everyone on your email list.. There are e-mails that go around saying, "If you believe in God" then forward this. Well, I am starting one right here, right now. I am not ashamed of God but I am becoming more ashamed of my country. It is time to take a stand.

How Race Slipped Away From Romney

By Sara Murray and Patrick O'Connor | The Wall Street Journal – Thu, Nov 8, 2012 10:43 AM EST

BOSTON—Mitt Romney is one of the wealthiest men ever to run for president. And yet the lack of money earlier this year stalled his campaign, and he never really recovered.

The GOP nominee emerged late last spring from a long and bruising Republican primary season more damaged than commonly realized. His image with voters had eroded as he endured heavy attacks from Republicans over his business record. He also felt compelled to take a hard line on immigration—one that was the subject of debate among his advisers—that hurt his standing with Hispanic voters.

More than that, Mr. Romney had spent so much money winning the nomination that he was low on cash; aides, seeing the problem taking shape, had once considered accepting federal financing for the campaign rather than rely on private donations.

[More from WSJ.com: Not Everyone Is Happy to See Political Ads End]

The campaign's fate led on Wednesday to second-guessing and recriminations among Republicans chagrined that a seemingly winnable race slipped away. Some Republicans wondered whether the Romney campaign had misjudged the power of President Barack Obama's coalition, while others were questioning Mr. Romney's and the party's approach to immigration.

Back in spring, the Romney campaign's biggest worry was money. So the campaign's finance chair, Spencer Zwick, huddled with political director Rich Beeson to craft a complex schedule that took Mr. Romney to the cities that were prime real estate for fundraising.

It meant visits to places like California, Texas and New York—none of which were important political battlegrounds—while only allowing for quick side trips to swing states that Mr. Romney would need to win to become president.

On one level the strategy worked: Mr. Romney ultimately garnered some $800 million or more, putting him in close competition with Mr. Obama's robust fundraising effort.

But Mr. Romney paid a deep political price. The fundraising marathon reduced his ability to deliver his own message to voters just as the Obama campaign was stepping in to define the Republican candidate on its terms. Mr. Romney's heavy wooing of conservative donors limited his ability to move his campaign positions to the center, to appeal to moderate and independent donors.

The search for cash led him to a Florida mansion for a private fundraiser where Mr. Romney would make the deeply damaging, secretly recorded remarks where he disparaged and dismissed the 47% of Americans who don't pay taxes.

In the end, Mr. Romney lost nearly every swing state. Other factors contributed to his defeat, of course, including difficulty making voters warm to him and a dearth of support among Hispanics.

But in the eyes of top aides in both campaigns, that early summer period when Mr. Romney was busy fundraising was perhaps the biggest single reason he lost the election.

The Obama campaign spent heavily while Mr. Romney couldn't, launched a range of effective attacks on the Republican nominee and drove up voters' negative perceptions of Mr. Romney.

The problem: Mr. Romney had burned through much of his money raised for the primaries, and by law, he couldn't begin spending his general-election funds until he accepted the GOP nomination late in the summer.

The money crunch didn't totally take the Romney camp by surprise. Long before Mr. Romney secured the nomination, his closest advisers began plotting what it would cost to wage an effective campaign against Mr. Obama in the general election. Mr. Zwick, his finance chief, assumed the best way to handle cash needs would be to raise money from private donors, rather than accept the public financing the government offers presidential candidates, advisers said.

[More from WSJ.com: The Long-Term Economic To-Do List]

Mr. Zwick looked at fundraising markets in every state and sketched out a schedule for Mr. Romney, his wife Ann, and his yet-to-be-named running mate. He decided the payoff from fundraising was worth the investment of the candidate's time. Analytical decisions like that one were the campaign's mantra. In interviews, staffers called it the "Bain way."

In August, when Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan was announced as Mr. Romney's vice presidential pick, Mr. Ryan's fundraising schedule was released the same day: 10 events by the end of the month.

Mr. Romney's finance team was vigilant in its efforts to ensure fundraising jaunts would be worth his time. Every other month the campaign's state finance chairmen met for a roughly four-hour meeting with Romney staffers. During the meeting, fundraisers had to stand in front of their peers and report whether they had hit their fundraising target.

