This is something that isn't being reported on much, but I had heard of it. The Chinese are famously interested in making a buck, even if it uses people completely in the process. There are very desperate people in Africa with no hope, and if someone offers them a copper penny, they'll take it.
Please read this link for more info. It's from a British reporter.
As if slavery hadn't already been to Africa and back...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1063198/PETER-HITCHENS-How-China-created-new-slave-empire-Africa.html
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Ponderings on gays
So, this was interesting this morning. I think I should mention, in case it's not obvious to people I know, that I don't have a problem with people who are gay. I treat them like human beings and encourage everyone else to do the same. They are often delightful people to know. However, there is also an agenda that runs over the rights of those who are not gay. Most people don't see it that way, but there is. Like many other groups, gays are divided about that agenda.
Last night we went to the Olive Garden and got a seat in the little bar area, because then we could get going and not wait in line forever. Our waiter made one mean Mai Tai, and it was lovely. He had been a bartender, so he took it upon himself to do our drinks for us. He was also what we call "flamin'", meaning overtly and extremely obviously gay, in both dress and hand waving. :)
He was also a very, very good waiter and we enjoyed him. He says he would love to go into social work with youth and get a master's in Social Work, but right now it's good to make money at the Olive Garden. I have to agree with him, there. I do shudder that Seattle U. is where he wants to go, but it's liberal reputation didn't come from nowhere. If you are a conservative Catholic, don't even think about going there unless you really love a good fight and don't intend to major in anything Catholic. I guess it has a good law school, so it might be good for that.
In any case, I tipped him well, better than usual, because I'm tipping him for the great service we got, not his attitude or general appearance. He was a truly exceptional waiter. And I can separate the two.
I have read in a few places that there are many, many gay folks who would like very much to live nice, normal lives next door to hetero couples, but they are embarrassed by the actions of a few, the kind who love to show off their antics in big parades and make absolute spectacles of themselves. The kind who cannot tolerate people different from themselves when they, in fact, accuse conservatives of the same. That is downright annoying. It is annoying in any of the political touchpoints of today. The attitude that bothers me the most is, "If you think like that, then you aren't enlightened enough to speak to or be treated as an intelligent human being. You are only worth my while if you think like me, because you are "tolerant" if you think just like me."
Does anyone see that that is total irony? It's not even slightly logical. Tolerance does include polite conversations with conservatives, too.
Anyway, here is an article that was published today. In CA, there is a marriage amendment being voted on, making marriage only between men and women. It appears to be failing, but we shall see.
I found this at http://culbreath.wordpress.com/ Thanks, Jeff!
Published: September 26, 2008
“At least five members of the audience walked out”
Bishop Soto stuns national homosexual ministries conference
(Editor’s Note: For the complete text of the bishop’s speech, see related story in today’s edition, “It is sinful.”)
When two Catholics from Southern California learned that Sacramento Coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto was to be the keynote speaker at the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries conference in Long Beach on Sept. 18, they decided to attend themselves to see and hear the talk in person. They say what they witnessed was a bishop who “courageously but gently” gave a clear presentation of Church teaching on sexuality.
[[Soto092608.jpg]]After California Catholic Daily reported on Bishop Soto’s plans to attend and speak at the conference (“Birds of a feather?” Sept. 15, 2008), many readers expressed disapproval or worry over how to interpret the soon-to-be Bishop of Sacramento’s decision. Bishop Soto will take over the diocese from retiring Bishop William Weigand on Nov. 30. The National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries, based in Berkeley, is a network of local ministries that has the reputation of taking, at best, an ambiguous stance on the moral character of homosexuality and homosexual acts.
But there was noting ambiguous about Bishop Soto’s remarks to the group. “Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals, but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all,” Bishop Soto said. “For this reason, it is sinful. Married love is a beautiful, heroic expression of faithful, life-giving, life-creating love. It should not be accommodated and manipulated for those who would believe that they can and have a right to mimic its unique expression."
At least five members of the audience walked out during the bishop’s address. When he finished speaking, there was general silence -- with only a very small number applauding.
The chairman of the conference then announced that the bishop would answer questions at a reception that would be held in another room. That led to widespread expressions of disapproval from members of the audience, who said they wanted to be able to express their responses immediately. It was agreed that those who wanted to speak would line up. The bishop was told twice by the chairman that he was free to leave if he wanted -- or to stay and listen. Bishop Soto stayed and sat quietly listening to every response.
A series of about eight speakers came to the microphone to express their unhappiness with what the bishop had said -- and what they felt he had not said. One woman said, in essence, "We know what the Church says. What we wanted you to talk about is the value of our lived experience as lesbian women and gay men."
Two speakers -- one man and one woman -- thanked the bishop for his address and voiced their agreement with what he had to say.
While the audience members were responding to the bishop’s remarks, a board member of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries came up to one of the tables in the room and said, "On behalf of the board, I apologize. We had no idea Bishop Soto was going to say what he said."
© California Catholic Daily 2008. All Rights Reserved.
Article URL: http://calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=cbbf34a9-d1cd-49a4-ab61-4cf77f14e121
And here is the actual speech. It covers more ground than just gays in the Church. I think people need to remember he is not "imposing his views on the rest of us". He is a Catholic leader teaching CATHOLICS at this conference. He was not speaking at the state capitol. A lot of people seem to miss that bishops are there to teach Catholics, not everyone else, but it's for everyone else if they want to listen, too.
Published: September 26, 2008
“It is sinful”
Text of Bishop Jaime Soto’s address to National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries
(Editor’s Note: Below is a transcript of Bishop Jaime Soto’s keynote speech to the National Association of Diocesan Gay and Lesbian Ministries meeting in Long Beach on Sept. 18 as published on the web site of the Diocese of Sacramento. See a firsthand account of the speech and audience reaction in today’s edition, “At least five members of the audience walked out.”)
When we meditate on the person of Jesus, we often call to mind the many ways that Jesus cared for people. In all the many instances in the gospel when people come to the Lord Jesus with their needs, he fed them, he healed them, he forgave them, and he saved them. This can oftentimes lead us to the conclusion that Jesus always said “yes.” He always gave people what they wanted. He was an agreeable person.
That is not always the case in the gospel. A couple of weeks ago, we heard in Sunday’s gospel the story of a difficult encounter between Jesus and Simon Peter. In the sixteenth chapter of Matthew chosen for the Twenty-second Sunday of the Year, Jesus begins to lay out for his disciples the pending passion and death that awaits him in Jerusalem. Simon Peter is a little put off by the subject of Jesus’ conversation concerning the suffering that awaits him. He tries to persuade the Lord that this is not a good idea for him or for his followers. What Jesus described was not the cruise for which Simon Peter had signed up. When Simon Peter first responded to the Lord’s invitation to come follow him, this was not on the itinerary.
Jesus says “no” to his friend, Simon Peter, in no uncertain terms, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” The words of Jesus to Peter must have shocked Peter. This is not the agreeable guy he had come to know and follow. He probably felt like prophet Jeremiah who in the first reading that same Sunday said quite bluntly, “You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped.”
Jesus says “no” to Peter’s request so that he can say “yes” to Peter and to us with his sacrifice on the cross. Jesus does not give in to the expectations of Peter or the expectations of others. He has firmly planted in his heart the expectations and desires of his Father in heaven. He says “no” to Peter and challenges Peter to take up a greater “yes,” to take up his cross and follow him.
Paul had the same thing in mind when in the Letter to the Romans he says, “Do not conform yourselves to this age.” Paul reminds us that we are not to conform ourselves to the fads and fancies of our society. We are to conform ourselves to Christ.
We can easily give in to the temptation to go along in order to get along. We can easily be duped by the popular ideas and trends that surround us. “Everybody does it” can become reason enough to think it or do it ourselves. Like Peter we can think that what Jesus teaches us is too unrealistic, too unreasonable. Like Peter we can convince ourselves that we know better than the Lord. We may even try to negotiate with Jesus, like Peter does, for easier terms.
We see this especially in the area of sexuality. So much of what we see and hear every day can lead us to a distorted sense of our sexuality. Sexuality has been reduced to a matter of personal preference and personal pleasure without responsibility and with little respect for others. We can lose sight of the profound dignity of the human person who shares in God’s love and creative work through the chaste expression of one’s sexuality proper to one’s calling in life.
We are surrounded by a “contraceptive culture” that has reduced the procreative act to simple recreation absolved of any responsibility.
The deceptive language of “pro-choice” ignores the consequences of the choice for abortion that does violence to the most innocent and leaves traumatic scars on many young women.
What is a particular concern and alarm for us in California as well as others across the country is the bold judicial challenge to the longstanding cultural and moral understanding of marriage as a sacred covenant between a woman and a man. Our own efforts to restore common sense through the ballot initiative, Proposition 8, are portrayed as bigoted and out-of-touch. The irony is that what we propose is most in touch with the nature of families and what is good for the welfare of all.
That we find ourselves at this time, reasserting the basic moral and reasonable understanding of marriage, means that much has changed in the popular perceptions of sexuality and common notions about marriage. While we work to pass Proposition 8 this coming November, it is important to remember why we do this. Like Jesus, in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew that I cited, we are saying a strong “no” to the California courts and to many who support the court’s wrong-headed decision. This “no” is not rooted in bigotry or bias. It is firmly rooted in a greater “yes” to a truer, more authentic appreciation of love’s calling and love’s design for the human heart.
The nature of love has been distorted. Many popular notions have deviated from its true destiny. Love for many has come to mean having sex. If you cannot have sex than you cannot love. This is the message. Even more destructive is the prevailing notion that sex is not an expression of love. Sex is love. This reductio ad absurdam deprives sexuality of its true meaning and robs the human person of the possibility of ever knowing real love.
Sexual intercourse is a beautiful expression of love, but this is so when intercourse is understood as a unique expression intended to share in the creative, faithful love of God. As the Holy Father, Pope Benedict, elaborated in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, “Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love” – between a man and woman – “becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love.” (DCE, n. 11) Sexual intercourse within the context of the marriage covenant becomes a beautiful icon – a sacrament – of God’s creative, unifying love. When sexual intercourse is taken out of this iconic, sacramental context of the complementary, procreative covenant between a man and a woman it becomes impoverished and it demeans the human person.
Sexual intercourse between a man and a woman in the covenant of Marriage is one expression of love to which the human person can aspire, but we are all called to love. It is part of our human nature to love. We all have a desire to love, but this love can deviate from its true calling when it exalts only in the pleasure of the body. Pope Benedict said in the same encyclical, “The contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure ‘sex,’ has become a commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great ‘yes’ to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will.” (DCE, n. 5) This is not our true calling. The human desire to love must lead us to the divine. Looking again to the Holy Father’s encyclical, he says, “True, eros – human desire – tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” (DCE, n. 5)
This path is the path of chastity. This is very true in marriage. It is also true in all of human life because it is the nature of all authentic love. We are all called to love. We are all called to be loved. This can only happen when we choose to love in the manner that God has called us to live. Love leads us to ecstasy, not as a moment of intoxication but rather as a journey, “an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it’ (Lk 17:33).” (DCE n. 6)
Sexuality, then, as part of our human nature only dignifies and liberates us when we begin to love in harmony with God’s love and God’s wisdom for us. Chastity as a virtue is the path that brings us to that harmony with God’s wisdom and love. Chastity moves us beyond one’s desire to what God wills for each one of us. Chastity is love’s journey on the path of “ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” Chastity is the understanding that it is not all about me or about us. We act always under God’s gaze. Desire tempered and tested by “renunciation, purification, and healing” can lead us to God’s design.
This is true for all of us. It is also true for men and women who are homosexual. We are called to live and love in a manner that brings us into respectful, chaste relationships with one another and an intimate relationship with God. We should be an instrument of God’s love for one another. Let me be clear here. Sexual intercourse, outside of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman, can be alluring and intoxicating but it will not lead to that liberating journey of true self-discovery and an authentic discovery of God. For that reason, it is sinful. Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all. For this reason, it is sinful.
Married love is a beautiful, heroic expression of faithful, life-giving, life-creating love. It should not be accommodated and manipulated for those who would believe that they can and have a right to mimic its unique expression.
Marriage is also not the sole domain of love as some of the politics would seem to imply. Love is lived and celebrated in so many ways that can lead to a wholesome, earnest, and religious life: the deep and chaste love of committed friends, the untiring love of committed religious and clergy, the profound and charitable bonds among the members of a Christian community, enduring, forgiving, and supportive love among family members. Should we dismiss or demean the human and spiritual significance of these lives given in love?
This is a hard message today. It is the still the right message. It will unsettle and disturb many of our brothers and sisters, just as Peter was unsettled and put off by the stern rebuke of his master and good friend, the Lord Jesus. If the story of Peter’s relationship with Jesus had begun and ended there, it would have been a sad tale indeed, but that is not the whole story then nor is it the whole story now. Jesus met Simon Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. He said with great love and fondness, “Come, follow me.” Peter would not only continue to follow the Lord Jesus to Jerusalem. Despite his many failings and foibles, he would eventually choose to love as Jesus loved him. He would die as martyr’s death in Rome, giving himself completely for the one who loved him so dearly.
The teaching of the Church regarding the sacred dignity of human sexuality is not a rebuke but an invitation to love as God loves us. The Church’s firm support of Proposition 8 is not a rebuke against homosexuals but a heartfelt affirmation of the nature of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman. We hope and pray that all people, including our brothers and sisters who are homosexuals, will see the reasonableness of our position and the sincerity of our love for them.
For that reason, we should let the words of St. Paul haunt us and unsettle us: “Do not conform yourself to this age.” In so many ways we can allow ourselves to be duped, fooled, by the fads and trends of this age. It is far better that we allow ourselves to be drawn into the ways and the manners of Jesus. The Lord Jesus challenges us as he challenged his friend, Simon Peter, to not conform to what is fashionable and convenient. He has so much more to offer us. Do not think as others do. Let us think as God does. He shows us the way, the truth, and the life.
