Well, it’s Thanksgiving again, and I think I need to write a piece listing all the things for which I am thankful to God, particularly now after what will likely prove to be a disastrous election for this country.

• I am thankful that I am alive and healthy. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but I believe that everyone should be thankful for their life and their health every day. We are all just a heartbeat away from not having any more chances to be forgiven for our sins.
• I am thankful for my job. This is another item that I think should be universal. Far too many people complain about their jobs, and far too many people choose to take government handouts rather than work as productive citizens. I am proud to be productive and to be doing my little part to make the country a little better.
• I am thankful for my wife. I’ve been married for nearly three weeks (yes, weeks), and I’m very thankful that it happened. My wife is a wonderful woman who makes me a better person. She’s patient with my sometimes eccentric ways, and she keeps me grounded when I start to lose focus. I’m also thankful for her health. She has a number of serious health concerns, particularly Multiple Sclerosis and a hereditary, chronic kidney ailment. But right now, she is as healthy as she has been in many years. The medicine she’s on for MS allowed her to walk, unaided, down the aisle 3 weeks ago as opposed to riding a wheelchair or using a cane, or being in a hospital bed. Stress aggravates MS and the stress of a new home, a new husband, a new stepmother, and a new life have been wearing on her for months. She spent August bedridden from a major attack, and another would almost certainly have come if she hadn’t been on her treatment. I thank God every day that he has blessed me with so wonderful a woman.
• I am thankful for my family, and now that includes my extended family. In the Thanksgiving piece I wrote 2 years ago I thanked God for my family, and I continue to do so. Very little has changed where my blood relatives are concerned (although, I had many more of my extended family than had I expected to be present at my wedding, for which I am also thankful) but, of course I have now added relatives with my marriage. I have come to very much like my brother-in-law (a blue-collar worker who hunts every year), and, despite some tension between my wife and her father, he and I get along fairly well also. 
• As I mentioned in a couple of pieces and comments I’ve written in the last couple of weeks, I am thankful for the continued popular resistance against the push to change the millennia old definition of marriage. Despite the fact that we as a nation elected a Leftist extremist as President (a fact that continues to worry me about the future), we have still shown that enough people care about marriage not to let the Extremist Leftists win its redefinition where we can control that. It is that continued resistance to the attempts to undermine the values that make this country great that makes me proud to call myself an American.

I spent last week on my honeymoon in the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia. It was wonderful to spend a relaxing week with my new wife away from all the post election nonsense and Barack Obama love fests in the media. As we stayed in a resort that caters to couples on their weddings, honeymoons, anniversaries, and the like, we met a number of interesting people and learned a number of interesting things.

As we all know by now, the Left is engaging in an all out assault on marriage. Feminists like Gloria Steinem and her National Organization for Women (NOW) colleagues have for years decried it as an obsolete institution of “legalized slavery” and oppression of women. The “relativist” crowd believes in “open marriages” (those where the individuals still maintain intimate relations with people not their spouses) and praises Bill Clinton (et al.) for their extramarital affairs. The Left has decried military adultery prohibitions as “puritan” and “medieval.” Divorce has been made easily available and can be done “no-fault” based solely on “irreconcilable differences” rather than assigning blame for the husband or wife not living up to their end of the bargain. And, of course, the gay privileges lobby has been pushing harder and more violently for a complete redefinition of marriage. 

So far the assault has had mixed results. On the one hand, marriage is seen as disposable. The vows that say “Till death do us part” are now understood to imply “or one of us gets tired of being stuck with the other.”   Divorce rates are staggering, some claim over 50%. But, people still marry, and people still do stay together for decades. People still applaud those who announce that they are on their 40^th, 50^th, 60^th, etc. anniversaries. And any time the idea of allowing same-sex “marriage” is brought up to the people, the people say, loudly and emphatically, “NO!” Even when it means actively changing the law.

