Some of Mitt Romney’s supporters in New Hampshire are up to no good, as caught on camera swiping peoples’ lawn signs and switching McCain signs for Romney signs.

An act of immense stupidity (i.e. taping it or getting caught on tape) and skullduggery.

Is this how you really try to get people to like your man?

For those who might want to swipe my Fred Thompson signage, be warned that you might not want to test my willingness to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights to protect my property.

Thank you kindly, and I hope you’ll play nice for the camera next time, just like your man Romney tries to.

I was blisteringly angry following the latest NH debate…

…the review of the talking heads and other pundits, when Frank Luntz’s “Faux-cus Group”, erm.. excuse me, focus group present Romney as the untouchable scion to the mantle of Ronaldus Magnus.

And the “show of hands” by a panel of “undecided voters” (and therefore presumably unbiased, as well) .

Let’s see how unbiased they actually are:

No bias going on there, ya think? Who is paying this guy to shill with such great theatrics - Mitt’s campaign, or Fox News Channel?

Watch and see this video which has been making the rounds on RedState, TownHall, and other conservative web forums:

The telling thing here, is the apparent inclusion of the SAME guy from the first NH debates a few months ago as last night. Some of the Ron Paul supporters (arguably incensed that their guy was summarily excluded by Fox News Channel) have also indicated that some or all of the focus group members were in fact, paid actors.

Whether that is so remains to be determined… but I do smell something stinky coming from the “Live Free or Die” state, and it sure as heck ain’t my kid’s diapers.

Not to knock on Romney too hard… he didn’t crack as badly under the multiple attacks he faced from the other candidates as he did in the previous debate; but he wasn’t absolutely stellar either.

It’s not the first time Luntz comes off as a shill for Romney either:

In last night’s debate, I see no clear winner who stood head and shoulders above the rest; all did reasonably well, with the possible exception of McCain’s occasional barb, and Huckabee getting flustered at turns.

But the pandering and Luntz not even making the pretence of impartiality as he pointed to the “pander-o-meter” cresting at each golden word falling from Mitt’s carefully glossed lips seemed hokey at best, and staged at worst.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks that Luntz is a propagandist shill who is paid to deliver… the numbers:

*warning: very foul language

The MSM has been abuzz with how Cindy Sheehan, the moonbats’ “Peace Mama” is apparently stepping down from her self-appointed role as Supreme Badgerer of the President and even going as far as to say that she has “given up on America”.

For your convenience, I’ve linked to her “diary” over at the DailyKo(mmunist)s - as it seems that trying to find it from within that great hive-mind of moonbattery took a bit of effort.

One would think that such a story would be on the front page, but perhaps the KosKidz want to keep their celebrity’s pratfalls under wraps, or there was a certain possibility of the “Slashdot Effect” pounding Kos’s servers into submission - although not many of the MSM sites reporting this story cared to dig out any links to Kos, much less Sheehan’s “Kos-diary”

Here are a few interesting tidbits she does offer:

I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed.

Heh. I could have told you that you should already have been committed to a fine psychiatric institution a few years ago, or at least have been given some meds to help calm down your hysteria, lady.

I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others.

Really? Have you indeed invested everything to bringing peace to the land? You are well within your rights to grieve the loss of your son Casey, and well within your rights to disagree with the prosecution of our military actions in the Middle East. But YOU are the one who played the role of media harlot for the sake of your own egomania. Please! Spare us the sob story.

Do you mean to tell us that you are better than every other grieving mother and father and child and spouse who has seen their loved one make the ultimate sacrifice life for their country? Was not Casey of legal age to make a commitment to serve his country? In my opinion, you do his memory much harm through your showboating his good name to get your fifteen minutes of fame.

Were you so strongly opposed to his entry in the Armed Services, or was this a revelation you received from the Great Leftist Hive Mind when that soldier showed up on your doorstep with a telegram and/or a folded American flag?

As for most people not wanting peace or justice… well lady, where do you see it? You are partially right - when you deal with the radical left, and a left which hardly does its forebears any credit, for these modern leftists are the product of a parentage and an “education” (an indoctrination, really) bereft of a moral compass, and have been raised at the twin teats of selfish materialism (hah!) and crass consumerism without regard for authority or a desire to give up a little to gain a lot.

But for the rest of us on the center and on the right… we do desire peace with justice. But unlike your thinking, it does not entail giving up when the going is the worst, it is pressing on, making mistakes - yes, mistakes, for we shall make them for as long as we are trapped in the mortal coil of sinful flesh - and endeavoring to correct our course to bring stability to Iraq in some form.