If the local finance chairman fell short of their targets, the campaign sometimes canceled its fundraising stops there, a finance staffer said.

The real cost, though, was in the lost opportunity to use Mr. Romney to do other campaigning to introduce himself to general-election voters on his own terms. Aside from a five-day bus tour of six, mostly Midwestern states, Mr. Romney's highest profile summer campaign event was a problem-plagued overseas trip one aide called "total chaos." Even in that trip's schedule were nestled two fundraisers, one in London, another in Israel.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign and a super PAC helping it, Priorities USA Action, had unveiled ads attacking the centerpiece of Mr. Romney's resume, his record as the head of private-equity firm Bain Capital. The ads portrayed Mr. Romney as the heartless leader of a company that gobbled up companies and then slashed jobs.

The cash shortfall hindered the Romney campaign's response; to get through the sparse time, the campaign took out a $20 million loan.

Bob White, a former Bain executive who has long followed Mr. Romney, formed a team to research Bain investments so the campaign was prepared with a rapid response whenever one was questioned. Mr. White sought out more than a dozen chief executives of companies that benefited from Bain Capital investments to offer narratives of prosperous investments to balance out the ones that had soured. The campaign posted more than a dozen of them on a website lauding Mr. Romney's "sterling business career." But they couldn't afford to air the testimonials in television ads, an adviser said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Romney's two top strategists, Russ Schriefer and his partner Stuart Stevens, started to craft an ad strategy around their slim bank account. In focus groups, swing voters kept asking: What would Mr. Romney would do if elected?

They prepared spots explaining what Mr. Romney would do in the opening days of his presidency: approve construction of an oil pipeline to Canada, cut taxes and replace Mr. Obama's health-care law with "common-sense reforms." Yet the team didn't even have enough money to air their ad in the Washington, D.C., media market, therefore ignoring the sprawling suburbs of Northern Virginia—a key to a swing state that Mr. Romney badly needed to win.

As Mr. Romney struggled, a group of flush Republican super PACs stepped in to lend the presumed GOP nominee air cover. The biggest, American Crossroads and its affiliate Crossroads GPS, realized early that the Obama team would front-load its advertising to attack Mr. Romney when he couldn't return fire.

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Crossroads adviser, referred to this phase as "the interregnum," and he reminded the group and its donors that former President Bill Clinton used this phase to undercut then Sen. Bob Dole in 1996 before he became the Republican presidential nominee.

[More from WSJ.com: After Election, Labor Leaders Plan Next Steps]

Between mid-April, when Mr. Romney effectively locked up the nomination, and the Republican convention at the end of August, the Obama campaign outspent the Romney camp $173 million to $75 million, according to data compiled by the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

But thanks in large measure to super PACs, Republicans outspent the Obama campaign and its Democratic allies over the same period by roughly $50 million, shelling out nearly $250 million compared with $198 million for Democrats, according to the same figures.

Still, the super PACs were better at attacking Mr. Obama than building up Mr. Romney, and the Republican's "likability" ratings with voters stayed low. With few public appearances and little to spend on ads, the campaign couldn't gain any momentum. An adviser described it as a campaign of "fits and starts."

Mr. Romney, meanwhile, kept making his conservative talking points to donors and never moved to the political center. It was during those months that Mr. Romney was filmed at a fundraiser in Florida dismissing 47% of Americans as Obama supporters because they receive government benefits or don't pay taxes and wouldn't be amenable to Mr. Romney's message of small government and lower tax rates. "My job is not to worry about those people," Mr. Romney said in the video. "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

The campaign also never figured out how to get beyond a damaging policy position from the primary season, a tough line on overhauling immigration laws. Mr. Romney refused to embrace legislation that might give some illegal immigrants long in the U.S. a path to citizenship, and instead advocated what he called "self-deportation."

Struggling to win the primary, the campaign's political team decided Mr. Romney needed to draw a contrast on the immigration issue to differentiate himself from the other Republicans on stage. The candidate's hard-line stance alienated Hispanic voters, which would prove a critical failing in the fall general election.

By early September, the Romney campaign was slumping and trailing badly in the polls. The first presidential debate offered what might be its last shot at a turnaround.