There is, however, some disturbing news on the marriage front. My wife and I met a very nice couple from Montreal while on an excursion around St. Lucia. This couple was celebrating their 9^th anniversary and had left their two children with the grandparents. We talked about some of the cultural differences between Montreal and Washington, DC (Traffic, snow, the fact that we took their baseball team, etc.) and they said something to us that absolutely shocked me. Apparently, Quebec provincial law forbids a woman (or a man, for that matter) from changing her name upon marriage. In doing some research, I have discovered that not only is this true, but it applies to all residents of the province, even those married elsewhere.

Let me make this abundantly clear, I do not mean to say that Quebec does not make the name change automatic, nor do I mean to say that Quebec officially recommends against changing your name. I mean they expressly forbid it! 

The law (in English) reads as follows:

“Both spouses keep their birth names after marriage and continue to exercise their civil rights under that name, i.e. they must use their birth name in contracts, on credit cards, on their driver’s licence, etc. However, women are free to assume their husband’s name socially.

This rule applies to all spouses domiciled in Québec, even if they were married outside Québec.” (source: http://www.justice.gouv.qc.ca/english/publications/generale/maria-a.htm. My emphasis)

The only way for a woman to change her name in Quebec is to go through the courts, a lengthy, moderately expensive, not-universally-successful process that requires that she used the new name for 5 years socially, that the old name is too difficult to pronounce (for non-English or French names) or the name has become infamous (I suppose people named “Bush” would fall in that category). 

Now one might ask why this would be the case. I certainly would. It isn’t a case of women’s rights or freedom of choice. They aren’t giving you a choice, they are expressly forbidding the change. The reason is that the divorce rate is so high in Quebec, and the cost of changing the name back and forth is so great in time, effort, and money (you have to change passports, drivers’ licenses, credit cards, bank information, insurance information, credit information, etc.), that the government decided to give in to the societal pressure. So rather than making divorce more difficult, which they should, they decided to make it even easier, taking away even more of the burden of divorce. 

Some people, myself included, find the name-change tradition to be an important one. I actually had a debate with my wife about her name months before we married. She indicated that she didn’t want to take my last name, and I told her I was very uncomfortable with that choice. I see it as the woman presuming the inevitability of divorce, (which is precisely what happened in my first marriage.) (For the record she agreed, and has since welcomed the change, just as soon as we can get it done.) For the State to impose that presumption of divorce on all its married residents is unconscionable, particularly when the State ought to be finding ways to lower the divorce rate rather than capitulating to it.

Funny, a French speaking government capitulating to something it should be fighting. Who’d have thought…

Almost lost in the national disaster of a massive leftward shift in the Federal government, there is one ray of hope in an otherwise abysmal election season. Despite (or perhaps because of) record turnouts, particularly amongst Democrats, the good people several states, most notably that bastion of conservatism and Christianity known as California, have once again defeated all measures intended to destroy the institution of marriage by making that term apply to – shall we say – non-traditional relationships.

By a relatively slim margin of 52% to 48%, Californians voted in favor of this year’s Proposition 8, a proposed constitutional amendment specifically designed to protect the definition of marriage from unaccountable judges in California. 21% of Obama voters, and even 10% of self-described “liberals” voted in favor of Proposition 8. 

The proposition reads as follows:

This initiative measure is submitted to the people in accordance with the provisions of Article II, Section 8, of the California Constitution.

This initiative measure expressly amends the California Constitution by adding a section thereto; therefore, new provisions proposed to be added are printed in italic type to indicate that they are new.

SECTION 1. Title

This measure shall be known and may be cited as the “California Marriage Protection Act.”

SECTION 2. Section 7.5 is added to Article I of the California Constitution, to read:

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Even in a climate most likely to produce yet another disastrous result, in a state with generally favorable attitudes toward homosexuality, the people of California still managed to vote correctly on the issue of redefining marriage. This is particularly telling because California had had gay “marriage” imposed upon it by judges only about 6 months ago. The people continue to speak, and they continue to speak out against defining as “marriage” something that is not and cannot be considered marriage. The people of Florida and Arizona enacted similar amendments, despite both states already having statutory protection of marriage. The rationale has been to prevent the courts from ever doing in Florida and Arizona what they tried to do in California, and have successfully done in Massachusetts and Connecticut. 