Is it perfect? By no means. It will take sacrifice, and the blood of perhaps many more Americans, to stand in the gap so as to prevent an even far greater bloodshed were our nation to fall prey to Islamists.

Yet you speak of sacrifices:

“I have spent every available cent I got from the money a “grateful” country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. “

No, neither we, nor the “government” killed your Casey. An Islamist insurgent took the life of your Casey, who fully well knew that that was a possible outcome for himself when he took the oath of service. And guess what? I am grateful for your son’s sacrifice. He truly is a hero.

I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.

You’ve ruined your marriage, jeopardized your health, and put yourself into intractable debt for your media harlotry. Where was your duty to Mr. Sheehan, to be an obedient and supportive wife to him, and a mother to your remaining children still here on earth? You were carried away by your grief, and found yourself used by the radical left. Who gave you the right to ignore your responsibilities as a mother and a wife to selfishly pursue that carrot dangled in front of you by “opportunity” so-called?

“I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.”

Whoa, hold on a sec… you were “forced into” this journey? By whom? Did some terrorists sneak up behind you and jab a weapon into your back, and demand that you become the “Peace Mama”? Or was it that big bad MSM? I could by that… those MSM moguls are some rather unpleasant chaps, even if they are on the same team as you are, for the most part.

And that “mendacious unbending marble” paradigm? You just might be right about that. The radical left that you whored yourself out to for the blood-price of your son’s life is about the most thick-headed bunch of mostly useless idiots. This is about the only place where I could see myself agreeing with you: the Left is too busy trying to play chameleon (Hillary) or obfuscate thier closeted skeletons (Obama) or outright practice chicanery and deception (Silky Pony Edwards)… or otherwise be so wrapped up in their personal agendas that they cannot work with one another.

I’ll also agree with you that the present two party system we have is nothing but useless; the diversity of opinion on public policy is much too large to be included in a big tent of either monied Democrats or monied Republicans. Those of use wee folk are indeed, largely ill-represented.

Finally, I could say that your commitment (to the cause of ending the war) might be commendable, and your afflictions worthy of some consolation, if you did not hold it out expecting some kind of sympathy for your… frankly, insulting and childish behaviour (such as your last post at Kos’s site) :

“Good-bye America … you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.”

Indeed? Well, you just as well might do well to emigrate to a country that you do love. Try Venezuela, I hear that Chavez guy is a real riot to hang out with…. y’know, shutting down the media, suppressing invidiual freedoms, confiscating private property… he sure seems like a real swell guy, no?

Yeah, that’s your new boyfriend there, he likes to do the sort of stuff like your son Casey gave his life in order to prevent the same from happening here in the good ol’ USA.

Looks like there might be some quiet time for Paris (Hilton, that is)… some solace away from the busy life of jet-setting and partying and generally wastefully occupying the fringes of our conscious with her otherwise frivolous and attention-getting antics… in jail.

According to the Daily Mail, it seems our Princess was pinched for violating her probation, when she pressed the gas pedal after drinking a wee bit too much of the Punch.

Too bad, I say. Even an insanely wealthy hotel heiress should learn some that there is a penalty for doing wrong.

Yet, the attention-getting heiress is pleading with the Governator (Arnold Schwartzenegger) for a pardon, with… a MySpace petition.

AllahPundit over at HotAir posted an interview by Bill O’Reilly of Johnny Sutton, the US Attorney who successfully prosecuted the case against the two border patrol agents who shot a fleeing illegal immigrant drug runner.

Items like this have me wondering who is the biggest scumbag of them all-

1) The border patrol agents who unload 15 rounds at a fleeing Mexican drug runner on the US side of the border (wounding him with the one shot that actually hit)… and then attempting to cover it up by removing evidence? Bad move, in hindsight

2) The Mexican drug runner who was plying his trade across the border

3) The ACLU and other such traitors who saw to it that the Mexican drug runner gets a $5 MILLION dollar settlement for having his civil rights shot in the butt (and I say: exactly what “civil rights” is an illegal alien - who is fleeing arrest - entitled to? The only right he should have gotten is a more well aimed bullet to the spleen.

4) The misinformation to the jury by the jury foreman about how the judge would not accept a hung jury

5) The jury, for possibly rushing to a guilty verdict so they could get back to thier lives

6) The judge, for passing a disproportionately severe sentence (unless it was one of those wacky mandatory sentence crimes)

7) Johnny “Law”, i.e. Johnny Sutton, the prosecuting US Attorney who seems more interested in catering to the Mexican Drug Cartel is better than protecting American citizens - and now has opened the door to effectively disarm, if not disband, the Border Patrol, and certainly facilitate more illegal migrations and drug traffic over what remains of the border.

