What’s up Democrats? Isn’t this your job?
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
God had a better idea
Blue is nice for sky, but for trees, I prefer the original plan.
http://mydesignstories.net/profiles/blogs/blue-trees-by-konstantin-dimopoloulos#comments
Faith AND Works
“John Wesley died as he had lived from his conversion. For 53 years, he had faithfully preached that men need and are saved only by faith in Christ, but the corollary of that was that they would be judged by works—by how they live. He often prayed, "Let me wear out, not rust out. Let me not live to be useless." Until a week before his death, when fever incapacitated and forced him to take to his bed, he had in his 88th year, continued to preach, write, supervise and encourage. He died on the morning of March 2nd 1791, and no sooner was his spirit released than those who had come to rejoice with him "burst
into an anthem of praise. "No coach, no hearse were needed for his funeral, for he had given instructions that six poor men, in need of employment, be given a pound each to carry his body to the grave.” “ from England Before and After Wesley, By Donald Drew
Global warmist is thief and forger
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and a believer in the religion of (AGW) man made global warming, stole documents from the Heartland Institute, a conservative, free market think tank the left loves to hate and attack. At least any time I cite it you would think I’d just written, “Rush Limbaugh has personally baptized this.” Gleick, according to various conservative news sources who know what the code word “sustainable” means, “obtained the documents under false pretenses and then passed them on to liberal blogs. Now a computer analysis by Dr. Patrick Juola at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, concludes that one the documents, the so-called “climate strategy memo,” is a fake, most likely manufactured by Gleick himself. “ CRC Green Watch, April 2012
The mischief is now known as “Fakegate,” and Gleick has taken a leave of absence from his position as President. I have no doubt his institution which is doing the investigation will find he has done nothing wrong because his heart was in the right (left) place.
Dr. Gleick has admitted that he impersonated a board member of the Heartland Institute in a series of emails to obtain confidential documents, a criminal practice known as “phishing.” Gleick, apparently, had hoped to obtain funding documents that he could use to discredit Heartland and scare off its donors by showing that it was simply shilling for Big Oil and Big Coal and other “dirty” corporate interests. . . the documents Gleick obtained from Heartland contained no smoking gun, so Gleick, or one of his over-zealous AGW alarmist confederates, had to spice things up by concocting a fake document entitled, “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” which Gleick then mixed in with the purloined Heartland documents and sent off to blog sites of fellow activists. (New American)
These people need scandal and intrigue (hellfire and brimstone) to continue getting donations from the private sector and grants from the government. Gleick’s supporters and fellow religionists consider him a hero and a martyr for the pantheist cause (global warming). The truth matters not. Their science is weak and their politics is global, even if the warming isn’t. The regular “free” press doesn’t vet them anymore than they vetted Obama, so most Americans will never find the truth. Besides this is April, and it was news in March.
When Gleick is tried in a court of law for stealing and fraud and found innocent, I’ll post that—but these kinds of thefts rarely get that far. Unless you’re on the right and pretty small potatoes.
Seniors encouraged to take college loans in 2010, and blamed in 2012 for doing so
One could get whip lash reading about senior citizens and college loans. Is is a good idea or not?
In August 2010, this article appeared in USAToday. "There are more opportunities than in the past for senior citizens to take college classes and get help paying for them," says financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com.
Many community colleges and some four-year colleges allow seniors to audit classes for free and significantly reduce tuition for those who take them for credit. The financial arrangements vary widely by school and so do the age requirements — generally 60, 62, or 65 and over.”
Yes, in 2010, before the news about the next bubble burst, people were being encouraged to borrow money for college. But in today’s USAToday, Washington Post and other sources buying the boilerplate from the NY Federal Reserve research, there’s a different story, although much overblown, since the small print says 5.8% of the college loan debt is for seniors, and 10% are in arrears. That’s a pretty small portion of college debt.
“New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that Americans 60 and older still owe about $36 billion in student loans, providing a rare window into the dynamics of student debt. More than 10 percent of those loans are delinquent. As a result, consumer advocates say, it is not uncommon for Social Security checks to be garnished or for debt collectors to harass borrowers in their 80s over student loans that are decades old.
The fact that even seniors remain saddled with student loans highlights what a growing chorus of lawmakers, economists and financial experts say has become a central conflict in the nation's higher education system: The long-touted benefits of a college degree are being diluted by rising tuition rates and the longevity of debt.”
Think Progress, a leftist bloggity news/opinion site, uses the phrase “crushing America’s Senior citizens.” Anything to avoid talking about what a bad job this administration has done with the economy, and to suck more people into a mentality of victimhood to be saved by BO. Obama is taking credit for an economy that could have rebounded in spite of the him, faster and healthier, by dragging us further trillions into debt.
Why recovery has taken so long
“If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
-Candidate Barack Obama, Jan. 17, 2008.
Just for Democrats. Republicans haven’t forgotten.
Monday, April 02, 2012
Woman loses her voice, continues to serve God
Need a good cry? This is a wonderful story about Sister Noel Devine who is 85-years-old, and for 67 of those years has served as a Maryknoll sister. She has now lost her voice to Primary Lateral Sclerosis, but continues to serve. Watch to the end when a 93 year old sister sings a hymn. Watch her eyes glow with the love of Jesus.