Last night we went to the Olive Garden and got a seat in the little bar area, because then we could get going and not wait in line forever. Our waiter made one mean Mai Tai, and it was lovely. He had been a bartender, so he took it upon himself to do our drinks for us. He was also what we call "flamin'", meaning overtly and extremely obviously gay, in both dress and hand waving. :)
He was also a very, very good waiter and we enjoyed him. He says he would love to go into social work with youth and get a master's in Social Work, but right now it's good to make money at the Olive Garden. I have to agree with him, there. I do shudder that Seattle U. is where he wants to go, but it's liberal reputation didn't come from nowhere. If you are a conservative Catholic, don't even think about going there unless you really love a good fight and don't intend to major in anything Catholic. I guess it has a good law school, so it might be good for that.
In any case, I tipped him well, better than usual, because I'm tipping him for the great service we got, not his attitude or general appearance. He was a truly exceptional waiter. And I can separate the two.
I have read in a few places that there are many, many gay folks who would like very much to live nice, normal lives next door to hetero couples, but they are embarrassed by the actions of a few, the kind who love to show off their antics in big parades and make absolute spectacles of themselves. The kind who cannot tolerate people different from themselves when they, in fact, accuse conservatives of the same. That is downright annoying. It is annoying in any of the political touchpoints of today. The attitude that bothers me the most is, "If you think like that, then you aren't enlightened enough to speak to or be treated as an intelligent human being. You are only worth my while if you think like me, because you are "tolerant" if you think just like me."
Does anyone see that that is total irony? It's not even slightly logical. Tolerance does include polite conversations with conservatives, too.
Anyway, here is an article that was published today. In CA, there is a marriage amendment being voted on, making marriage only between men and women. It appears to be failing, but we shall see.
I found this at http://culbreath.wordpress.com/ Thanks, Jeff!
Published: September 26, 2008
“At least five members of the audience walked out”
Bishop Soto stuns national homosexual ministries conference
(Editor’s Note: For the complete text of the bishop’s speech, see related story in today’s edition, “It is sinful.”)
When two Catholics from Southern California learned that Sacramento Coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto was to be the keynote speaker at the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries conference in Long Beach on Sept. 18, they decided to attend themselves to see and hear the talk in person. They say what they witnessed was a bishop who “courageously but gently” gave a clear presentation of Church teaching on sexuality.
[[Soto092608.jpg]]After California Catholic Daily reported on Bishop Soto’s plans to attend and speak at the conference (“Birds of a feather?” Sept. 15, 2008), many readers expressed disapproval or worry over how to interpret the soon-to-be Bishop of Sacramento’s decision. Bishop Soto will take over the diocese from retiring Bishop William Weigand on Nov. 30. The National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries, based in Berkeley, is a network of local ministries that has the reputation of taking, at best, an ambiguous stance on the moral character of homosexuality and homosexual acts.
But there was noting ambiguous about Bishop Soto’s remarks to the group. “Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals, but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all,” Bishop Soto said. “For this reason, it is sinful. Married love is a beautiful, heroic expression of faithful, life-giving, life-creating love. It should not be accommodated and manipulated for those who would believe that they can and have a right to mimic its unique expression."
At least five members of the audience walked out during the bishop’s address. When he finished speaking, there was general silence -- with only a very small number applauding.
The chairman of the conference then announced that the bishop would answer questions at a reception that would be held in another room. That led to widespread expressions of disapproval from members of the audience, who said they wanted to be able to express their responses immediately. It was agreed that those who wanted to speak would line up. The bishop was told twice by the chairman that he was free to leave if he wanted -- or to stay and listen. Bishop Soto stayed and sat quietly listening to every response.
A series of about eight speakers came to the microphone to express their unhappiness with what the bishop had said -- and what they felt he had not said. One woman said, in essence, "We know what the Church says. What we wanted you to talk about is the value of our lived experience as lesbian women and gay men."
Two speakers -- one man and one woman -- thanked the bishop for his address and voiced their agreement with what he had to say.
While the audience members were responding to the bishop’s remarks, a board member of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries came up to one of the tables in the room and said, "On behalf of the board, I apologize. We had no idea Bishop Soto was going to say what he said."
© California Catholic Daily 2008. All Rights Reserved.
Article URL: http://calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=cbbf34a9-d1cd-49a4-ab61-4cf77f14e121
And here is the actual speech. It covers more ground than just gays in the Church. I think people need to remember he is not "imposing his views on the rest of us". He is a Catholic leader teaching CATHOLICS at this conference. He was not speaking at the state capitol. A lot of people seem to miss that bishops are there to teach Catholics, not everyone else, but it's for everyone else if they want to listen, too.
Published: September 26, 2008
“It is sinful”
Text of Bishop Jaime Soto’s address to National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries
(Editor’s Note: Below is a transcript of Bishop Jaime Soto’s keynote speech to the National Association of Diocesan Gay and Lesbian Ministries meeting in Long Beach on Sept. 18 as published on the web site of the Diocese of Sacramento. See a firsthand account of the speech and audience reaction in today’s edition, “At least five members of the audience walked out.”)
When we meditate on the person of Jesus, we often call to mind the many ways that Jesus cared for people. In all the many instances in the gospel when people come to the Lord Jesus with their needs, he fed them, he healed them, he forgave them, and he saved them. This can oftentimes lead us to the conclusion that Jesus always said “yes.” He always gave people what they wanted. He was an agreeable person.
That is not always the case in the gospel. A couple of weeks ago, we heard in Sunday’s gospel the story of a difficult encounter between Jesus and Simon Peter. In the sixteenth chapter of Matthew chosen for the Twenty-second Sunday of the Year, Jesus begins to lay out for his disciples the pending passion and death that awaits him in Jerusalem. Simon Peter is a little put off by the subject of Jesus’ conversation concerning the suffering that awaits him. He tries to persuade the Lord that this is not a good idea for him or for his followers. What Jesus described was not the cruise for which Simon Peter had signed up. When Simon Peter first responded to the Lord’s invitation to come follow him, this was not on the itinerary.
Jesus says “no” to his friend, Simon Peter, in no uncertain terms, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” The words of Jesus to Peter must have shocked Peter. This is not the agreeable guy he had come to know and follow. He probably felt like prophet Jeremiah who in the first reading that same Sunday said quite bluntly, “You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped.”
Jesus says “no” to Peter’s request so that he can say “yes” to Peter and to us with his sacrifice on the cross. Jesus does not give in to the expectations of Peter or the expectations of others. He has firmly planted in his heart the expectations and desires of his Father in heaven. He says “no” to Peter and challenges Peter to take up a greater “yes,” to take up his cross and follow him.
Paul had the same thing in mind when in the Letter to the Romans he says, “Do not conform yourselves to this age.” Paul reminds us that we are not to conform ourselves to the fads and fancies of our society. We are to conform ourselves to Christ.
We can easily give in to the temptation to go along in order to get along. We can easily be duped by the popular ideas and trends that surround us. “Everybody does it” can become reason enough to think it or do it ourselves. Like Peter we can think that what Jesus teaches us is too unrealistic, too unreasonable. Like Peter we can convince ourselves that we know better than the Lord. We may even try to negotiate with Jesus, like Peter does, for easier terms.
We see this especially in the area of sexuality. So much of what we see and hear every day can lead us to a distorted sense of our sexuality. Sexuality has been reduced to a matter of personal preference and personal pleasure without responsibility and with little respect for others. We can lose sight of the profound dignity of the human person who shares in God’s love and creative work through the chaste expression of one’s sexuality proper to one’s calling in life.
We are surrounded by a “contraceptive culture” that has reduced the procreative act to simple recreation absolved of any responsibility.
The deceptive language of “pro-choice” ignores the consequences of the choice for abortion that does violence to the most innocent and leaves traumatic scars on many young women.
What is a particular concern and alarm for us in California as well as others across the country is the bold judicial challenge to the longstanding cultural and moral understanding of marriage as a sacred covenant between a woman and a man. Our own efforts to restore common sense through the ballot initiative, Proposition 8, are portrayed as bigoted and out-of-touch. The irony is that what we propose is most in touch with the nature of families and what is good for the welfare of all.
That we find ourselves at this time, reasserting the basic moral and reasonable understanding of marriage, means that much has changed in the popular perceptions of sexuality and common notions about marriage. While we work to pass Proposition 8 this coming November, it is important to remember why we do this. Like Jesus, in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew that I cited, we are saying a strong “no” to the California courts and to many who support the court’s wrong-headed decision. This “no” is not rooted in bigotry or bias. It is firmly rooted in a greater “yes” to a truer, more authentic appreciation of love’s calling and love’s design for the human heart.
The nature of love has been distorted. Many popular notions have deviated from its true destiny. Love for many has come to mean having sex. If you cannot have sex than you cannot love. This is the message. Even more destructive is the prevailing notion that sex is not an expression of love. Sex is love. This reductio ad absurdam deprives sexuality of its true meaning and robs the human person of the possibility of ever knowing real love.
Sexual intercourse is a beautiful expression of love, but this is so when intercourse is understood as a unique expression intended to share in the creative, faithful love of God. As the Holy Father, Pope Benedict, elaborated in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, “Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love” – between a man and woman – “becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love.” (DCE, n. 11) Sexual intercourse within the context of the marriage covenant becomes a beautiful icon – a sacrament – of God’s creative, unifying love. When sexual intercourse is taken out of this iconic, sacramental context of the complementary, procreative covenant between a man and a woman it becomes impoverished and it demeans the human person.
Sexual intercourse between a man and a woman in the covenant of Marriage is one expression of love to which the human person can aspire, but we are all called to love. It is part of our human nature to love. We all have a desire to love, but this love can deviate from its true calling when it exalts only in the pleasure of the body. Pope Benedict said in the same encyclical, “The contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure ‘sex,’ has become a commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great ‘yes’ to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will.” (DCE, n. 5) This is not our true calling. The human desire to love must lead us to the divine. Looking again to the Holy Father’s encyclical, he says, “True, eros – human desire – tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” (DCE, n. 5)
This path is the path of chastity. This is very true in marriage. It is also true in all of human life because it is the nature of all authentic love. We are all called to love. We are all called to be loved. This can only happen when we choose to love in the manner that God has called us to live. Love leads us to ecstasy, not as a moment of intoxication but rather as a journey, “an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it’ (Lk 17:33).” (DCE n. 6)
Sexuality, then, as part of our human nature only dignifies and liberates us when we begin to love in harmony with God’s love and God’s wisdom for us. Chastity as a virtue is the path that brings us to that harmony with God’s wisdom and love. Chastity moves us beyond one’s desire to what God wills for each one of us. Chastity is love’s journey on the path of “ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” Chastity is the understanding that it is not all about me or about us. We act always under God’s gaze. Desire tempered and tested by “renunciation, purification, and healing” can lead us to God’s design.
This is true for all of us. It is also true for men and women who are homosexual. We are called to live and love in a manner that brings us into respectful, chaste relationships with one another and an intimate relationship with God. We should be an instrument of God’s love for one another. Let me be clear here. Sexual intercourse, outside of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman, can be alluring and intoxicating but it will not lead to that liberating journey of true self-discovery and an authentic discovery of God. For that reason, it is sinful. Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all. For this reason, it is sinful.
Married love is a beautiful, heroic expression of faithful, life-giving, life-creating love. It should not be accommodated and manipulated for those who would believe that they can and have a right to mimic its unique expression.
Marriage is also not the sole domain of love as some of the politics would seem to imply. Love is lived and celebrated in so many ways that can lead to a wholesome, earnest, and religious life: the deep and chaste love of committed friends, the untiring love of committed religious and clergy, the profound and charitable bonds among the members of a Christian community, enduring, forgiving, and supportive love among family members. Should we dismiss or demean the human and spiritual significance of these lives given in love?
This is a hard message today. It is the still the right message. It will unsettle and disturb many of our brothers and sisters, just as Peter was unsettled and put off by the stern rebuke of his master and good friend, the Lord Jesus. If the story of Peter’s relationship with Jesus had begun and ended there, it would have been a sad tale indeed, but that is not the whole story then nor is it the whole story now. Jesus met Simon Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. He said with great love and fondness, “Come, follow me.” Peter would not only continue to follow the Lord Jesus to Jerusalem. Despite his many failings and foibles, he would eventually choose to love as Jesus loved him. He would die as martyr’s death in Rome, giving himself completely for the one who loved him so dearly.
The teaching of the Church regarding the sacred dignity of human sexuality is not a rebuke but an invitation to love as God loves us. The Church’s firm support of Proposition 8 is not a rebuke against homosexuals but a heartfelt affirmation of the nature of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman. We hope and pray that all people, including our brothers and sisters who are homosexuals, will see the reasonableness of our position and the sincerity of our love for them.
For that reason, we should let the words of St. Paul haunt us and unsettle us: “Do not conform yourself to this age.” In so many ways we can allow ourselves to be duped, fooled, by the fads and trends of this age. It is far better that we allow ourselves to be drawn into the ways and the manners of Jesus. The Lord Jesus challenges us as he challenged his friend, Simon Peter, to not conform to what is fashionable and convenient. He has so much more to offer us. Do not think as others do. Let us think as God does. He shows us the way, the truth, and the life.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
"Bella" actor speaks up
Check it out on YouTube! The video is there. Think he's crazy? Then you should look up what Margaret Sanger wanted to do when she founded Planned Parenthood -- Get rid of the poor and minorities, they are useless anyway.
I don't make this stuff up.
Famous Mexican actor rips Obama over abortion, warns U.S. Latinos
Los Angeles, Sep 24, 2008 / 04:34 pm (CNA).- The movie star Eduardo Verástegui has recorded a special video message to encourage Hispanic voters in the U.S. to put an end to abortion and to expose the radical abortion position of presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Verástegui, who is perhaps best known in the U.S. for his pro-life film "Bella," presents his challenge to Latino voters by calling attention to the fact that most abortion clinics are located in Hispanic neighborhoods and that the Spanish media is saturated with pro-abortion advertising.
“Abortion is not only a lucrative industry; it is also used by people who are racist as a means to eliminate our people, since they consider us to be a threat to democracy in this country,” Verástegui asserts.