Hell, just declare the border null and void at this point.

8) The Official Party Line that making life difficult for illegal Mexican immigrants is a no-no… after all, we simply cannot live without NAFTA, FTAA, or the SPP… can we?

Alright. I’ll be brutally frank here, and finally own up to an irrefutable, unstoppable fact.

There is nothing I can do about it; it is as futile as catching the wind in my hands or stopping the incoming tides with my body.

My mother is dying.

I once heard someone quote a Bible passage in reference to another person who was dying:

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

(Hebrews 9:27-28, King James Version)

For a long time, I have scoffed at religion and thought it to be a useless vehicle for people too weak to think for themselves; and perhaps it is. There is a subtle area between "faith" and the pure intellectual grasping of things by our (limited?) abilities.

I was raised Catholic. (and I beg pardon of anyone reading this who might be Catholic: if you are a strong Catholic and wish to stop reading from here, I advise you to do so now.)

When I was growing up, I followed my parents to church and was quite content to park myself in a pew for an hour every Sunday for a nice nap… I never took what the priests had to say very seriously. There was the whole sit-stand-kneel thing, and the go-up-to-the-creepy-priest-and-eat-the-wafer business. About the only fun I ever had from it all, was my involvement with the CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) activities. Taking field trips, doing fun and often stupid stuff with my peers. Hardly religious stuff at all.

But after seeing what hypocrisies the priests tended to get into, I never really cared about what they had to say. Especially after the various child-molestation scandals came to light. That might be one of the few things that would ever motivate me to strike another human being down in wrath: one who would harm an innocent child like that.

Even today, I have my issues with the Church of Rome: As my mother lay in bed dying of cancer, my father had called for a priest to come administer the "last rites" (in Catholicism, this is a "sacrament" or a religious rite to prepare a soul to be received in heaven, have sins forgiven, and/or healed of whatever mortal affliction the person might have).

This priest was an absolute buffoon: stammering and questioning this sick woman who barely knows right from left anymore - asking her if she knows what she wants? And then, he could not make up his mind what he needed to do! Hello? We called your sorry, clueless butt out here to give LAST RITES. What was so hard about that..? the guy had to have stdied that in priest-school before he got ordained.

Mr. Priest, are you on crack? How dare you put someone who is near death and obviously suffering through a grilling as if she doesn’t "know what she wants…"

We actually had to chase the priest out of the hospital room. I’d have to say that whatever little shred of faith that I may have had in the Roman Church has been utterly destroyed. I actually told this priest to leave, saying that "there is no salvation in the Roman Catholic Church".

I’m sure that went over well with my Dad, and had my mother been in her right mind, she’d have lit into me. They are both arch-Catholic… and mother’s wish had always been for me to return to the "Holy Mother Church".  Except that I cannot in good conscience, return to a "church" that is built upon lies, misery and hypocrisy. 

This is really hard for me to deal with… every 20-30 minutes, Mom is screaming out parts of the rosary, saying "hail mary" and the like. I’ve always had a problem with Mary worship… sure, she (Mary) was a "good" woman and according to the tradition and scriptures, chosen of God to bear the Baby Jesus into this world.

But she ain’t nothing more than that, to me. She didn’t die on a cross, nor did she rise again from the dead. I simply cannot bring myself to pray that "hail mary prayer". 

Don’t get me wrong. I want her to "go to heaven". Perhaps more than most people, since I am her son. She has done many good things to others in her life, the least of which was putting up with a dumb mule of a son like me. But will her good deeds earn her a place in Heaven?

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

…Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God…

(Romans 3:10-12, 20-23, KJV) 

Why is she screaming "I don’t want to die… I don’t want to go to Hell!"??

She calls out to her Blessed Virgin, Holy Mother… but she has no peace. 

This "Queen of Heaven" did not hear her prayers… she is not comforted. And I am actually beginning to be afraid that she just might be heading to that other place. On an intellectual level, I had always forced myself to think that Hell was an abstraction, some medieval construct made for evil people in the afterlife … but to hear her talking about it so vividly…

Even when Dad and I finally left to get some sleep… she was still crying and murmuring how "I don’t want to get off the train…" This of course, is a metaphor for her awareness of impending death. Perhaps it was her fever talking… but she kept saying that whenever the train stopped… it was so hot… so unbearably hot.

Her Blessed Virgin did not help her, nor do I think she ever will.

Perhaps this is the result of some choices I have made, some things I know God isn’t pleased with.

I wonder: have I truly failed my mother, at such an important time?