The earning potential of college athletes
Ohio State is out of the Final Four. I heard a discussion about college athletes turning pro on the radio—speculation about one or two of our Buckeyes. If I were a 20 year old, talented, uninjured college athlete, I wouldn't need 20 seconds to decide. You can always go back to college; you get only one chance at being 20. What do you think?
Thomas Jefferson High School again
I don’t buy this. The whole purpose of high school clubs is to learn leadership skills and develop friendships. There are plenty of clubs which will mingle children of different races and cultures—math club, Spanish club, thespians—but the leader of the black students club should be an African American. TJHS doesn’t have very many blacks now; don’t dilute their effectiveness and learning opportunities. And no, I don’t want a guy in charge of young mothers club.
Of the 1,800 students who attended TJ last year, only 34 were black and 42 were Hispanic, school figures show. The overwhelming majority of their classmates were Asian (906) and white (787).
Glenn Beck is on vacation
Tonight there is a rerun on GBTV.com. He’s on vacation for 2 weeks. David Horowitz is one of the guests. Years ago I read his book Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey about growing up Marxist, knowing his parents’ friends were blacklisted Communists during the McCarthy years, and becoming a Black Panther. Now he’s a conservative and a very active (and protested) speaker on college campuses. He considers Ruth Bader Ginsberg the most radical of all the Supreme Court Justices. Other guests on tonight’s rerun are David Barton from Wall Builders, Geronimo Aguilar, a pastor of The Roc who says he was conceived at Woodstock, and some other conservatives. We’ve seen it before, but worth a second look. Discussing the important of a 2 parent home.
“Going to church regularly will add 7 years to your life (if you are white) and 14 years if you are black,” said one of the guests. I think I need to fact check that stat. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Check here.
Wait Till Next Year—Book club today
“Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.
We meet the people who most influenced Goodwin’s early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound; and her father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges. Most important, Goodwin describes with eloquence how the Dodgers’ leaving Brooklyn in 1957, and the death of her mother soon after, marked both the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood. “ (author’s website)
Question from leader of discussion, “Did her description of childhood trigger any memories of your own childhood such as neighborhood games, local Mom and Pop stores, best friends, church activities, family life, school and sports?”
Because in my early years our family lived on the same block as Nelson Potter and his family, I can claim at least what little interest I had in sports was because of a famous baseball player living near by. He was in college with my parents, and his son was in my class in school, and we still stay in touch at Christmas.
Sunday, April 01, 2012
This could be bad news for poverty pimps
There could be biological reasons for racial disparities in health!
Doctors long have thought that less access to screening and follow-up health care were the reasons black women are 40 percent more likely to develop cervical cancer and twice as likely to die from it. The new study involving young college women suggests there might be a biological explanation for the racial disparity, too.
Fourteen people shot in Florida at a wake for young black man
Maybe race hustlers Sharpton and Jackson have time to show up to lead a protest and hamper the police in their investigation, and perhaps the President can take some time from his campaign events to call the parents. Maybe Oprah can check in, and Spike Lee can tweet something inaccurate and Roseanne Barr can stir up a posse. What? Two dead? Black gang violence? Never mind. Manhattan Institute notes that in New York City, there were nine civilian victims of police gunfire last year, whereas there were “several hundred black homicide victims in the city, almost all shot by other blacks or Hispanics, none of them given substantial press coverage.”
Aventura Police Sgt. Chris Goranitis told CBS4 News the funeral was for 21-year-old Morvin Andre who died on March 16th, one day after he jumped from the 4th to 2nd floor of the Aventura Mall parking garage in an effort to escape pursuit by Bloomingdale’s loss prevention employees.
The Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide because he chose to jump rather than be apprehended, according to Goranitis.
Meantime, a senior police commander told CBS4 investigative reporter Jim DeFede that Andre had some connection to several South Florida gangs and some of those gang members were in attendance at his wake to pay their respects.
The commander said someone at the wake touched Andre’s body in the casket in a way that other gangs took as disrespectful. This led to an argument inside the funeral home which spilled out to the street.
I was hoping this was an April Fool joke
But it wasn’t. A First Lady of the United States actually wore this in public.
Not sure why it is called a system
Our health care system had a broken leg--no one disagreed on that. It was a bi-partisan medical diagnosis. Band-aids were liberally applied. So in order to fix it, the federal government under the control of progressives and Democrats decided to equalize things, break the other leg, both ankles, the wrist on one arm and the elbow on the other, just in case anyone would get the bright idea of offering crutches, and then prescribed a massive dose of hallucinogens mislabeled as pain killers.
The “Roe v. Wade” of this generation said the Manhattan Declaration Blog. Charles Colson wrote in 2009: “This is a huge religious-liberty question. It isn’t about contraceptives or even abortifacients. It’s about whether the United States government can limit the free exercise of religion by telling us which of our beliefs are entitled to conscience exemptions. It would be one thing if this came through the courts; still another thing if it were passed by Congress. But this edict is handed down by unelected government bureaucrats [White House Administration Staff] ... This is a momentous issue. There have been other threats to religious liberty by legislation and sometimes by court order — but never at the whim of an unelected government official.”