After noting that more than 3,000 babies are aborted each day in the U.S. and that 650 of those babies are Hispanic, the actor states that abortion is legal “because there are not enough men and women who raise their voice against abortion.”
“We need to put an end to abortion and political candidates play a very important role in this matter,” he continued, pointing out that Obama supports abortions performed during the last trimester of pregnancy, inhuman partial birth abortion,” and that Obama “wants to finance abortions with the tax dollars you and I pay.”
As a lawmaker, Obama “voted on several occasions against a law to protect babies who survived an abortion and were born alive,” Verástegui states.
“Obama is committed to removing all the pro-life laws that in many states currently offer protection to unborn babies and their mothers. Mr. Obama does not agree that the parents of a 13 year-old girl who is pregnant should be notified before she has an abortion,” the actor underscored.
“Obama is more interested in maintaining the legality of abortion that in the well-being of the babies, children and families of this country. Let us unite and do something to defend life at every stage, from conception to natural death,” he says.
Verástegui's message about Obama is punctuated by clips from the video “The Hard Truth,” which shows graphic images from real abortions. The Mexican actor explains that just as teachers in schools show videos of the Holocaust to expose the truth about the atrocities committed by the Nazis, he too is including the video to show the horror of abortion.
I don't make this stuff up.
Famous Mexican actor rips Obama over abortion, warns U.S. Latinos
Los Angeles, Sep 24, 2008 / 04:34 pm (CNA).- The movie star Eduardo Verástegui has recorded a special video message to encourage Hispanic voters in the U.S. to put an end to abortion and to expose the radical abortion position of presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Verástegui, who is perhaps best known in the U.S. for his pro-life film "Bella," presents his challenge to Latino voters by calling attention to the fact that most abortion clinics are located in Hispanic neighborhoods and that the Spanish media is saturated with pro-abortion advertising.
“Abortion is not only a lucrative industry; it is also used by people who are racist as a means to eliminate our people, since they consider us to be a threat to democracy in this country,” Verástegui asserts.
After noting that more than 3,000 babies are aborted each day in the U.S. and that 650 of those babies are Hispanic, the actor states that abortion is legal “because there are not enough men and women who raise their voice against abortion.”
“We need to put an end to abortion and political candidates play a very important role in this matter,” he continued, pointing out that Obama supports abortions performed during the last trimester of pregnancy, inhuman partial birth abortion,” and that Obama “wants to finance abortions with the tax dollars you and I pay.”
As a lawmaker, Obama “voted on several occasions against a law to protect babies who survived an abortion and were born alive,” Verástegui states.
“Obama is committed to removing all the pro-life laws that in many states currently offer protection to unborn babies and their mothers. Mr. Obama does not agree that the parents of a 13 year-old girl who is pregnant should be notified before she has an abortion,” the actor underscored.
“Obama is more interested in maintaining the legality of abortion that in the well-being of the babies, children and families of this country. Let us unite and do something to defend life at every stage, from conception to natural death,” he says.
Verástegui's message about Obama is punctuated by clips from the video “The Hard Truth,” which shows graphic images from real abortions. The Mexican actor explains that just as teachers in schools show videos of the Holocaust to expose the truth about the atrocities committed by the Nazis, he too is including the video to show the horror of abortion.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Please thank Joel
Hello All,
This was printed recently, and it has come to my attention that because this man stood up for pro-life Catholics in particular, saying that Catholic bashing was ok, but all other bashing was not, he has recieved quite a bashing of his own. He's Episcopalian. I'd like to have as many people thank him as possible.
Thank you, Joel!
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/379962_Joel22.html
Supporters of assisted suicide bait Catholics
Monday, September 22, 2008
Last updated 12:14 a.m. PT
By JOEL CONNELLY
P-I COLUMNIST
IN AN AMERICA where any remark hinting of prejudice can force its maker into endless mea culpas, the mocking of a world religious leader ought to invite political suicide.
But one religion, the Catholic Church, seems to be exempt -- at least by some advocates of Initiative 1000, which would legalize physician-assisted suicide.
Pope Benedict XVI took an anti-euthanasia message to Lourdes last week, saying, "A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering is a cruel and inhumane society."
"Dignity never abandons the sick person," he declared, adding that people must accept death at "the hour chosen by God."
The communications director for I-1000 promptly sent political bloggers a memo titled "Pope Keeps God on Schedule, Auto-Dial." It read:
"The Pope does not go into detail about God's appointment book, although many doctors note that God is, in fact, kept waiting past the chosen hour (rather like we are kept waiting at the doctor's office) due to medical interventions that artificially extend life (but do not end suffering). Perhaps God is running late."
She was doubtless trying to be snarky. But the note demeans fundamental questions raised in the pope's speech, which will face Washington voters when they fill out their ballots.
The protection of life, by law, is a basic principle of democratic societies. Central to our definition of its value is the prohibition against killing innocent people. What circumstances, if any, merit loosening that prohibition? What does that say to (and about) a society?
While it doesn't carry the full stench of bigotry, I-1000 campaigners are dispensing noxious stuff, at least to a chosen few of the secular faithful.
And the "Catholic card" has been played, astutely, in a way reminiscent of the misdirection plays that Lou Holtz perfected coaching at Notre Dame. The goal: Create confusion as to who has the ball.
The pro-1000 campaign sent out a release last month making a big deal that Catholic dioceses and archdioceses had donated $132,650 in the previous eight days to the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide.
The initiative's amen corner -- at least as represented by two radio stations I listened to -- reported that the Catholic Church was "pouring money" into the anti-I-1000 campaign.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt used to say in his campaigns, let's look at the facts.
The Coalition Against Assisted Suicide had raised $508,952 as of Friday. Of that total, $221,414 had come from Catholic dioceses, parishes, health organizations and the Knights of Columbus. Add $500 from the retired Archbishop of Detroit.
By contrast, just one wealthy donor, former Gov. Booth Gardner, has given $170,000 to the Yes on 1000 Committee.
Oregon Death with Dignity gave $300,000 to seed the pro-1000 campaign. Various Compassion & Choices groups, mainly headquartered in Denver, have donated $265,000.
Other out-of-state donors have included the Hemlock Society and Euthanasia Research.
All told, the Yes on 1000 Committee has raised $1.906 million. It is a Goliath to opponents' David.
"The five out-of-state dioceses and archdioceses who are currently funding the campaign against I-1000 have been plagued with lawsuits and allegations of child abuse," reads the pro-I-1000 release.
The statement is a direct appeal to overt and/or latent anti-Catholicism. The abuse cases are being settled. Money has not been taken from settlements to fight assisted suicide.
In fact, let's turn the argument on its ear.
The Catholic Church supports Washington's largest private health care system. It provides the state's largest private education system. It underwrites our largest private hospice.
Non-Catholic parents send their kids to inner-city parochial grammar schools because they get an education in values. The church provides hospice care to dying patients who cannot pay, or when insurance runs out.
As well, the church has been accused of trying to "force" its values on other people.
Catholics are at most 13 percent of the population in this "unchurched" state.
In the current campaign, said Sister Sharon Park of the Washington State Catholic Conference, "the church is mostly working within the church. Our duty is to educate our people."
Existing state law prohibits assisted suicide. Isn't it accurate, then, to say that Gardner, Compassion & Choices, the Hemlock Society and Euthanasia Research are trying to impose THEIR values on the rest of us?
"Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals," Yale professor Peter Viereck famously opined.
Sadly, there seems to be some truth in the statement. Racism has vanished from the nation's political vocabulary. Sexism is isolated to a few boorish right-wing pundits. Homophobia is clearly on the way out.
Anti-Catholicism survives: It lives despite the church's defense of immigrants, opposition to the death penalty, and giant peace marches that have wound through Seattle streets to St. James Cathedral.
We all have values. It is flat-out wrong to demean the values of a particular faith or exclude them from the public square.
Wasn't the civil rights movement a case of religious values moving and improving a nation?
P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com. Follow politics on the P-I's blog at blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics.
© 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
This was printed recently, and it has come to my attention that because this man stood up for pro-life Catholics in particular, saying that Catholic bashing was ok, but all other bashing was not, he has recieved quite a bashing of his own. He's Episcopalian. I'd like to have as many people thank him as possible.
Thank you, Joel!
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/379962_Joel22.html
Supporters of assisted suicide bait Catholics
Monday, September 22, 2008
Last updated 12:14 a.m. PT
By JOEL CONNELLY
P-I COLUMNIST
IN AN AMERICA where any remark hinting of prejudice can force its maker into endless mea culpas, the mocking of a world religious leader ought to invite political suicide.
But one religion, the Catholic Church, seems to be exempt -- at least by some advocates of Initiative 1000, which would legalize physician-assisted suicide.
Pope Benedict XVI took an anti-euthanasia message to Lourdes last week, saying, "A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering is a cruel and inhumane society."
"Dignity never abandons the sick person," he declared, adding that people must accept death at "the hour chosen by God."
The communications director for I-1000 promptly sent political bloggers a memo titled "Pope Keeps God on Schedule, Auto-Dial." It read:
"The Pope does not go into detail about God's appointment book, although many doctors note that God is, in fact, kept waiting past the chosen hour (rather like we are kept waiting at the doctor's office) due to medical interventions that artificially extend life (but do not end suffering). Perhaps God is running late."
She was doubtless trying to be snarky. But the note demeans fundamental questions raised in the pope's speech, which will face Washington voters when they fill out their ballots.
The protection of life, by law, is a basic principle of democratic societies. Central to our definition of its value is the prohibition against killing innocent people. What circumstances, if any, merit loosening that prohibition? What does that say to (and about) a society?
While it doesn't carry the full stench of bigotry, I-1000 campaigners are dispensing noxious stuff, at least to a chosen few of the secular faithful.
And the "Catholic card" has been played, astutely, in a way reminiscent of the misdirection plays that Lou Holtz perfected coaching at Notre Dame. The goal: Create confusion as to who has the ball.
The pro-1000 campaign sent out a release last month making a big deal that Catholic dioceses and archdioceses had donated $132,650 in the previous eight days to the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide.
The initiative's amen corner -- at least as represented by two radio stations I listened to -- reported that the Catholic Church was "pouring money" into the anti-I-1000 campaign.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt used to say in his campaigns, let's look at the facts.
The Coalition Against Assisted Suicide had raised $508,952 as of Friday. Of that total, $221,414 had come from Catholic dioceses, parishes, health organizations and the Knights of Columbus. Add $500 from the retired Archbishop of Detroit.
By contrast, just one wealthy donor, former Gov. Booth Gardner, has given $170,000 to the Yes on 1000 Committee.
Oregon Death with Dignity gave $300,000 to seed the pro-1000 campaign. Various Compassion & Choices groups, mainly headquartered in Denver, have donated $265,000.
Other out-of-state donors have included the Hemlock Society and Euthanasia Research.
All told, the Yes on 1000 Committee has raised $1.906 million. It is a Goliath to opponents' David.
"The five out-of-state dioceses and archdioceses who are currently funding the campaign against I-1000 have been plagued with lawsuits and allegations of child abuse," reads the pro-I-1000 release.
The statement is a direct appeal to overt and/or latent anti-Catholicism. The abuse cases are being settled. Money has not been taken from settlements to fight assisted suicide.
In fact, let's turn the argument on its ear.
The Catholic Church supports Washington's largest private health care system. It provides the state's largest private education system. It underwrites our largest private hospice.
Non-Catholic parents send their kids to inner-city parochial grammar schools because they get an education in values. The church provides hospice care to dying patients who cannot pay, or when insurance runs out.
As well, the church has been accused of trying to "force" its values on other people.
Catholics are at most 13 percent of the population in this "unchurched" state.
In the current campaign, said Sister Sharon Park of the Washington State Catholic Conference, "the church is mostly working within the church. Our duty is to educate our people."
Existing state law prohibits assisted suicide. Isn't it accurate, then, to say that Gardner, Compassion & Choices, the Hemlock Society and Euthanasia Research are trying to impose THEIR values on the rest of us?
"Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals," Yale professor Peter Viereck famously opined.
Sadly, there seems to be some truth in the statement. Racism has vanished from the nation's political vocabulary. Sexism is isolated to a few boorish right-wing pundits. Homophobia is clearly on the way out.
Anti-Catholicism survives: It lives despite the church's defense of immigrants, opposition to the death penalty, and giant peace marches that have wound through Seattle streets to St. James Cathedral.
We all have values. It is flat-out wrong to demean the values of a particular faith or exclude them from the public square.
Wasn't the civil rights movement a case of religious values moving and improving a nation?
P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com. Follow politics on the P-I's blog at blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics.
© 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
My friend needs prayers for her cancer
Dear Friends,
The following entry is from my friend Jennifer's Caringbridge website. It is as I had feared, since she's been in stage 3 or 4 cancer since 2002. She got married about two years ago, I think, to a wonderful guy. She lives in Santa Clara or thereabouts. I am very sad to read this, but I hope that prayers may prevail. I am hopeful that her example will inspire others. Jennifer (Wagner) Estes and I went to GU together and lived in the same hall her freshman year.
Prayers!
This is the most difficult journal entry I will have to write thus far. I apologize if it has been a long time since my last entry, but it has been very difficult for me since I started chemo to sit down and concentrate.
I started chemo on 9/16 and completed a total of 4 days. It was extremely difficult as each day passed because I had to get out of bed, shower, get dressed and travel the distance from my house to Stanford and back. These little tasks we take for granted were 10 times more difficult for me due to pain, nausea, etc. I am glad it only lasted 4 days. I went in on Saturday for a white/red cell booster shot.
It will take 7-10 days from my last day of chemo (9/19) to feel better; however, my pain has worsened. We went to see my oncologist this last Monday (9/22) for a long discussion/check-up. What he basically told me was that he does not think the chemo will work as fast as the tumor growth. Having to increase medication to treat symptoms such as pain, nausea, vomiting, etc. is not a good sign. The other components of the biochemo treatment he does not feel my body can withstand.
