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This is yesterday’s effort but Blogger didn’t like me then so you can have it today instead…

Those of you who have read my stuff before will know I have a talent (read curse) for attracting odd people when I am standing in queues (particularly when waiting for buses). Well today I don’t have a story about my fellow passengers. In fact I think for about the first time ever I felt something which bordered on friendship with the majority of the bus (not including smelly drunk people) as we held on for our lives and survived to tell the tale.

Well, after more than a month’s absence, a belated Happy New Year to you all. It hasn’t started out quite that way for me, much-explaining the time elapsed since my last post, and as most of you know, I was openly questioning whether this enterprise was even worth it anymore. Only about a dozen readers heeded my call for expressions of their support, but as I have always been one to expound upon “quality over quantity” and the first to advise others not to get sucked into popularity contests, three of these messages particularly persuaded me to leave everything as-is and, eventually, begin making use of this space again.

Tom Pauken, writing in Chronicles magazine of Rockford, Ill., describes the hostility on the part of the Bush-Rove axis to real conservatives in action in Texas politics in the late 20th century — illustrative of how it is that in Washington at the top of the 21st, their act of suffocation continues, as this commentary in the same space by Samuel Francis demonstrates.

I should have been reading this stuff more closely two months ago. Bush didn’t need my vote, after all, to carry Virginia….

[Headline in the style of Mark Shea, who has his good points, even though he has no time for the Annals whatsoever.]

I’m not sure much direct comment is necessary to a story detailing a ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court that “Parents can’t monitor kids’ phone calls”, as a result of agitation on some incorrigible 14-year-old girl’s boyfriend’s behalf by the Anti-Christian Licentiousness Union (ACLU). The ruling may apply only to that one state, but as part and parcel of a trend it is all too clear….

I would have never guessed that my life-long beloved Pittsburgh NFL team (which I’ve followed since the 1975 playoffs and Super Bowl X) was actually the first in the league to have a cheerleading squad! But since we’re dealing with the team owned by the late Art Rooney, a practicing Catholic (he actually had a priest-chaplain for the team during its first Super Bowl season, 1974-75), this was a squad that, during its existence [1961-69] was more akin to college-style rather than all the immodesty and wiggles and jiggles made infamous by the Dallas[s] outfit in the late 1970s. In fact, Rooney insisted that the so-called Steelerettes “remain ladylike on and off the field. Fraternizing with the players was forbidden.”

Yes, it’s one of those intendedly “heartwarming” stories of how we in the 21st Century are making advances in how we celebrate the “holiday season”: the phenomenon of divorced parents coming back together just for the holiday celebration, along with all the kids: not only their own, but those of whom each “ex” has hooked up with since the divorce! It’s a Newsweek story reproduced on the PMSNBC Web site.

Deck the malls with bows of holly: fa la la la la, la la, la la!
T’is the season to go shopping: fa la la la la, la la, la la!
Merchants making off with all your dollars: fa la la, la la la, la la la …
It’s enough to make me holler: FA LA LA LA LA, LA LA, LA LA!!!

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Jingle bells, nothing sells like a Christmas ad today —
Get those decorations up, now, hurry, don’t delay, hey!
The holidays are in the air, or so it would seem …
When we’re saying “Merry Christmas” weeks ahead of Halloween!

[Yes, nine days after the fact. My very ordinary retail job wipes me out totally at a day's end. And the "holiday" rush is yet to begin!]

A few days ago, when I was first thinking of what I was going to say for a post-election commentary, I was just going to re-emphasize what I’d been saying in the run-up, namely, that we have been conscripted into a war-to-the-death in defense of Christian civilization (”to the death” because those are the terms by which the enemy is engagaing this fight: it wants nothing less than Christianity’s total eradication), and that we must not confuse the President’s re-election with a “victory” for the defenders of godly truth and civilization and thus it cannot be an excuse to let down our guard and rest on our laurels. (WorldNetDaily’s editor Joseph Farah bears this latter point out.)

The Commemoration of All Souls does, alas, take a back seat this particular year to the U.S. Presidential elections even for myself: the souls in Purgatory always need our help, but days that could determine a civilization’s destiny don’t come all the time.

Yet, for that, this elevation in our society of the exercise of the franchise to a sacral dignity is utterly ridiculous; it comes from the inflation of the capitalized Democracy into a sacred cow. Yes, of course, it is the responsibility of every eligible citizen to exercise the franchise, but I defy all the inane “just go vote, no matter who or what for, but just do it” propaganda to declare that part of that responsibility is to do so intelligently, from due discernment in conformity with a rightly-ordered conscience. Any vote for Sen. Sacrilege or sodomite “marriage” is, by these criteria, an irresponsible one, and it would be better for the common good if the uninformed, the stupid, the perverse (spiritually, intellectually, and/or otherwise), and those on government handouts would stay away (or were kept away) from the polls. Rush Limbaugh has something of the right idea here.

What follows are a few loosely-connected thoughts in epilogue to my election considerations posted last Oct. 19th….

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Forget about unemployment problems, or Social Security, or taxes. Never mind the atrocious network of propaganda mills posing as “educational institutions,” or the ticking time-bomb that is the U.S. health-care system. Don’t even sweat the progress of the U.S. military operations in the Middle East, or even the prospect of further Islamoterrorism at home.