On a dreary Tuesday in early September, Mr. Romney and his top brass descended on the remote Vermont estate of Kerry Healey, Mr. Romney's former Massachusetts lieutenant governor, for debate preparations.

Beth Myers, a senior campaign adviser who was managing preparations, decided Mr. Romney had better dive into debate preparations—which the candidate disliked—head first. After just one mock session, senior Romney staffers were blown away—with Rob Portman, the Ohio senator picked to portray Mr. Obama.

Mr. Portman mastered Mr. Obama's policies and mannerisms so completely that Romney aide Peter Flaherty referred to him as "Mr. President" even when they bumped into each other on the trail.

"It was game on," said Mr. Flaherty, who played each of the three debate moderators.

Mr. Romney, meanwhile, worked on compressing his responses into two-minute tidbits. Just days before the first debate, Messrs. Romney and Portman, dressed in suits, took the stage at the Back Bay Events Center in Boston for a final rehearsal. Aides there said Mr. Romney's answers were crisp, and he parried Mr. Portman's attacks with ease. Afterward, Lanhee Chen, the campaign policy director, called his wife and told her, "Mitt's ready."

Minutes into the first debate Romney advisers saw their candidate was poised and relaxed with an easy grasp of the facts behind his answers. Obama advisers could tell the president was off his game.

Throughout the debate, the Republican nominee highlighted his work with Democrats during his four-year stint as Massachusetts governor, reassuring voters he planned to reach across the aisle as president, too.

Romney advisers say he always intended to make that point, because it cut to the heart of voters' main complaint against Mr. Obama.

Ending partisan gridlock "was his biggest promise, and so therefore, it may be his biggest failure," Mr. Schriefer said.

The first debate reshuffled the race. Obama aides traded concerned emails about how to get their campaign back on track even before it concluded.

In the end, postdebate bumps in polls and money weren't enough to change his fate. On Tuesday, Mr. Romney managed to flip just two states Mr. Obama won in 2008, Indiana and North Carolina. (Florida remains too close to call.) Mr. Obama won the Electoral College contest easily.

By early evening Mr. Romney said he had only written one speech: A victory speech that stood at 1,118 words, unedited. Late that night, he delivered a concession speech that came in at just 646 words.

"I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes," Mr. Romney told a somber crowd in a not-quite-full ballroom at the Boston convention center. "But the nation chose another leader."

The day after his loss, Mr. Romney stopped by headquarters to visit staffers and thank them for their efforts.

He didn't hint at what he would do next, only saying "I'm not going away," one staffer said.

It's a 50-50 nation, give or take

By CALVIN WOODWARD | Associated Press – Wed, Nov 7, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — The election laid bare a dual — and dueling — nation, politically speaking, jaggedly split down the middle on the presidency and torn over much else. It seems you can please only half of the people nearly all of the time.

Americans retained the fractious balance of power in re-electing President Barack Obama, a Republican House and a Democratic Senate, altogether serving as guarantors of the gridlock that voters say they despise. Slender percentages separated winner and loser from battleground to battleground, and people in exit polls said yea and nay in roughly equal measure to some of the big issues of the day.

Democracy doesn't care if you win big, only that you win. Tuesday was a day of decision as firmly as if Obama had run away with the race. Democrats are ebullient and, after a campaign notable for its raw smackdowns, words of conciliation are coming from leaders on both sides, starting with the plea from defeated Republican rival Mitt Romney that his crestfallen supporters pray for the president.

But after the most ideologically polarized election in years, Obama's assertion Wednesday morning that America is "more than a collection of red states and blue states" was more of an aspiration than a snapshot of where the country stands.

"It's going to take a while for this thing to heal," said Ron Bella, 59, a Cincinnati lawyer who lives in Alexandria, Ky. He is relieved Obama won, but some of his co-workers are in a "sour mood" about it.

"They feel like the vast majority of the country wanted Romney, and the East and the West coasts wanted Obama," he said. "I'm not sure exactly why that is, but there just seems to be such hatred for Obama out there."