I point-blank asked my oncologist if I was dying . . . and he said yes. These next 2 weeks will only tell us if another round of chemo is necessary depending on my recovery from their side effects from the first round. He does not think it will work, but stays hopeful, as I do.
I am starting to think about how much time I may have left. That was another question I had for him and he said it could weeks, months, longer - we do not know. So my goal is to rest and feel better and start having some fun while making arrangements. When the time comes, we will have hospice help.
I am sorry to have to tell all of you this news in an impersonal way, but having this relentless discussion is depressing, tiring and time-comsuming because people have so many questions. I don't mind questions, but I want to get the initial news out of the way. If you want to come and visit for a bit, we have some people who have mentioned wanting to come by starting next week (not Tuesday), so call Peter's cell if you want to come by (408-421-3925).
Thanks for your continued support and we love you all ~ Jennifer:)
The following entry is from my friend Jennifer's Caringbridge website. It is as I had feared, since she's been in stage 3 or 4 cancer since 2002. She got married about two years ago, I think, to a wonderful guy. She lives in Santa Clara or thereabouts. I am very sad to read this, but I hope that prayers may prevail. I am hopeful that her example will inspire others. Jennifer (Wagner) Estes and I went to GU together and lived in the same hall her freshman year.
Prayers!
This is the most difficult journal entry I will have to write thus far. I apologize if it has been a long time since my last entry, but it has been very difficult for me since I started chemo to sit down and concentrate.
I started chemo on 9/16 and completed a total of 4 days. It was extremely difficult as each day passed because I had to get out of bed, shower, get dressed and travel the distance from my house to Stanford and back. These little tasks we take for granted were 10 times more difficult for me due to pain, nausea, etc. I am glad it only lasted 4 days. I went in on Saturday for a white/red cell booster shot.
It will take 7-10 days from my last day of chemo (9/19) to feel better; however, my pain has worsened. We went to see my oncologist this last Monday (9/22) for a long discussion/check-up. What he basically told me was that he does not think the chemo will work as fast as the tumor growth. Having to increase medication to treat symptoms such as pain, nausea, vomiting, etc. is not a good sign. The other components of the biochemo treatment he does not feel my body can withstand.
I point-blank asked my oncologist if I was dying . . . and he said yes. These next 2 weeks will only tell us if another round of chemo is necessary depending on my recovery from their side effects from the first round. He does not think it will work, but stays hopeful, as I do.
I am starting to think about how much time I may have left. That was another question I had for him and he said it could weeks, months, longer - we do not know. So my goal is to rest and feel better and start having some fun while making arrangements. When the time comes, we will have hospice help.
I am sorry to have to tell all of you this news in an impersonal way, but having this relentless discussion is depressing, tiring and time-comsuming because people have so many questions. I don't mind questions, but I want to get the initial news out of the way. If you want to come and visit for a bit, we have some people who have mentioned wanting to come by starting next week (not Tuesday), so call Peter's cell if you want to come by (408-421-3925).
Thanks for your continued support and we love you all ~ Jennifer:)
Why a bail out is a little scary
I know that if the Congress doesn't pass the bail out plan, everyone will get mad. And if they do, everyone else will get mad.
Either way, I'd say it's time to dig a root cellar and brush up on your Little House on the Prairie skills.
And invest in gold if you can afford it.
Meanwhile, I think this is a good explanation of what is going on. I'd love to hear other people's takes on the financial crisis, esp. after reading this.
September 24, 2008, 9:00 a.m.
Socialism in the Treasury Chest
Question period.
By Mark Hemingway
If you believe that the best way to handle the current economic crisis is hurling gobsmackingly large amounts of money at it, all to be used at the discretion of the Treasury secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you may well be an idiot. That’s according to a rule of thumb devised by famed investor Warren Buffett.
Back in July, Brian Carney interviewed Ted Forstmann in the Wall Street Journal. The reason for the interview was that in 1988 Forstmann wrote an uncannily prescient oped for the Journal warning that the junk-bond craze was going to end badly. Well, just a few months ago in July, Forstmann once again took to the pages of the Journal to caution investors that a fiscal conflagration was imminent. “We are in a credit crisis the likes of which I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” Forstmann said. “The credit problems in this country are considerably worse than people have said or know. I didn’t even know subprime mortgages existed and I was worried about the credit crisis.”
Forstmann also helpfully passed on how Buffett broke down the components of the typical boom-to-bust business cycle. “Buffett once told me there are three ‘I’s in every cycle. The ‘innovator,’ that’s the first ‘I.’ After the innovator comes the ‘imitator.’ And after the imitator in the cycle comes the idiot. Which makes way for an innovator again,” he said.
So let’s look at how the current credit crisis has occurred, using Buffett’s rule. Some innovator on Wall Street slices and dices mortgage debt and manages to sell that debt at a handsome profit. Even though that debt consists of a lot of bad paper lumped in with the good, through the magic of derivatives — and other financial products more complicated to understand than programming God’s VCR — they manage to make money off it. Then come the imitators, piling into the market. Only there’s a lot more bad paper to go around than good, so mortgage securities aren’t as valuable as they once were (and they were financially iffy to begin with).
Soon housing prices stagnate — because every idiot knows that’s what happens sooner or later when real-estate prices rise for years on end — which removes the only thing propping up the value of the bad mortgage debt. Credit stops flowing. Mighty investment banks start toppling. (Lehman Brothers had a mere $2.5 billion in bonuses to hand out to their New York staff before they filed Chapter 11.) The coup de grace? Ordinary Americans are being told to cough up somewhere north of $2,300 for every man, woman, and child in the country, or else we’re facing the prospect of $30 trillion in global wealth vanishing overnight. In Buffett’s formulation, if the taxpayer steps in at this crucial point in the cycle — that has to make us the idiots, right?
So what should we do to avert this imminent crisis? Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson estimates bailing out Wall Street will cost some $700 billion, but it might be more — so why don’t we go ahead and hand him a blank check with no strings attached?
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the ten scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the Treasury Department and I’m here to help.”
In some respects, calling in a benevolent financial dictator would appear to make things much simpler. Wall Street is a complicated place and math is hard. Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke would have you believe that it’s perfectly natural that the solution to a large financial crisis is throwing a large amount of money at the problem. They seem to hope that no one will notice that the problem with the bailout isn’t ironing out some of the fiscal particulars: It’s philosophical.
When government seizes control of a critical industry, that’s, uh, what do you call it? Oh, yes, socialism. “The government is telling us that capital and credit markets cannot, for several reasons, solve the current crisis on their own — only the federal government and its massive taxpayer base have the authority and the resources to solve it,” noted financial columnist James Ledbetter. “That is state socialism: the philosophy preached by the founders of the Second International, by the radical wing of the American labor movement, through the formation of the Soviet Union and its satellites, and now by Henry Paulson.”
If you watched Paulson and Bernanke’s testimony to the Senate Banking Committee you were unlikely to be convinced of the purity of Paulson’s motivations. “This is all about the American taxpayer,” Paulson insisted. But when asked about what kind of oversight Paulson would have for the bailout plan — which gives the former Goldman Sachs CEO almost limitless resources to throw at his former colleagues and peers on Wall Street — Paulson stammered that there would be oversight and conflict-of-interest rules but couldn’t give any specifics. Never mind that Paulson might want to explain how he might have even helped create the current situation as CEO of Goldman Sachs. Here’s a question that should have been asked of Paulson, notes financial analyst Barry Ritzholtz: “In 2004, your former firm, Goldman Sachs, along with four other brokers, received a waiver of the net capitalization rules, allowing those firms to dramatically exceed the 12-to-1 leverage rules. How much was this waiver responsible for the current situation?”
While that rather pointed question didn’t get asked, the Wall Street Journal tersely noted of Paulson’s testimony regarding the bailout, “Lawmakers appeared unconvinced until the end.” It’s reassuring that Congress seems skeptical now. But where have the skeptics in Congress been? Or the media, for that matter?
Last summer, Chairman Bernanke said that “fundamental factors — including solid growth in incomes and relatively low mortgage rates — should ultimately support the demand for housing, and at this point, the troubles in the subprime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader economy or the financial system.” So what changed between then and now? In retrospect, it sure seems obvious that major financial institutions weren’t properly leveraged; and the housing crisis was unfolding for everyone to see.
We’ve heard what Paulson and Bernanke propose to do in as much detail as they appear prepared to provide, given the urgency of the situation. And throwing their hands up and asking for all the money in the world so they can convene some smart people in a room and fix this at some point in the future just isn’t good enough. Turning the U.S. Treasury into a blank check may lift spirits on Wall Street, but it might also defraud and demoralize Main Street. Doling out large sums to prop up Wall Street may end up being inevitable. But before Paulson, Bernanke, and the federal government do anything, a lot more tough questions need to be asked and answered. Demanding anything less might be considered idiotic.
— Mark Hemingway is an NRO staff reporter.
— Mark Hemingway is a writer in Washington, D.C.
Either way, I'd say it's time to dig a root cellar and brush up on your Little House on the Prairie skills.
And invest in gold if you can afford it.
Meanwhile, I think this is a good explanation of what is going on. I'd love to hear other people's takes on the financial crisis, esp. after reading this.
September 24, 2008, 9:00 a.m.
Socialism in the Treasury Chest
Question period.
By Mark Hemingway
If you believe that the best way to handle the current economic crisis is hurling gobsmackingly large amounts of money at it, all to be used at the discretion of the Treasury secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you may well be an idiot. That’s according to a rule of thumb devised by famed investor Warren Buffett.
Back in July, Brian Carney interviewed Ted Forstmann in the Wall Street Journal. The reason for the interview was that in 1988 Forstmann wrote an uncannily prescient oped for the Journal warning that the junk-bond craze was going to end badly. Well, just a few months ago in July, Forstmann once again took to the pages of the Journal to caution investors that a fiscal conflagration was imminent. “We are in a credit crisis the likes of which I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” Forstmann said. “The credit problems in this country are considerably worse than people have said or know. I didn’t even know subprime mortgages existed and I was worried about the credit crisis.”
Forstmann also helpfully passed on how Buffett broke down the components of the typical boom-to-bust business cycle. “Buffett once told me there are three ‘I’s in every cycle. The ‘innovator,’ that’s the first ‘I.’ After the innovator comes the ‘imitator.’ And after the imitator in the cycle comes the idiot. Which makes way for an innovator again,” he said.
So let’s look at how the current credit crisis has occurred, using Buffett’s rule. Some innovator on Wall Street slices and dices mortgage debt and manages to sell that debt at a handsome profit. Even though that debt consists of a lot of bad paper lumped in with the good, through the magic of derivatives — and other financial products more complicated to understand than programming God’s VCR — they manage to make money off it. Then come the imitators, piling into the market. Only there’s a lot more bad paper to go around than good, so mortgage securities aren’t as valuable as they once were (and they were financially iffy to begin with).
Soon housing prices stagnate — because every idiot knows that’s what happens sooner or later when real-estate prices rise for years on end — which removes the only thing propping up the value of the bad mortgage debt. Credit stops flowing. Mighty investment banks start toppling. (Lehman Brothers had a mere $2.5 billion in bonuses to hand out to their New York staff before they filed Chapter 11.) The coup de grace? Ordinary Americans are being told to cough up somewhere north of $2,300 for every man, woman, and child in the country, or else we’re facing the prospect of $30 trillion in global wealth vanishing overnight. In Buffett’s formulation, if the taxpayer steps in at this crucial point in the cycle — that has to make us the idiots, right?
So what should we do to avert this imminent crisis? Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson estimates bailing out Wall Street will cost some $700 billion, but it might be more — so why don’t we go ahead and hand him a blank check with no strings attached?
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the ten scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the Treasury Department and I’m here to help.”
In some respects, calling in a benevolent financial dictator would appear to make things much simpler. Wall Street is a complicated place and math is hard. Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke would have you believe that it’s perfectly natural that the solution to a large financial crisis is throwing a large amount of money at the problem. They seem to hope that no one will notice that the problem with the bailout isn’t ironing out some of the fiscal particulars: It’s philosophical.
When government seizes control of a critical industry, that’s, uh, what do you call it? Oh, yes, socialism. “The government is telling us that capital and credit markets cannot, for several reasons, solve the current crisis on their own — only the federal government and its massive taxpayer base have the authority and the resources to solve it,” noted financial columnist James Ledbetter. “That is state socialism: the philosophy preached by the founders of the Second International, by the radical wing of the American labor movement, through the formation of the Soviet Union and its satellites, and now by Henry Paulson.”
If you watched Paulson and Bernanke’s testimony to the Senate Banking Committee you were unlikely to be convinced of the purity of Paulson’s motivations. “This is all about the American taxpayer,” Paulson insisted. But when asked about what kind of oversight Paulson would have for the bailout plan — which gives the former Goldman Sachs CEO almost limitless resources to throw at his former colleagues and peers on Wall Street — Paulson stammered that there would be oversight and conflict-of-interest rules but couldn’t give any specifics. Never mind that Paulson might want to explain how he might have even helped create the current situation as CEO of Goldman Sachs. Here’s a question that should have been asked of Paulson, notes financial analyst Barry Ritzholtz: “In 2004, your former firm, Goldman Sachs, along with four other brokers, received a waiver of the net capitalization rules, allowing those firms to dramatically exceed the 12-to-1 leverage rules. How much was this waiver responsible for the current situation?”
While that rather pointed question didn’t get asked, the Wall Street Journal tersely noted of Paulson’s testimony regarding the bailout, “Lawmakers appeared unconvinced until the end.” It’s reassuring that Congress seems skeptical now. But where have the skeptics in Congress been? Or the media, for that matter?
Last summer, Chairman Bernanke said that “fundamental factors — including solid growth in incomes and relatively low mortgage rates — should ultimately support the demand for housing, and at this point, the troubles in the subprime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader economy or the financial system.” So what changed between then and now? In retrospect, it sure seems obvious that major financial institutions weren’t properly leveraged; and the housing crisis was unfolding for everyone to see.