The extremist gay lobby has been unsuccessful in coercing the public into accepting their agenda despite the massive PR tactics they have chosen to use: putting it in our faces on TV and in the movies, disparaging any opponent to gay privileges as a bigot, comparing it to the civil rights battles that blacks endured until the 1960s, getting it marketed by celebrities and “news” media outlets, etc. None of it has worked. The only times that states have recognized gay marriage has been when it has been forced on them by the courts. Fortunately, California has a process by which the people can force the courts to follow the law by putting it in the Constitution. 

The media reaction to the news has been unconscionable. The glee over the election of President-elect Obama has only been matched by the despondency with which the news of gay marriage defeats has been reported. If you believe the Associated Press, you’d think that Adolph Hitler himself had been elected President based on the tone of articles they’ve published on the gay “marriage” amendment. Yesterday (November 5), as the results from other elections came in, the AP refused to publish any stories saying that the California Marriage Protection Act had passed, saying, instead, that it was simply “too close to call.” This despite the fact that Reuters had already reported that the measure had passed. Today, as it became clear that the measure had been defeated, the AP stories talk about the tears and dread in the gay community when they found out that their sham “marriages” were, in fact, shams. 

I realize that this story is not over, and I know that the courts and now the Congress and the President Elect all support gay marriage. I know that one of Obama’s first actions as President will be to push for the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which repeal would force states to recognize gay marriages performed in other states under the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution. So I realize this may end up being a small and fleeting victory with a much more catastrophic defeat looming on the horizon. But, at least it shows that the majority of the people still believe that marriage has a specific definition and care enough about that definition to try to make it law. 

I have no confidence in the government on this issue anymore, but I can still rely on the people.

Now, I’m going to go and get married.

Senator John McCain, attempting to be gracious in defeat, has said that Barack Obama will be “my president” and that he would “support” President Obama during his administration to help him face the challenges that would surely arise. While I understand the need to be gracious in defeat, I must disagree with Senator McCain’s pledge of support. Barack Obama will be President of the United States. He will not be “my” President. I did not vote for him. I fundamentally disagree with nearly everything he believes in – though President Elect Obama and I do share an opinion of the NCAA’s football Bowl Championship Series. (Insert reference to blind squirrels and nuts here.) I pray his reign is short and we can put someone better suited to run a country in the White House in 2012 (say, a ham sandwich, for example.) And I do not support Barack Obama’s Presidency in any way shape or form.

As a matter of fact, despite having lost a huge amount of ground in both houses in congress, and a massive amount of support overall, I would hope that conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans would refuse to support President Obama. Let him and his Democrat colleagues in the Congress hang out to dry. Give him precisely the same respect and support that President George W. Bush received from the Democratic Party during his 8 years in the White House. 

President Obama should now be forced to make decisions and have to defend them before hostile filibuster attempts. Everything from his stated goals of forcing abortion and gay “marriage” to the farthest Left possible interpretation to his appointments for Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development for the Distribution of Government Cheese should be scrutinized, battered, and universally opposed by an extremely vocal minority. Let him stand on an island with his elitist friends in Congress when he unilaterally pulls out of Iraq before the Iraqi Government is ready for it. Hang him out to dry every time he makes even the most minor mistake in policy.

I call on all conservatives to vocally oppose the Europezation of America and when it comes time to vote next year (if your state runs odd year elections) or in 2010, do what you can to rein in some of this insanity. Then, perhaps, we can mount a successful effort to remove from office a Leftist, racist, elitist, anti-American President.

Congratulations, America, you’ve just elected as President a man who…

-          Believes that you, that’s right, you, the people who voted for him, are “bitter” people who “cling to guns, … religion, … antipathy toward people who aren’t like [you], … anti-immigrant sentiment [and] anti trade sentiment…”

-          Believes that the Federal Government is a better judge of how to handle your health than a doctor.

-          Believes that gays have an inalienable, God-given right to “marry” people of the same sex.

-          Believes that abortion is an inalienable, God-given right that the government must provide “regardless of the ability to pay.”