Compromise was a popular notion in the hours after Obama's victory and an unavoidable one, given the reality of divided government. But the familiar contours of partisan Washington were also in evidence, especially the notion that compromise means you do things my way.

As Democratic Rep. Steve Israel of New York put it, "If you refuse to compromise, we are going to beat you." Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the election showed "if you are an extremist tea party Republican, you are going to lose."

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said pointedly that Republicans will meet Obama halfway "to the extent he wants to move to the political center" and propose solutions "that actually have a chance of passing."

In New York's bustling Times Square, hope, skepticism and the usual polarities were all to be found when people talked about the president. "He may not have done a great job in my mind but I kinda trust him," said Jerry Shul. "I have faith he will get with the Republicans and get something done."

A less-flattering George Dallemand called this "a moment of truth" for the country. "I guess we have to wish for the best now, but I still think he is socialism."

In Miami, Karen Fitzgerald, 55, wore a black dress and said she was in mourning over Romney's defeat.

"It's an upsetting day," she said. But she took some comfort from her Democratic friends on Facebook, who have stopped chiding the other side in their posts. "Now they're all saying we need to work together and be united," she said. "Maybe we can."

In Springfield, Ohio, an "elated" Frank Hocker, 67, hoped Republicans would get the message to get out of Obama's way. "There was a backlash," he said. "For this obstructionist House and those tea party people, I hope they learned their lesson. I hope they learned their lesson: Don't stop the progress of this country."

In Chicago, Obama supporter Scherita Parrish, 56, predicted the president will reach out to Republicans but may not get much back.

"But the people have spoken," she said. "They need to lick their wounds, get on with it and start working with the president."

Unity is a challenge not just for Obama but for the Republicans, who won less than 30 percent of the growing Hispanic vote and not even one in 10 black voters. Obama built a strong Electoral College majority, if only a narrow advantage in the popular vote, despite losing every age group of non-Hispanic white voters.

Poll: Latino Vote Devastated GOP Even Worse Than Exits Showed

Mitt Romney lost Latinos by unprecedented margins -- even worse than the initial exit polls showed -- according to a study by Latino Decisions.

An election eve poll of 5,600 voters across all 50 states by the group, which has researched the Latino vote throughout the campaign, concluded Obama won by an eye-popping 75-23 margin. Their research concluded that CNN's exit poll estimate of 71 percent of Latinos breaking to Obama likely undercounted their support, although they agreed with the assessment that turnout equaled 10 percent of the electorate.

"For the first time in US history, the Latino vote can plausibly claim to be nationally decisive," Stanford University university professor Gary Segura, who conducted the study, told reporters.

According to Segura, the Latino vote provided Obama with 5.4 percent of his margin over Romney, well more than his overall lead in the popular vote. Had Romney managed even 35 percent of the Latino vote, he said, the results may have flipped nationally.

The effect was at least as dramatic in swing states, most notably in Colorado, which Obama won on Tuesday. There Latinos went for the president by an astounding 87-10 margin, an edge not far from the near-monolithic support he received from African American voters. In Ohio, with a smaller but still significant Latino population, Obama won by an 82-17 margin.

"This poll makes clear what we've known for a long time: the Latino giant is wide awake, cranky, and its taking names," Eliseo Medina, Secretary-Treasurer of the SEIU, told reporters Wednesday on a conference call discussing the results.

Beyond the eye-popping margin of victory, the internal numbers helped explain why many of the Republican's efforts to deal with the problem fizzled in 2012. Romney tacked hard right on illegal immigration, recommending a policy of "self-deportation," but he hoped that by stressing his dedication to legal immigration he might mitigate the damage.

The reason that didn't work, according to the study, is that Latino citizens are too personally connected to undocumented residents to separate the issue. Some 60 percent of high propensity Latino voters say they know someone who is living in the country illegally.

"You're not talking about an abstract immigrant, you're talking about someone the respondent knows and cares for and may in fact be related to," Segura said.

For the GOP, his conclusion was simple: "The Republicans need to make this go away."

The starting point would be comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented residents, a move he says could at least chip away at Democrats' increasing strength with the community. But selling that to the conservative base is going to be a tough slog and could invite a damaging backlash all its own, leaving the future fraught with danger for the right.