We’ve heard what Paulson and Bernanke propose to do in as much detail as they appear prepared to provide, given the urgency of the situation. And throwing their hands up and asking for all the money in the world so they can convene some smart people in a room and fix this at some point in the future just isn’t good enough. Turning the U.S. Treasury into a blank check may lift spirits on Wall Street, but it might also defraud and demoralize Main Street. Doling out large sums to prop up Wall Street may end up being inevitable. But before Paulson, Bernanke, and the federal government do anything, a lot more tough questions need to be asked and answered. Demanding anything less might be considered idiotic.
— Mark Hemingway is an NRO staff reporter.
— Mark Hemingway is a writer in Washington, D.C.
God's Pharmacy
I kinda liked this one. It was a forward posted on a homeschooling yahoo group, but I personally had not seen it before, so here it is! :)
This is very interesting.
These are best & more powerful when eaten raw. We're such slow learners...
God left us great clues as to what foods help what part of our body!
God's Pharmacy! Amazing!
A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye... and YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.
A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All o f the research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure heart and blood food.
Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.
A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.
Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.
Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.
Avocadoes, Eggplant and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).
Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm as well to overcome male sterility.
Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.
Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries
Oranges, Grapefruits, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.
Onions look like the body's cells. Today's research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes. A working companion, Garlic, also helps eliminate waste materials and dangerous free radicals from the body.
This is very interesting.
These are best & more powerful when eaten raw. We're such slow learners...
God left us great clues as to what foods help what part of our body!
God's Pharmacy! Amazing!
A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye... and YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.
A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All o f the research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure heart and blood food.
Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.
A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.
Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.
Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.
Avocadoes, Eggplant and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).
Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm as well to overcome male sterility.
Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.
Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries
Oranges, Grapefruits, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.
Onions look like the body's cells. Today's research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes. A working companion, Garlic, also helps eliminate waste materials and dangerous free radicals from the body.
Monday, September 22, 2008
How important is voting?
If you aren't sure voting is for you, please go to this website:
www.headlinebistro.com
and look at the video on the right, about a screen down. It is a gorgeous video, illustrating (to amazing music) how important it is to vote. We really have to vote, even if the candidate is not quite perfect. People died to give us the right, and we should make every vote count.
I tried to download it, but I think it is locked.
www.headlinebistro.com
and look at the video on the right, about a screen down. It is a gorgeous video, illustrating (to amazing music) how important it is to vote. We really have to vote, even if the candidate is not quite perfect. People died to give us the right, and we should make every vote count.
I tried to download it, but I think it is locked.
Catholic Persecution in Vietnam
In case people forget how important religious freedom is, and what happens when your government is too much in charge, please read the following. I have known an awful lot of Vietnamese immigrants. One of our favorite families is from there, and my first teaching job was at a school where 30% of the population was Vietnamese, mostly the children and grandchildren of people who came over in the 70's.
If you've never met a serious Vietnamese Catholic, you really should. They know what freedom is and have suffered the lack of it. And they won't forget, even if we do.
AP reporter detained, beaten by police in Vietnam
By JOCELYN GECKER – 2 days ago
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — An Associated Press reporter in Vietnam was punched, choked and hit over the head with a camera by police who detained him Friday while he covered a Catholic prayer vigil in the communist country.
Ben Stocking, the Hanoi bureau chief for The Associated Press, was released from police custody after about 2 1/2 hours and required four stitches on the back of his head. His camera was confiscated by police.
"They told me I was taking pictures in a place that I was not allowed to be taking pictures. But it was news, and I went in," Stocking said by telephone from Hanoi.
Stocking, 49, was covering a demonstration by Catholic priests and church members at the site of the former Vatican Embassy in Hanoi, which is currently the subject of a land dispute between the church and city authorities.
The city had started to clear the site Friday after announcing a day earlier that it planned to use the land for a public library and park — a significant development in an already tense relationship between the church and state in Hanoi.
After Vietnam's communist government took power in 1954, it confiscated property from many landowners, including the Catholic Church. The church says it has documents showing it has title to the land.
Within minutes of arriving at the prayer vigil, Stocking said, he was escorted away by plainclothes police who took his camera and punched and kicked him when he asked for it back.
Taken to a police station for questioning, Stocking tried to reach for his camera and an officer "banged me on the head with the camera and another police officer punched me in the face, straight on." The blow from the camera opened a gash at the back of his head.
Transferred to another police station to give a written statement, Stocking was permitted to leave with a U.S. Embassy official to be taken to a medical clinic.
The AP is protesting the incident, seeking an apology from Vietnamese authorities involved and insisting on the return of Stocking's property.
"It is an egregious incident of police abuse and unacceptable treatment of a journalist by any civilized government authority," said John Daniszewski, the AP's managing editor for international news. "Ben Stocking was doing his job in a calm, reasonable and professional manner when he was escorted away and violently assaulted."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Bush administration has asked the Vietnamese government what it would do to prevent such incidents in the future. The United States, he said, supports religious freedom "whether it's in Vietnam or elsewhere around the world."
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Angela Aggeler said a formal statement of protest was filed with the Foreign Ministry.
The Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to e-mail and telephone requests by the AP seeking comment.
Violence is rare against international journalists in Vietnam, which has strict controls that govern press activities and travel. Foreign media have to register with the Foreign Ministry and get permission to go to remote provinces.
The first portion of Stocking's arrest was captured by an anonymous cameraman and posted on YouTube.
If you've never met a serious Vietnamese Catholic, you really should. They know what freedom is and have suffered the lack of it. And they won't forget, even if we do.
AP reporter detained, beaten by police in Vietnam
By JOCELYN GECKER – 2 days ago
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — An Associated Press reporter in Vietnam was punched, choked and hit over the head with a camera by police who detained him Friday while he covered a Catholic prayer vigil in the communist country.
Ben Stocking, the Hanoi bureau chief for The Associated Press, was released from police custody after about 2 1/2 hours and required four stitches on the back of his head. His camera was confiscated by police.
"They told me I was taking pictures in a place that I was not allowed to be taking pictures. But it was news, and I went in," Stocking said by telephone from Hanoi.
Stocking, 49, was covering a demonstration by Catholic priests and church members at the site of the former Vatican Embassy in Hanoi, which is currently the subject of a land dispute between the church and city authorities.
The city had started to clear the site Friday after announcing a day earlier that it planned to use the land for a public library and park — a significant development in an already tense relationship between the church and state in Hanoi.
After Vietnam's communist government took power in 1954, it confiscated property from many landowners, including the Catholic Church. The church says it has documents showing it has title to the land.
Within minutes of arriving at the prayer vigil, Stocking said, he was escorted away by plainclothes police who took his camera and punched and kicked him when he asked for it back.
Taken to a police station for questioning, Stocking tried to reach for his camera and an officer "banged me on the head with the camera and another police officer punched me in the face, straight on." The blow from the camera opened a gash at the back of his head.
Transferred to another police station to give a written statement, Stocking was permitted to leave with a U.S. Embassy official to be taken to a medical clinic.
The AP is protesting the incident, seeking an apology from Vietnamese authorities involved and insisting on the return of Stocking's property.
"It is an egregious incident of police abuse and unacceptable treatment of a journalist by any civilized government authority," said John Daniszewski, the AP's managing editor for international news. "Ben Stocking was doing his job in a calm, reasonable and professional manner when he was escorted away and violently assaulted."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Bush administration has asked the Vietnamese government what it would do to prevent such incidents in the future. The United States, he said, supports religious freedom "whether it's in Vietnam or elsewhere around the world."
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Angela Aggeler said a formal statement of protest was filed with the Foreign Ministry.
The Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to e-mail and telephone requests by the AP seeking comment.
Violence is rare against international journalists in Vietnam, which has strict controls that govern press activities and travel. Foreign media have to register with the Foreign Ministry and get permission to go to remote provinces.
The first portion of Stocking's arrest was captured by an anonymous cameraman and posted on YouTube.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Del Fox Meats
Hey everyone!
I'm off to Costco, but the one thing I can't buy is... sausage. ARGH. All of it makes my stomach run for the bathroom. Tastes great, but I guess it must be the nitrates or something un-organic. I love sausage. And bacon.
This was the meat store that was available at Klesick yesterday. I did eat a Polish Dog of theirs, and it was A-MAZING. I want more.
I think I'll order soon. Anyone else?
http://www.delfoxmeats.com/retail.htm
I'm off to Costco, but the one thing I can't buy is... sausage. ARGH. All of it makes my stomach run for the bathroom. Tastes great, but I guess it must be the nitrates or something un-organic. I love sausage. And bacon.
This was the meat store that was available at Klesick yesterday. I did eat a Polish Dog of theirs, and it was A-MAZING. I want more.
I think I'll order soon. Anyone else?
http://www.delfoxmeats.com/retail.htm
Klesick farms
Here is where we went yesterday. Go to www.harvestjubilee.org to see what was going on this weekend. There is more fun planned for October. Del Fox Meats was serving yummy polish dogs and corn on the cob, and it was amazing. If I didn't already have 1/4 cow coming this way in Dec, I'd place an order. Maybe I'll order some other meat, anyway, like pig and sheep if they have it. I guess lamb prices are coming down right now, so I'd love to get in on that. I love lamb.
We get a family box every Tuesday from here:
http://www.organicproduceshoppe.com/index.php
I was going to mention that this would be a good place for any family farms to look for a business model if they were looking. These folks make it a family affair and they do a tremendous job.
We get a family box every Tuesday from here:
http://www.organicproduceshoppe.com/index.php
I was going to mention that this would be a good place for any family farms to look for a business model if they were looking. These folks make it a family affair and they do a tremendous job.
Home again!
Saturday went like this:
Ok, maybe we should start with having found every last child belonging all over my parents' house and putting it all back in bags and backpacks, and then piling it in the car or in the doorway, then going out to drinks and onion rings with my sister Bonnie. Hooray!
Then at 5:15 am, Dom woke up and wanted his nursing, and then the alarm went off, starting our day at 5:30 am. I packed everything remaining, put the bikes back on the rack, filled the front seat with backpacks, and woke up the kids, fed them pop tarts and stuffed them in the incredibly stuffed car.
Did I mention I decided to bring a saddle and bridle back with me?
Why?
Because I want to do a pentathlon. I need some horse stuff of my own if I'm going to lease a horse part time and give myself lessons.
But then again, who knows if I will actually be that crazy. Bonnie might need this stuff back before I get that far.
We also got a box of apples from the ranch in CA. Yay!
Got out the door at 6:40 am, marvelled at how much Astoria has changed, then stopped in Longview for gas and snacks. Made all kids go potty.
Stopped in Renton so Brandon could go potty.
Got to church parking lot at 11 am, just in time for Gabe's soccer team to warm up, then start the game at 11:30. 11:45, Daddy walked Brandon across the lot for his game, which started at 12:00. At 1, we got home and changed our wet clothes (it was raining all day).
1:30: Go on a cub scout go see it to Klesick Farms in Stanwood, where we found out where our produce box comes from. Yay! It was really fun, but again, rainy.
4 pm, returned, changed clothes, partially unpacked car, went to Mass, because we signed up to pass out flyers about cub scouts. Great Mass, still raining.
Got home, put jammies on, kids to sleep, Mommy to sleep by 9pm.
Phew.
Today we are watching TV and do nothing much else all day. I decided it was worth it to push that hard if we didn't have to go anywhere today.
I might go to Costco, though.
And a homeschooling meeting. But that's after bed time.
It was a good visit to my folks' house, and I had some great time with my folks and my sister. Mostly my sister. Grandpa took the kids on lots of nature hikes. Then he had one of his "fits", which kind of ruined things, but he generally does that at the end of visits for no apparent reason, so I guess I'll just accept that personality quirk and move on. Asking a question and not liking the answer is not really all that productive. Otherwise, we had a really good visit. Turns out things go better in person than on the phone.
I think I'll try arranging pictures now, and buying them online.
Ok, maybe we should start with having found every last child belonging all over my parents' house and putting it all back in bags and backpacks, and then piling it in the car or in the doorway, then going out to drinks and onion rings with my sister Bonnie. Hooray!
Then at 5:15 am, Dom woke up and wanted his nursing, and then the alarm went off, starting our day at 5:30 am. I packed everything remaining, put the bikes back on the rack, filled the front seat with backpacks, and woke up the kids, fed them pop tarts and stuffed them in the incredibly stuffed car.
Did I mention I decided to bring a saddle and bridle back with me?
Why?
Because I want to do a pentathlon. I need some horse stuff of my own if I'm going to lease a horse part time and give myself lessons.
But then again, who knows if I will actually be that crazy. Bonnie might need this stuff back before I get that far.
We also got a box of apples from the ranch in CA. Yay!
Got out the door at 6:40 am, marvelled at how much Astoria has changed, then stopped in Longview for gas and snacks. Made all kids go potty.
Stopped in Renton so Brandon could go potty.
Got to church parking lot at 11 am, just in time for Gabe's soccer team to warm up, then start the game at 11:30. 11:45, Daddy walked Brandon across the lot for his game, which started at 12:00. At 1, we got home and changed our wet clothes (it was raining all day).
1:30: Go on a cub scout go see it to Klesick Farms in Stanwood, where we found out where our produce box comes from. Yay! It was really fun, but again, rainy.
4 pm, returned, changed clothes, partially unpacked car, went to Mass, because we signed up to pass out flyers about cub scouts. Great Mass, still raining.
Got home, put jammies on, kids to sleep, Mommy to sleep by 9pm.
Phew.
Today we are watching TV and do nothing much else all day. I decided it was worth it to push that hard if we didn't have to go anywhere today.
I might go to Costco, though.
And a homeschooling meeting. But that's after bed time.
It was a good visit to my folks' house, and I had some great time with my folks and my sister. Mostly my sister. Grandpa took the kids on lots of nature hikes. Then he had one of his "fits", which kind of ruined things, but he generally does that at the end of visits for no apparent reason, so I guess I'll just accept that personality quirk and move on. Asking a question and not liking the answer is not really all that productive. Otherwise, we had a really good visit. Turns out things go better in person than on the phone.
I think I'll try arranging pictures now, and buying them online.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A driving we will go...
