A day late and a dollar short.

A day late and a dollar short

So Obama released his budget…actually he should have released it a week ago, so he is seven days late….

…and the deficit is a bit more than a dollar…in fact it is $1.65 trillion…for the academically challenged, that is…1,650,000,000,000 or something in the order of $4,500,000,000 a day. Is that too hard for you to get your head around…how about an hourly rate…$18,750,000…or a minute….$312,500. Most people average 70 heartbeats a minute…so for every heartbeat you have, the government must borrow $4,500 (approximately).

Now, let me think for a minute…every time my heart beats we go further into debt by over $4,000?

And this is what Obama comes up with even though he is 7 days late? Maybe we should be thankful it was only 7 days late…any more and a heartbeat could be even more expensive!!

Enough of the frivolity…today I want to talk of something that has my heart all aflutter….

It is February 13 and for the last several days…or weeks…we have been assaulted with reminders of Valentine’s Day on February 14.

Diamonds, dinners, flowers and cards.

The history of Valentines Day is a little difficult to track down. At some point as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire many of the traditional Roman festivities were renamed and re-engineered to become celebrations of Christian events.

In 450 AD or thereabouts…a fertility festival was slated on the Roman calendar for February 15. These celebrations contained all the debauchery one would expect from a fertility celebration. If the God’s were kind…well, you get the idea….

The deflowering of virgins was a highlight of these celebrations, as was the promiscuity permitted for all on this one day of free love.

Sometime around that date, the fertility celebrations stopped and it seems were replaced by the more conventional celebration of love started by Saint Valentine. The historical records provide little insight into which St Valentine we are talking about as there seems to be three possibilities.

Does that really matter though?

It is very clear that St. Valentines Day is now a Christian holiday celebrating lovers….or at least it should be.

When I was a young ‘un, Valentines Day was limited to a celebration between those who loved each other and were able to consummate that love in the most intimate manner. It was a celebration of the love that lovers have…and certainly not something that children were a part of.

It was a special day…a day full of romance, full of promise, full of forgiveness, full of hope rekindled…a day when lovers would connect once more…intimately, emotionally and faithfully…a day when the troubles of the world would stay out of the connection that two people had for each other.

I remember the snickers and laughter as we children grew to understand what Valentines Day meant…and we secretly longed to be grow up quickly so that we could be a part of this seemingly magical day.

But it wasn’t to be.

You see…some people did not have lovers, and the endless celebrations around them simply made them feel even more left out. It wasn’t fair…they should be involved too.

So Valentines Day gave up some of its wonder…some of its importance…and in the interest of being all encompassing…became a celebration of the love of friends…not the love of your lover.

At some point, it became apparent that children were also loved…so Valentines Day became reinvented once more to not only celebrate the intimate love of lovers, and to be all inclusive of friends, but to also reflect the love between parents and children and vice-verse.

Oh how joyous a day it has become…a celebration of love all around.

But wait…how do we now deal with an inclusive Valentines Day in our schools?

Why, we must ensure that EVERYBODY is treated equal…if a child gives a Valentines Day card to his much loved best friend, he must also give one to everybody else in the class…after all, we would not want anybody to NOT get one, would we…what a tragedy that would be.

So Valentines Day is now a day to celebrate those that you love intimately, those that are your friends, parents, children, brothers, sisters, school friends…and people you don’t like.

In other words, it has been destroyed.

Once again…in our search for equality, we have taken something special, something unique…something deeply personal…and sacrificed its meaning on the altar of all-inclusiveness.

No longer is Valentines Day a sumptuous romantic dinner filled with the promise of intimacy…it is little more than an all-inclusive buffet …where the food is bland and the promise is empty.

I mourn the loss of a day set aside for lovers…

I cannot say that the celebration of love is meaningless…we celebrate every day (and if we do not, we are way off the mark)…we celebrate and love our children every day, we should love and celebrate our parents every day…we celebrate our friends….

…but how often do we put everything else away and celebrate our lover? How often do we stop the world and devote our full attention to the person who makes our life complete? How often do we make him or her the most important person in our lives…even if for just a few short hours?

And how do we do this if we share that special day with everybody else in our lives?

For everybody reading this, I ask that you do one simple thing….

Retake Valentines Day and make it a day for you and your lover…that is who it is for. Do not allow the world to convince you otherwise. Make it special…and give your children something special to look forward to when they are of the age to have a lover.

The all-inclusive nature of the modern day Valentines Day has sufficiently relegated its meaning that it is no wonder to me that many see it as simply a marketing piece for the florists and candy manufacturers and Hallmark.

It is FAR more than just that.

Maybe the early Romans had it right? A fertility celebration makes much more sense than the over commercialized meaningless and valueless messages we send today.

OK…now for another quick direction change.

I want to briefly talk about this kerfuffle between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church.

I am not going to say much…except for this….

This battle is not over religious freedom as the Church and many pundits claim

This battle is not over the rights of women to use contraception or even the morning after pill.

Those are inconsequential sideshows. (Now, I am not saying they are not important…what I am saying is that they are NOT what this is about.)

This whole thing is about freedom. Freedom to make individual choices for yourself. Freedom to follow religious beliefs. Freedom to NOT follow religious beliefs.

When the government tries to overstep its bounds by attacking religious freedom, it knew it could not win that battle. It was never intended that they would force through those requirements on the Catholic church.

What Obama intended was to create an uproar that would enable him to APPEAR to compromise, APPEAR to listen, while at the same time pushing through a mandate that was what he wanted in the first place.

He wants to APPEAR like the good guy…the reasonable guy…while still overstepping the governments rights to interfere in your life.

His intention was to distract you with the religious freedom trip while he implemented mandates that strip your personal freedoms, and for which you WILL pay.

This is the most corrupt and deceptive administration in modern history…do not be fooled by his clever antics. He is preparing for total government control over your lives, and is just now testing the waters as he waits for his next term.

He may have overplayed his hand this time around…but you can bet the farm on the fact that he has learned from it…and the next attempt will be FAR more subtle.

The Deceiver-In-Chief is on his game…be warned!

…..devereaux