-          Believes that “…the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is merely an outdated guideline that is no longer binding on the government.

-          Believes whole-heartedly in Karl Marx’s maxim “From each according to his talent to each according to his need.” And as such, wants to take your hard-earned money and give it to someone who lacks the ambition to work behind the counter at McDonald’s, something he calls “spreading the wealth.”

-          Has had his political views formed by people like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers who unapologetically loathe America and everything it stands for.

-          Does not believe in American exceptionalism, neither that it exists nor that it is something to be strived for.

-          Believes that America is an inherently racist nation and that the problems experienced by blacks in this country are due entirely to that racism and not to the actions of those experiencing the problems. (For example, it’s America’s inherent racism that causes black people to suffer the foreclosure of their homes, not the fact that the borrowers did not qualify for their loans, did not determine that they were buying too much house, and did not take measures to ensure that they would be able to afford the mortgage.)

-          Has gone on record as saying that he will refuse to fund the military for research and development into “unproven” weapons systems. (The punch line here is that the whole point of research and development is that which is being researched and developed is, by definition, “unproven.”)

-          Believes that by “living document” we mean that the Constitution is so vague and difficult to understand by normal men that it requires enlightened judges to interpret it to match the policies of Leftist politicians.

-          Believes that our foreign policy ought to be decided by unelected, unaccountable diplomats in the UN.

-          Believes that people who cannot afford a house ought to be able to buy the house anyway, and that you and I should have to pay for it (along with our own houses.)

-          Believes that there is something so fundamentally wrong with the very idea of America that it requires massive changes at the most basic level.

I’ll make some predictions now and we’ll see in four years whether or not I’m wrong (and it’s likely that I will be on many of them.)

1. Gay marriage will be required doctrine in all 50 states.
1. Churches that refuse, for religious reasons (owing to the fact that homosexuality is called “wicked” at least half a dozen times in the Bible), to perform weddings for same-sex couples will be punished under the law that removes the tax exempt status of churches that engage in political speech.
2. The Supreme Court will hold that there is no violation of freedom of speech or the free exercise of religion in such laws. (This may take more than 4 years, but it will be one of the lasting effects of a Barack Obama presidency).
2. Iraq will fall into the control of Iran-sponsored terrorists. Such terrorists will use the combined assets of Iran and Iraq to create a small nuclear arsenal with which they will threaten the United States, unless we allow “greater freedom” for Muslims in this country.
1. Obama will agree with that assessment and push for affirmative action and quota laws in all walks of life to benefit practicing Muslims.
3. The economy will tank. 
1. Housing prices will take the approximate path of a yo-yo as government “encouragement” of banks lending to unqualified people continues to artificially interfere with demand.
2. Unemployment will jump as new taxes and burdensome minimum-wage laws take effect making labor more and more expensive for all businesses, particularly small ones.
3. Very small businesses will fold even more quickly than normal as the $250,000 tax bracket will crush most of them.
4. Your taxes will go up as the incentive to earn more money is sucked out of most people and the Government will need to recover the lost revenue so as to continue “spreading the wealth.” Not to mention needing to pay for government healthcare (something other countries are trying to steer away from.)
4. Affirmative action laws will become even more restrictive on businesses and schools, and there will be active discrimination against whites, particularly in the Government.
5. We will be attacked by an emboldened Osama bin Laden when he realizes we have a president who lacks the conviction to respond to those who harm us.
6. Israel will be attacked by the Iran-Iraq alliance and will suffer a catastrophic war. I will not predict whether or not they will be “wiped from the map” because Barack Obama will have little to do with that (although, I do not expect that he will send any aid.)
7. Our foreign policy will start capitulating to France and the UN.
8. We will sign and ratify the Kyoto accords and businesses will have to bear the burden of excessive pollution restrictions.
9. Gasoline prices will skyrocket as Congress will not approve new exploration, production, or refining of oil.

So Congratulations. I hope you all are proud that we managed to elect a black man as President, because that’s about all he has going for him.

It’s going to be a long, stupid four years.