Today is the day. We are going to Astoria for two whole days plus part of today. I was going to leave at 9am today, but then we got notice that both boys have soccer pictures today, and later this afternoon, by the way. Like 5pm. ARGH. I know, I know, I could skip pictures, but the boys really like them, and anyway, maybe I'll miss a good part of rush hour that would have taken me that long anyway.
So today is homeschooling, packing, more packing, naps, more packing, etc. until 4:15, when we head to the field to do pics. Then I'm taking a teammate to his mom at another soccer practice, then south I go, to my not-so-much homeland of Astoria, OR. We probably won't get there til 10pm, sadly, but then I have all day Thurs and part of Friday to goof off. My sister is moving home for a few months, so she'll be there and we'll see her more than we have in three years. That will be cool.
Please pray for a safe and uneventful journey with four kids and mom. Also pray for the daddy, who is getting a CAT scan on Friday to see if he has a sinus blockage that is causing all his upper respiratory problems this summer and a good part of last winter. He is very tired of being sick. If he needs surgery, please pray that it is also minimal.
If you can't find me, now you know where I'll be!
So today is homeschooling, packing, more packing, naps, more packing, etc. until 4:15, when we head to the field to do pics. Then I'm taking a teammate to his mom at another soccer practice, then south I go, to my not-so-much homeland of Astoria, OR. We probably won't get there til 10pm, sadly, but then I have all day Thurs and part of Friday to goof off. My sister is moving home for a few months, so she'll be there and we'll see her more than we have in three years. That will be cool.
Please pray for a safe and uneventful journey with four kids and mom. Also pray for the daddy, who is getting a CAT scan on Friday to see if he has a sinus blockage that is causing all his upper respiratory problems this summer and a good part of last winter. He is very tired of being sick. If he needs surgery, please pray that it is also minimal.
If you can't find me, now you know where I'll be!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Seen any Down's kids lately?
I know it's awful of me to keep copying and pasting from this one blog, but she says things that are So Important, I can't help but NEED to pass them along to anyone reading this.
When she mentions the vile comments about the disabled, she means really vile. Go over and check the sources, because people have reverted back to calling the disabled "retards" and much, much worse. They say some amazingly mean things. They do this to large families, too, in case anyone was wondering.
When did people get quite so rude?
And All Unkindness
Christopher NOlan, poet, author, and wheelchair bound victim of Cerebral Palsy so severe he communicates only via keyboard writes of himself:
'A brain-damaged baby cannot ponder why a mother cannot communicate with it, and unless it gains parental love and stimulation it stymies, and thus retardation fulsomely establishes its soul-destroying seabed.' Conscious of the breathtaking sacrifice involved in what his family did for him, yet he detected where destiny beckoned. The future for babies like him never looked more promising, but now society frowned upon giving spastic babies a right to life. Now they threatened to abort babies like him, to detect in advance their handicapped state, to burrow through the womb and label them for death, to baffle their mothers with fear for their coming, and yet, the spastic baby would ever be the soul which would never kill, maim, creed falsehood or hate brotherhood. Why then does society fear the crippled child...and why does it hail the able-bodied child and crow over what may in time become a potential executioner?
Elsewhere in his writings young Christopher marvels at the age he lives in, recognizing that a hundred years ago a child like him would have been trapped in himself, unable to communicate beyond a rudimentary level with even the most doting of parents. He would scarcely have survived his childhood, and he certainly wouldn't have published a book, spent any time in the public eye, or given national awards. The western cultural attitude towards disability is disturbing, especially given the technological advances that give the disabled lives they didn't even survive to dream about in previous centuries.
Tarranto looks at comments about baby Trig Palin made by Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic, Cintra Wilson at Salon, and South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler (wife of the guy who was chuckling about the hurricane due to strike New Orleans as evidence that God was on the Democrats' side) and concludes:
This is worse than tasteless or even unhinged. It is depraved. It represents an inversion of any reasonable conception of right and wrong, including liberal conceptions.
Fowler uses Palin's motherhood to disparage her accomplishments, an obvious betrayal of the principle of women's equality. And although proponents of permissive abortion laws nearly always claim to support not abortion but "a woman's right to choose," here we have three of them rebuking Palin for choosing not to abort her baby.
It is disgusting, and of course, in the less careful swampy regions of Kos, the comments are even worse. As the mother of a disabled child I am alternately outraged and sickened by what I am reading. I know, and am grateful to know, that there are certainly people who consider themselves far to the left of me who would likewise be sickened and outraged by such vile bigotry against the disabled and those who cherish their disabled family members. But that doesn't make this sort of bitter bile against people like my child any more palatable or acceptable.
Right to Life groups have been pointing out the 'right to die' and the right to kill all to easily become an obligation to die, an obligation to kill those that make society uncomfortable, and that's what we are seeing revealed in this nasty, putrid comments.
From a post I wrote two years ago called 'The Disappearance of the Disabled' where I noticed that at a large group of conservative Christian homeschoolers, I noticed several disabled children, more than you would usually see in a similar sized group of families, and I realized why that is when:
I read this post, Eradicating the Disabled, about an article called "The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have." The author of the original article is the mother of a child with Down Syndrome. She notes,
"today nearly all children diagnosed in utero with Down's syndrome are
aborted---upwards of 90 percent. Moreover, she senses that the "right" to abort
has become, increasingly, regarded as a social and moral duty. She recounts
hearing a "director of an Ivy League ethics program," who stated "that
prospective parents have a moral obligation to undergo prenatal testing and to
terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability,
because it was immoral to subject a child to the kind of suffering he or she
would have to endure." A statement that instantly raises the
no-longer-amusing-or-hypothetical prospect of "wrongful life" litigation,
directed at mothers who "choose life." Unstated, but clearly lurking beneath the
surface, is a certain moral indignancy toward those who would presume to inflict
such children upon the rest of us."
The original author also says
"Many young women, upon meeting us, have asked whether I had "the test." I interpret the question as a get-home-free card. If I say no, they figure, that means I'm a victim of circumstance, and therefore not implicitly repudiating the decision they may make to abort if they think there are disabilities involved.
If yes, then it means I'm a right-wing antiabortion nut whose choices aren't relevant to their lives. "
This does not happen to us every day, every month, or even every year, but I have been asked some unbelievably rude questions by total strangers. People meet our Cherub and ask questions like, "Were you tested? Why did you have more children after she was born? Weren't you afraid you'd bring another handicapped child into the world? Is what's wrong with her genetic? " I know I am not the only mother of a disabled child to whom some idiot has casually commented, "hmm, too bad you didn't know she was retarded before she was born so that she could have been aborted." In our case we also have that 'get of jail free' card because, as it happens, the Cherub is adopted. I generally make people uncomfortable by replying to such questions with something like, "Well, she was adopted, so that doesn't really apply to our situation, but we believe all children are a blessing, anyway, so it wouldn't have made any difference if she had been born to us in the usual way." Yes, it makes some people uncomfortable, but some people ought to be uncomfortable at times. Sometimes it takes social discomfort to make us take a good, hard look at ourselves to make us think about who we are and what we have become.
Many, many thanks to J. Quinby for directing our attention to this link.
As he notes, he has written eloquently about this before. In that excellent post (and I really hope you will read the entire thing) he asks,
"How much further down the eugenics slope are we going to go? Is there any way back up? I am not optimistic at the moment.
How many Down's kids have you seen around lately? Not too many, I'll bet.
Ever wonder why?"
Have you? Do you care? Does it matter to you?
Update: We briefly addressed this issue before in the post titled "Treating the Disabled to Death."
Posted by Headmistress, zookeeper at 9/13/2008 02:00:00 PM 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: disabilities, Pro-life
When she mentions the vile comments about the disabled, she means really vile. Go over and check the sources, because people have reverted back to calling the disabled "retards" and much, much worse. They say some amazingly mean things. They do this to large families, too, in case anyone was wondering.
When did people get quite so rude?
And All Unkindness
Christopher NOlan, poet, author, and wheelchair bound victim of Cerebral Palsy so severe he communicates only via keyboard writes of himself:
'A brain-damaged baby cannot ponder why a mother cannot communicate with it, and unless it gains parental love and stimulation it stymies, and thus retardation fulsomely establishes its soul-destroying seabed.' Conscious of the breathtaking sacrifice involved in what his family did for him, yet he detected where destiny beckoned. The future for babies like him never looked more promising, but now society frowned upon giving spastic babies a right to life. Now they threatened to abort babies like him, to detect in advance their handicapped state, to burrow through the womb and label them for death, to baffle their mothers with fear for their coming, and yet, the spastic baby would ever be the soul which would never kill, maim, creed falsehood or hate brotherhood. Why then does society fear the crippled child...and why does it hail the able-bodied child and crow over what may in time become a potential executioner?
Elsewhere in his writings young Christopher marvels at the age he lives in, recognizing that a hundred years ago a child like him would have been trapped in himself, unable to communicate beyond a rudimentary level with even the most doting of parents. He would scarcely have survived his childhood, and he certainly wouldn't have published a book, spent any time in the public eye, or given national awards. The western cultural attitude towards disability is disturbing, especially given the technological advances that give the disabled lives they didn't even survive to dream about in previous centuries.
Tarranto looks at comments about baby Trig Palin made by Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic, Cintra Wilson at Salon, and South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler (wife of the guy who was chuckling about the hurricane due to strike New Orleans as evidence that God was on the Democrats' side) and concludes:
This is worse than tasteless or even unhinged. It is depraved. It represents an inversion of any reasonable conception of right and wrong, including liberal conceptions.
Fowler uses Palin's motherhood to disparage her accomplishments, an obvious betrayal of the principle of women's equality. And although proponents of permissive abortion laws nearly always claim to support not abortion but "a woman's right to choose," here we have three of them rebuking Palin for choosing not to abort her baby.
It is disgusting, and of course, in the less careful swampy regions of Kos, the comments are even worse. As the mother of a disabled child I am alternately outraged and sickened by what I am reading. I know, and am grateful to know, that there are certainly people who consider themselves far to the left of me who would likewise be sickened and outraged by such vile bigotry against the disabled and those who cherish their disabled family members. But that doesn't make this sort of bitter bile against people like my child any more palatable or acceptable.
Right to Life groups have been pointing out the 'right to die' and the right to kill all to easily become an obligation to die, an obligation to kill those that make society uncomfortable, and that's what we are seeing revealed in this nasty, putrid comments.
From a post I wrote two years ago called 'The Disappearance of the Disabled' where I noticed that at a large group of conservative Christian homeschoolers, I noticed several disabled children, more than you would usually see in a similar sized group of families, and I realized why that is when:
I read this post, Eradicating the Disabled, about an article called "The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have." The author of the original article is the mother of a child with Down Syndrome. She notes,
"today nearly all children diagnosed in utero with Down's syndrome are
aborted---upwards of 90 percent. Moreover, she senses that the "right" to abort
has become, increasingly, regarded as a social and moral duty. She recounts
hearing a "director of an Ivy League ethics program," who stated "that
prospective parents have a moral obligation to undergo prenatal testing and to
terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability,
because it was immoral to subject a child to the kind of suffering he or she
would have to endure." A statement that instantly raises the
no-longer-amusing-or-hypothetical prospect of "wrongful life" litigation,
directed at mothers who "choose life." Unstated, but clearly lurking beneath the
surface, is a certain moral indignancy toward those who would presume to inflict
such children upon the rest of us."
The original author also says
"Many young women, upon meeting us, have asked whether I had "the test." I interpret the question as a get-home-free card. If I say no, they figure, that means I'm a victim of circumstance, and therefore not implicitly repudiating the decision they may make to abort if they think there are disabilities involved.
If yes, then it means I'm a right-wing antiabortion nut whose choices aren't relevant to their lives. "
This does not happen to us every day, every month, or even every year, but I have been asked some unbelievably rude questions by total strangers. People meet our Cherub and ask questions like, "Were you tested? Why did you have more children after she was born? Weren't you afraid you'd bring another handicapped child into the world? Is what's wrong with her genetic? " I know I am not the only mother of a disabled child to whom some idiot has casually commented, "hmm, too bad you didn't know she was retarded before she was born so that she could have been aborted." In our case we also have that 'get of jail free' card because, as it happens, the Cherub is adopted. I generally make people uncomfortable by replying to such questions with something like, "Well, she was adopted, so that doesn't really apply to our situation, but we believe all children are a blessing, anyway, so it wouldn't have made any difference if she had been born to us in the usual way." Yes, it makes some people uncomfortable, but some people ought to be uncomfortable at times. Sometimes it takes social discomfort to make us take a good, hard look at ourselves to make us think about who we are and what we have become.
Many, many thanks to J. Quinby for directing our attention to this link.
As he notes, he has written eloquently about this before. In that excellent post (and I really hope you will read the entire thing) he asks,
"How much further down the eugenics slope are we going to go? Is there any way back up? I am not optimistic at the moment.
How many Down's kids have you seen around lately? Not too many, I'll bet.
Ever wonder why?"
Have you? Do you care? Does it matter to you?
Update: We briefly addressed this issue before in the post titled "Treating the Disabled to Death."
Posted by Headmistress, zookeeper at 9/13/2008 02:00:00 PM 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: disabilities, Pro-life
Friday, September 12, 2008
Permaculture
I was having some fun at the library the other day. I had come across this term while nannying once. I personally think it's the fancy name the hippy environmentalists gave to their cause to make it sound better than "hippy environmentalist". It does sound better, and they do have some really, really cool ideas. I really enjoyed the magazine I picked up, it even had a parenting article that compared the parenting journey to that of a farmer, and it was quite a good piece. I guess the author is the same guy who wrote, "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal". I must look up that author, I guess. I enjoy many hippy things, but when they get into the Gaia stuff, I do have to back up a bit. Sorry, but Christ's spot is already taken.
Anyway, www.permaculture.org is a good place to start clicking links and exploring. The idea is to leave a very small footprint on the Earth, and to work with it instead of against it, to live off the land and improve your neighborhood while you are there. Also, teaching interested people about it comes up again and again. Bartering, communal living, recycling water, building your house out of adobe and hay bales... etc. etc. I find it totally fascinating. My only problem is I might have a hard time selling my house if I built it that way, or else someone would really be happy to buy it. It would take a while to find that person.