The Enterprise blog said, “Scalia nailed it with the very first question asked by a justice. Why not “address directly” the main problem with American healthcare, the overconsumption of healthcare services driven by the third-party payment system?” Exactly what I thought from the beginning. Insurance created this problem--the dream that someone else pays while I select from the banquet table of tests, screening, vaccines, and advice about my own habits I should be controlling; why would more insurance cure it?
Palm Sunday
Today is Palm Sunday, and if attending any Christian church today you may hear something like this, compiled by Sarah Ciotti. Some churches reenact Jesus' triumphal entry; some pass out palm branches to wave during the hymns. At our service we'll be hearing from Pastor David Mann, our missionary to Haiti.
“9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’” (Matt 21:9)[1]
These holy words have inspired the Church for centuries. Known as the Sanctus, a part of the Eucharist Prayer, Christians have sung the end of this verse since before 400 AD.[2]
The Sanctus, listed below, hints at a juxtaposition innate in sacred mystery; God as Divine as expressed in the first stanza and God as man, riding on a donkey, in the second.[3]
“Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts
Heaven and earth are full of your glory
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest”(Sanctus 2010).[4]
Continuing the Holy Week reflection, Jesus’ triumphal entry highlights our need to make our new commitment public. We want to announce it and name it; whether it is a new goal, a project, a new partnership, etc. We long to celebrate with family and friends. Yet, in the joy of announcing our plans, sadness exists. Like in the Sanctus, we hope for something great; yet we know our human nature. What if we fail? What if we can’t bring our commitment to completion? We desire publicity; but we realize the fragility that comes with such an announcement. Hence, today’s paradox.[5]
[1] Revised Standard Version, s.v. “Matthew, The Gospel According To.”
[2] Michael G. Powell, “An Introduction to the History of Christian Liturgy in the West. s.v. ‘sanctus,’”http://www.yale.edu/adhoc/research_resources/liturgy/d_sanctus.html
[3] Ibid.
[4] Excerpts from the English translation of The Roman Missal © 2010, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation.
[5] Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, “The Mysteries of Holy Week,” Retreat, Pocatello, ID, March 2012.
Pro-Lifers disagree with Cheney on marriage, but. . .
they applaud the doctors, technology and his own bravery in getting a new heart. Nasty people on the internet were complaining that Cheney was too old for a heart transplant (actually, what they really mean is he is a Republican). I’m 72, and although I think that’s probably too old to run for President (first term), it’s not too old for a heart transplant. And those nasties might change their minds if he were their father, brother or husband—or indeed, if it were their hearts that needed a replacement. He waited 20 months; but there have been amazing changes even in that time. Read the article.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
How to ruin a beautiful view
Few people think of visual environment. I saw this article in ENR Midwest Digital Wire. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57406874/feds-5-states-to-push-for-great-lakes-wind-farms/
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - The Obama administration and five states have agreed to speed up approval of offshore wind farms in the Great Lakes.
There are no wind turbines in the lakes at present. Proposals have met fierce opposition from people worried the structures would ruin views and harm the environment.
Under the deal, federal and state agencies will develop a plan to speed regulatory review of proposed offshore wind farms. Officials say the projects would have to meet safety and environmental standards.
States that signed the deal include Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania.
Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin declined.
Hacktivism
From Technewsworld an article on hacktivism by Sam Glines.
“Hacktivism is the new, hip thing; it has become a hobby for people with higher-than-average computer knowledge. The movement is led by an elite few who have a deep, lifelong knowledge of computers, and it includes senior Fortune 100 corporate executives and highly placed governmental employees, as well as the ranks of the unemployed.
The elite world of hacktivism is at the center of the Internet's Dark Side. While governmental agencies are looking for the individuals responsible for various acts of hacktivism, they struggle with using their tried-and-true methods to move up the food chain to identify hacktivist leaders. What is not well understood is that these layers cannot be penetrated by the standard law enforcement methods that were once effective in collapsing organized crime groups.
Hacktivism exists because the Internet is an open society that has no boundaries in which normal legal process can be applied without taking significant and draconian action, like direct control of the systems that keep the Internet alive. The traditional legal requirements for evidence are hampered by the very void in which the elites live. “
You might be anti-Semitic if . . .
If you judge a Jewish state by standards that you apply to no one else; if your neck veins bulge when you denounce Zionists but you’ve done no more than cluck “well, yes, very bad about Darfur”;
if there is nothing Hamas can do that you won’t blame ‘in the final analysis’ on Israelis;
if your sneer at the Zionists doesn’t sound a whole lot different from American neoconservative sneers at leftists;
then you should not be surprised if you are criticized, fiercely so, by people who are serious about a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians and who won’t let you get away with a self-exonerating formula—“I am anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic”—to prevent scrutiny. If you are anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, then don’t use the categories, allusions, and smug hiss that are all too familiar to any student of prejudice.
Please read the entire article at Dissent—it’s from 2008, but not much has changed. http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=987
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