I should back up and explain that part of my fascination has to do with the community atmosphere of Mendocino County, CA, home of the best marijuana in the world (I hear!) Hey, I read it in the paper once, so I guess it must be pretty good stuff. Anyway... it's where the hippies from San Francisco went when they were done with their protests and other such fun. A good place to go, I might add, it's just gorgeous. There were quite a few communes near us, in fact, I read once that Winona Ryder lived in one near the same time and place as I. There were also lots of books at the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino on alternative building methods. One of the books even showcased our neighbor up the street, who had put a new door and side on our ancient barn.
I love the idea of living with the land. What really stops me is 1. land prices and 2. TIME! No one who hasn't lived it realizes that you can farm, or you can have another life. You really have to give up a lot to be a farmer. It has to BE your life. You can't go on vacation unless there is another farmer nearby who'd love to help you out, and even then, you are taking a huge risk that something will go horribly wrong while you are gone. You sure can't leave during lambing or calving season!
If anyone can recommend good books about building alternative housing, I'd love to know. I guess I should go to www.gallerybookshop.com. They are a great bookstore.
Hey, Rikki! I think I found something you can get me for my birthday, since you asked. Sensible, but cheap, methods of building your own home books.
:)
Anyway, www.permaculture.org is a good place to start clicking links and exploring. The idea is to leave a very small footprint on the Earth, and to work with it instead of against it, to live off the land and improve your neighborhood while you are there. Also, teaching interested people about it comes up again and again. Bartering, communal living, recycling water, building your house out of adobe and hay bales... etc. etc. I find it totally fascinating. My only problem is I might have a hard time selling my house if I built it that way, or else someone would really be happy to buy it. It would take a while to find that person.
I should back up and explain that part of my fascination has to do with the community atmosphere of Mendocino County, CA, home of the best marijuana in the world (I hear!) Hey, I read it in the paper once, so I guess it must be pretty good stuff. Anyway... it's where the hippies from San Francisco went when they were done with their protests and other such fun. A good place to go, I might add, it's just gorgeous. There were quite a few communes near us, in fact, I read once that Winona Ryder lived in one near the same time and place as I. There were also lots of books at the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino on alternative building methods. One of the books even showcased our neighbor up the street, who had put a new door and side on our ancient barn.
I love the idea of living with the land. What really stops me is 1. land prices and 2. TIME! No one who hasn't lived it realizes that you can farm, or you can have another life. You really have to give up a lot to be a farmer. It has to BE your life. You can't go on vacation unless there is another farmer nearby who'd love to help you out, and even then, you are taking a huge risk that something will go horribly wrong while you are gone. You sure can't leave during lambing or calving season!
If anyone can recommend good books about building alternative housing, I'd love to know. I guess I should go to www.gallerybookshop.com. They are a great bookstore.
Hey, Rikki! I think I found something you can get me for my birthday, since you asked. Sensible, but cheap, methods of building your own home books.
:)
Smear Fest corrections
I'm so glad to see this. It's nice to have real corrections on CNN.
By Glenn Beck
CNN
Editor's note: Glenn Beck is on CNN Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 ET and also is host of a conservative national radio talk show.
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck has some lines McCain can use in tonight's speech to articulate his vision for change
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Campaigns are ugly. Watching the way politicians act makes you long for the respect and self-control of the Sopranos. Throughout, there are legitimate attacks and outright lies.
Every once in a while, I get a call on my radio show from someone telling me that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim, who admitted it in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, and has a fake birth certificate. No, no, and no. As I tell them, there are legitimate reasons not to vote for Barack Obama, no need to make them up.
But the newest target is Sarah Palin. Let's take a quick look at just a fraction of what she has faced in her first few days as John McCain's choice for vice president. iReport.com: Do you think Palin is being treated unfairly?
"Sarah Palin believes God told her to go to war with Iraq!"
There has been some hard-core journalistic malpractice on this one. The Associated Press ran this headline about a speech she gave at her church: "Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God'"
In the story, they omit the first part of the sentence they're quoting along with the entire previous sentence for good measure.
Here are her actual words: "Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."
Palin is clearly praying that we're doing the right thing in Iraq, something sensible for an introspective woman of faith concerned about the lives of our troops to do. She's not saying that she just received a text message from heaven's BlackBerry ordering her to launch missiles. Sorry to disappoint you.
And for those of you who think politicians asking God for guidance is offensive, might I remind you of this famous politician's prayer:
"Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will." --Barack Obama
"She has no experience!"
It's fair to assume that Barack Obama believed he was qualified to be in the White House when he announced he was running for president. At that point, he had been a U.S. Senator for 767 days. When Sarah Palin was announced as a vice presidential candidate, she had been the governor of Alaska for 634 days.
While I'm sure those extra 133 days were filled with personal discovery, I can't imagine anyone seriously trying to make the case that Obama is experienced and Palin isn't.
Unless, of course, you're Matt Damon, who said a Palin presidency would be a really "scary thing" because she has been "governor of Alaska for...for less than two years!" (Damon originally expressed his presidential preference for Obama in December 2006, when he had been a senator for less than two years.)
More importantly, Palin's career has been filled with executive experience. She's the only one of the four in this race who has run a business, town, and/or state (a state that gives her crucial energy experience in the middle of an energy crisis).
When Obama's campaign complains that Palin would be one heartbeat away from the presidency, they should consider that their candidate would be zero heartbeats away.
"But Obama is running a huge campaign -- Palin was just a small town mayor!"
Believe it or not, this one was actually trotted out by Obama himself.
"My understanding is, is that Gov. Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We've got 2,500 in this campaign. I think the budget is maybe $12 million a year. We have a budget of about three times that just for the month."
Apparently, Barack missed that she's become the governor of Alaska in the interim. Why would he compare his current duties with her former duties?
Well, since he announced his candidacy, Barack Obama has raised about $22 million a month. That's a large organization for sure, unless you are directly comparing it to Sarah Palin, who is handling state revenues that are about 61 times as large, or more than $1.3 billion per month.
"Palin only supports abstinence to be taught in sex-ed!"
This claim is usually followed by a super classy comment about her daughter and the use of contraception, but the premise is false. Palin hasn't said she doesn't want condoms discussed in sex-ed, calling their discussion "relatively benign."
"I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues. So I am not anti-contraception. But, yeah, abstinence is another alternative that should be discussed with kids. I don't have a problem with that," Palin said. Hers is hardly an extreme point of view in America today.
"If she cares about children with special needs, then why did she cut spending on them by 62 percent?"
Actually, Palin almost tripled their funding in only three years from $26,900 per student to $73,840 per student.
Incidentally, the amount of government money you spend on a specific group doesn't equal the amount you care for that group, but that's another story for another column.
All of these represent just a small percentage of the bizarre collection of claims being thrown at Palin by her opponents and some in the media -- who are desperately hoping something will stick. I leave you with my favorite so far: The Internet rumors that she harbors racism against Eskimos. If true, she sure has a strange way of expressing it -- her husband, Todd, is half Yupik Inuit Eskimo.
To balance that out, she must really love his other half.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.
By Glenn Beck
CNN
Editor's note: Glenn Beck is on CNN Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 ET and also is host of a conservative national radio talk show.
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck has some lines McCain can use in tonight's speech to articulate his vision for change
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Campaigns are ugly. Watching the way politicians act makes you long for the respect and self-control of the Sopranos. Throughout, there are legitimate attacks and outright lies.
Every once in a while, I get a call on my radio show from someone telling me that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim, who admitted it in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, and has a fake birth certificate. No, no, and no. As I tell them, there are legitimate reasons not to vote for Barack Obama, no need to make them up.
But the newest target is Sarah Palin. Let's take a quick look at just a fraction of what she has faced in her first few days as John McCain's choice for vice president. iReport.com: Do you think Palin is being treated unfairly?
"Sarah Palin believes God told her to go to war with Iraq!"
There has been some hard-core journalistic malpractice on this one. The Associated Press ran this headline about a speech she gave at her church: "Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God'"
In the story, they omit the first part of the sentence they're quoting along with the entire previous sentence for good measure.
Here are her actual words: "Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."
Palin is clearly praying that we're doing the right thing in Iraq, something sensible for an introspective woman of faith concerned about the lives of our troops to do. She's not saying that she just received a text message from heaven's BlackBerry ordering her to launch missiles. Sorry to disappoint you.
And for those of you who think politicians asking God for guidance is offensive, might I remind you of this famous politician's prayer:
"Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will." --Barack Obama
"She has no experience!"
It's fair to assume that Barack Obama believed he was qualified to be in the White House when he announced he was running for president. At that point, he had been a U.S. Senator for 767 days. When Sarah Palin was announced as a vice presidential candidate, she had been the governor of Alaska for 634 days.
While I'm sure those extra 133 days were filled with personal discovery, I can't imagine anyone seriously trying to make the case that Obama is experienced and Palin isn't.
Unless, of course, you're Matt Damon, who said a Palin presidency would be a really "scary thing" because she has been "governor of Alaska for...for less than two years!" (Damon originally expressed his presidential preference for Obama in December 2006, when he had been a senator for less than two years.)
More importantly, Palin's career has been filled with executive experience. She's the only one of the four in this race who has run a business, town, and/or state (a state that gives her crucial energy experience in the middle of an energy crisis).
When Obama's campaign complains that Palin would be one heartbeat away from the presidency, they should consider that their candidate would be zero heartbeats away.
"But Obama is running a huge campaign -- Palin was just a small town mayor!"
Believe it or not, this one was actually trotted out by Obama himself.
"My understanding is, is that Gov. Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We've got 2,500 in this campaign. I think the budget is maybe $12 million a year. We have a budget of about three times that just for the month."
Apparently, Barack missed that she's become the governor of Alaska in the interim. Why would he compare his current duties with her former duties?
Well, since he announced his candidacy, Barack Obama has raised about $22 million a month. That's a large organization for sure, unless you are directly comparing it to Sarah Palin, who is handling state revenues that are about 61 times as large, or more than $1.3 billion per month.
"Palin only supports abstinence to be taught in sex-ed!"
This claim is usually followed by a super classy comment about her daughter and the use of contraception, but the premise is false. Palin hasn't said she doesn't want condoms discussed in sex-ed, calling their discussion "relatively benign."
"I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues. So I am not anti-contraception. But, yeah, abstinence is another alternative that should be discussed with kids. I don't have a problem with that," Palin said. Hers is hardly an extreme point of view in America today.
"If she cares about children with special needs, then why did she cut spending on them by 62 percent?"
Actually, Palin almost tripled their funding in only three years from $26,900 per student to $73,840 per student.
Incidentally, the amount of government money you spend on a specific group doesn't equal the amount you care for that group, but that's another story for another column.
All of these represent just a small percentage of the bizarre collection of claims being thrown at Palin by her opponents and some in the media -- who are desperately hoping something will stick. I leave you with my favorite so far: The Internet rumors that she harbors racism against Eskimos. If true, she sure has a strange way of expressing it -- her husband, Todd, is half Yupik Inuit Eskimo.
To balance that out, she must really love his other half.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
In Honor of 9/11
Today is always remembered at our house as Grandma Grace's birthday. She passed on 10 years ago. Happy Birthday, Grandma, and rest in peace. I'm glad you didn't see this on tv three years later.
We must always remember
Terror attacks were an act of war, not simply a tragedy to be mourned
By DEBRA BURLINGAME
Tuesday, September 11th 2007, 4:00 AM
* Full list of the names of the victims
* Read the Daily News coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks
* Photo gallery: the front pages
* Photo gallery: a look back at 9/11
* Photo gallery: Susan Watt's 'Milestones to Recovery' exhibit
Six years ago, I turned on my television and saw the sickening image of an airplane flying directly into the south tower of the World Trade Center. I did not know that at precisely that moment, somewhere in the skies over the Ohio-Kentucky border, my brother was fighting for his life in the cockpit of his commercial airliner. It would be another 35 minutes before his plane crashed into the Pentagon's west side.
Though the term "9/11 family member" had not yet become part of the Sept. 11 lexicon, my first thought upon seeing the plane turn and slam into the World Trade Center was of the pilots in the flight deck and the added sorrow that their families would have to live with for the rest of their lives, seeing this video.
Until I was notified of my brother's fate, I was no different from everyone else that morning, horrified and overwhelmed by the shocking scene unfolding in lower Manhattan. After learning that people were jumping from the towers, I believe I began to depersonalize what I was seeing.
The human psyche can absorb only so much. Anyone who had been inside the World Trade Center towers or seen them upclose knew that jumping from that height was like leaping from the clouds. The day was only beginning.
A recent newspaper article suggested that the 9/11 commemoration "decibel level" should be "scaled back." Mourning the dead too loud and too long impinges on the living, the article said. Life goes on. I wouldn't disagree. But it is extremely important to distinguish between public mourning and public remembering; otherwise, the phrase that was as ubiquitous as the American flag six years ago, "Never Forget," and invoked with tearful or angry rectitude, is rendered hollow. We all meant it, whether the cause was revenge, retribution or simple recognition of our common humanity.
None of us wants this to happen again, but as time goes by, why can't we all agree, as we did then, about what took place that day?
There is a disturbing phenomenon creeping into the public debate about all things 9/11. Increasingly, Sept. 11 is compared to hurricanes, bridge collapses and other mechanical disasters or criminal acts that result in loss of life, with "body count" being the primary factor that keeps it in the top spot of "worst in the nation's history."
Misremembering is as dangerous as forgetting. If we must know one thing, it is that the Sept. 11 attacks were neither a natural disaster, nor the unfortunate result of human error. 9/11 wasn't the catastrophic equivalent of a 3,000-car pileup.
The attacks were not a random actof violence or insanity. They were a deliberate and brutal act ofwar committed by religious fanatics engaged in Islamic jihad against the United States, all non-Muslim people and any Muslim who wishes to live in a secular society. Worse, the people who perpetrated the attacks have explicitly told us that they are not done.
Sept. 11 is a date that comes and goes once a year, but "9/11" is with us every day. The body count keeps rising - Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, London, Amman.
We now clearly know that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was part of the holy war against America. When we previously dismissed this as a random attack by crazy men and declared ourselves lucky that "only six lives were lost," we effectively disarmed ourselves. Eight years later, six became 3,000. While the comparison to other "tragedies" may help us cope with what has befallen us, we must resist being glib and intellectually careless.
Our fellow human beings were not "lost" in 1993 or on 9/11. They were torn to pieces. We must not give the enemy any quarter. We must confront the reality of their acts.
We must refuse to be fooled by their propaganda, which is meant to appeal to our own moral vanity - the belief that we can appease them by responding to their outrageous demands for accommodation, their open threats and their hateful rhetoric with even more forbearance.
Several months after the Sept. 11 attacks, I was asked to look through a thick, three-ring binder put together by the FBI, a catalogue of objects - photographed and numbered - that were the unclaimed personal effects of the 184 victims who perished at the Pentagon. They included things such as buttons, uniform insignia, house and car keys, wedding rings, shoes, personalized coffee mugs and, saddest of all, a miniature, hot-pink luggage tag with a flowery design meant for a little girl's travel bag.
These mundane objects, the commonplace detritus of lives cut short, were deeply moving to see, perhaps because they were not some grand eulogy or noble tribute, but simple reminders of the fact that people like you and me went to work or boarded those planes on that lovely Tuesday morning, never dreaming that this was the last clear blue sky they would ever see.
Perhaps it is human instinct to turn away from suffering that goes on too long. We should celebrate life rather than wallow in grief. But we should vigilantly guard against self-delusion and denial as a means of coping with the terrible reality that we all lived through six years ago. There was a reason that we felt unified then.
The horror of what we experienced, individually and together, stripped away all the things that divide us today. We clung to each other, forgave each other, and were kind to each other, knowing that, in the end, we would only persevere together. Today of all days, that is something we should never forget.
Burlingame is the sister of Capt. Charles F. (Chic) Burlingame 3rd, pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
We must always remember
Terror attacks were an act of war, not simply a tragedy to be mourned
By DEBRA BURLINGAME
Tuesday, September 11th 2007, 4:00 AM
* Full list of the names of the victims
* Read the Daily News coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks
* Photo gallery: the front pages
* Photo gallery: a look back at 9/11
* Photo gallery: Susan Watt's 'Milestones to Recovery' exhibit
Six years ago, I turned on my television and saw the sickening image of an airplane flying directly into the south tower of the World Trade Center. I did not know that at precisely that moment, somewhere in the skies over the Ohio-Kentucky border, my brother was fighting for his life in the cockpit of his commercial airliner. It would be another 35 minutes before his plane crashed into the Pentagon's west side.
Though the term "9/11 family member" had not yet become part of the Sept. 11 lexicon, my first thought upon seeing the plane turn and slam into the World Trade Center was of the pilots in the flight deck and the added sorrow that their families would have to live with for the rest of their lives, seeing this video.
Until I was notified of my brother's fate, I was no different from everyone else that morning, horrified and overwhelmed by the shocking scene unfolding in lower Manhattan. After learning that people were jumping from the towers, I believe I began to depersonalize what I was seeing.
The human psyche can absorb only so much. Anyone who had been inside the World Trade Center towers or seen them upclose knew that jumping from that height was like leaping from the clouds. The day was only beginning.
A recent newspaper article suggested that the 9/11 commemoration "decibel level" should be "scaled back." Mourning the dead too loud and too long impinges on the living, the article said. Life goes on. I wouldn't disagree. But it is extremely important to distinguish between public mourning and public remembering; otherwise, the phrase that was as ubiquitous as the American flag six years ago, "Never Forget," and invoked with tearful or angry rectitude, is rendered hollow. We all meant it, whether the cause was revenge, retribution or simple recognition of our common humanity.
None of us wants this to happen again, but as time goes by, why can't we all agree, as we did then, about what took place that day?
There is a disturbing phenomenon creeping into the public debate about all things 9/11. Increasingly, Sept. 11 is compared to hurricanes, bridge collapses and other mechanical disasters or criminal acts that result in loss of life, with "body count" being the primary factor that keeps it in the top spot of "worst in the nation's history."
Misremembering is as dangerous as forgetting. If we must know one thing, it is that the Sept. 11 attacks were neither a natural disaster, nor the unfortunate result of human error. 9/11 wasn't the catastrophic equivalent of a 3,000-car pileup.
The attacks were not a random actof violence or insanity. They were a deliberate and brutal act ofwar committed by religious fanatics engaged in Islamic jihad against the United States, all non-Muslim people and any Muslim who wishes to live in a secular society. Worse, the people who perpetrated the attacks have explicitly told us that they are not done.
Sept. 11 is a date that comes and goes once a year, but "9/11" is with us every day. The body count keeps rising - Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, London, Amman.
We now clearly know that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was part of the holy war against America. When we previously dismissed this as a random attack by crazy men and declared ourselves lucky that "only six lives were lost," we effectively disarmed ourselves. Eight years later, six became 3,000. While the comparison to other "tragedies" may help us cope with what has befallen us, we must resist being glib and intellectually careless.
Our fellow human beings were not "lost" in 1993 or on 9/11. They were torn to pieces. We must not give the enemy any quarter. We must confront the reality of their acts.
We must refuse to be fooled by their propaganda, which is meant to appeal to our own moral vanity - the belief that we can appease them by responding to their outrageous demands for accommodation, their open threats and their hateful rhetoric with even more forbearance.
Several months after the Sept. 11 attacks, I was asked to look through a thick, three-ring binder put together by the FBI, a catalogue of objects - photographed and numbered - that were the unclaimed personal effects of the 184 victims who perished at the Pentagon. They included things such as buttons, uniform insignia, house and car keys, wedding rings, shoes, personalized coffee mugs and, saddest of all, a miniature, hot-pink luggage tag with a flowery design meant for a little girl's travel bag.
These mundane objects, the commonplace detritus of lives cut short, were deeply moving to see, perhaps because they were not some grand eulogy or noble tribute, but simple reminders of the fact that people like you and me went to work or boarded those planes on that lovely Tuesday morning, never dreaming that this was the last clear blue sky they would ever see.
Perhaps it is human instinct to turn away from suffering that goes on too long. We should celebrate life rather than wallow in grief. But we should vigilantly guard against self-delusion and denial as a means of coping with the terrible reality that we all lived through six years ago. There was a reason that we felt unified then.
The horror of what we experienced, individually and together, stripped away all the things that divide us today. We clung to each other, forgave each other, and were kind to each other, knowing that, in the end, we would only persevere together. Today of all days, that is something we should never forget.
Burlingame is the sister of Capt. Charles F. (Chic) Burlingame 3rd, pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
What? We're not dead yet? (LHC)
The Large Hadron Collider went online today. That's a LARGE circle underground that is going to work on particle physics. Lots of people are warning that, as the speed of the particles approaches the speed of light, our whole planet is going to disappear down a black hole... or something like that.
Sounds sort of Y2Kish. But hey, I'm good with God. As good as I'm going to get, anyway, given the amount of time I've been alive. If the world ends, I'm as ready as I'll ever be.
Meanwhile, here's a very nicely done rap explanation of the fun LHC thing under Switzerland and France. Thank you to my DH, who posted it on his facebook after we enjoyed it much last night.
Sounds sort of Y2Kish. But hey, I'm good with God. As good as I'm going to get, anyway, given the amount of time I've been alive. If the world ends, I'm as ready as I'll ever be.
Meanwhile, here's a very nicely done rap explanation of the fun LHC thing under Switzerland and France. Thank you to my DH, who posted it on his facebook after we enjoyed it much last night.
OUCH.
Why even have a constitution to argue about, then?
Thanks to the Common Room for the link.
Full details below:
Rasmussen: Only 29% of Obama supporters think Supreme Court should decide cases based on Constitution
posted at 12:30 pm on September 9, 2008 by Allahpundit
A friendly reminder from the Enlightened of how much more profound their respect for the rule of law is than yours, to be filed away for the next time one of them deigns to lecture you about Bush’s constitutional apostasy.
During his acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, John McCain told the audience, “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench.” Most American voters (60%) agrees and says the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice. The number who agree with McCain is up from 55% in August.
While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.
Better yet, file this away for the next time some conservative asks you why he should turn out to vote for a guy who supports amnesty. So alarming is it that even TNR’s wringing its hands: “Now, since it seems unlikely that many Americans spend much time weighing the relative merits of different methods of judicial decisionmaking, it’s a fairly safe bet that voters are largely reflecting the rhetoric they hear from political elites…” Exit question: What rhetoric from The One could his disciples possibly be “reflecting” here?
Thanks to the Common Room for the link.
Full details below:
Rasmussen: Only 29% of Obama supporters think Supreme Court should decide cases based on Constitution
posted at 12:30 pm on September 9, 2008 by Allahpundit
A friendly reminder from the Enlightened of how much more profound their respect for the rule of law is than yours, to be filed away for the next time one of them deigns to lecture you about Bush’s constitutional apostasy.
During his acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, John McCain told the audience, “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench.” Most American voters (60%) agrees and says the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice. The number who agree with McCain is up from 55% in August.
While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.
Better yet, file this away for the next time some conservative asks you why he should turn out to vote for a guy who supports amnesty. So alarming is it that even TNR’s wringing its hands: “Now, since it seems unlikely that many Americans spend much time weighing the relative merits of different methods of judicial decisionmaking, it’s a fairly safe bet that voters are largely reflecting the rhetoric they hear from political elites…” Exit question: What rhetoric from The One could his disciples possibly be “reflecting” here?
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Life update
I figured I was overdue for a rambling email about our family life right now. I wonder what I'll say? Hmmmm....
Well, we had a wonderful homeschooling week last week, because I (gasp) didn't go anywhere at all. At least it felt like that. I went nowhere from 9-12 and then it was lunch and naps, so I still didn't go anywhere til soccer practice at 5:30pm. On Friday, however, I really did go somewhere. I went to Rikki's house, and I babysat so she could volunteer at her daughter's kindergarten class and go see her husband after work, maybe even have a conversation or something.
We had nap time, clean up time, and then we did something completely unprecedented. We cleaned the garage so well, you can no officially park TWO CARS in it. Comfortably, even. That has NEVER happened. Not even close. We ordered pizza and the grandparents and another family arrived, so it was party city, and we were all tired at the end. Triumph!
Soccer went well. Both the boys' teams won on Saturday, and they were thrilled.
Brandon will be six on Wednesday, and his party is on Saturday, but don't you dare tell him. He is already much too excited.
I spent some time in the church library today, organizing books and also adding the homeschooling group's collection to our library. We keep storing our collection at people's houses, which means none of us actually use it, but now that it will be in a central location, I hope folks will start using it. Maybe people will see the cool things in the library, too. It has amazing books and videos in it, yet no one ever comes when I open it on first Sundays. I must need to advertise better. I even found a book by Archbishop Chaput today, who, by the way, is on the NY Times Bestseller List right now. The one I found is "How NOT To Share Your Faith". I have been meaning to read that one and look forward to it. The good news about the library is that people are using the bookcase "outpost" in the hallway of one of the churches, so I have a box of things I'm going to put in there to refill it. Hooray! I don't see the people, but they are using the library after all!
The garden did well this year, but I hope everything gets good looking before the frost hits. I'm worried I'll have another green tomatoes year, so I'd better buy some plastic, quick. The raspberries and strawberries are bearing right now, which is weird and cool.
We are planning a couple of trips this fall: Sept 17-19 I'm going to Astoria to see my parents and sisters, since they will all be in range at the same time, probably staying in a tent if the weather holds. On the first weekend of October is my 10th Gonzaga Reunion, which I'm totally excited about, and will have babysitting for and a place to stay. Yay!
I guess that's it for now! I'm praying for a nice, mild September to make up for June.
Well, we had a wonderful homeschooling week last week, because I (gasp) didn't go anywhere at all. At least it felt like that. I went nowhere from 9-12 and then it was lunch and naps, so I still didn't go anywhere til soccer practice at 5:30pm. On Friday, however, I really did go somewhere. I went to Rikki's house, and I babysat so she could volunteer at her daughter's kindergarten class and go see her husband after work, maybe even have a conversation or something.
We had nap time, clean up time, and then we did something completely unprecedented. We cleaned the garage so well, you can no officially park TWO CARS in it. Comfortably, even. That has NEVER happened. Not even close. We ordered pizza and the grandparents and another family arrived, so it was party city, and we were all tired at the end. Triumph!
Soccer went well. Both the boys' teams won on Saturday, and they were thrilled.
Brandon will be six on Wednesday, and his party is on Saturday, but don't you dare tell him. He is already much too excited.
I spent some time in the church library today, organizing books and also adding the homeschooling group's collection to our library. We keep storing our collection at people's houses, which means none of us actually use it, but now that it will be in a central location, I hope folks will start using it. Maybe people will see the cool things in the library, too. It has amazing books and videos in it, yet no one ever comes when I open it on first Sundays. I must need to advertise better. I even found a book by Archbishop Chaput today, who, by the way, is on the NY Times Bestseller List right now. The one I found is "How NOT To Share Your Faith". I have been meaning to read that one and look forward to it. The good news about the library is that people are using the bookcase "outpost" in the hallway of one of the churches, so I have a box of things I'm going to put in there to refill it. Hooray! I don't see the people, but they are using the library after all!
The garden did well this year, but I hope everything gets good looking before the frost hits. I'm worried I'll have another green tomatoes year, so I'd better buy some plastic, quick. The raspberries and strawberries are bearing right now, which is weird and cool.
We are planning a couple of trips this fall: Sept 17-19 I'm going to Astoria to see my parents and sisters, since they will all be in range at the same time, probably staying in a tent if the weather holds. On the first weekend of October is my 10th Gonzaga Reunion, which I'm totally excited about, and will have babysitting for and a place to stay. Yay!
I guess that's it for now! I'm praying for a nice, mild September to make up for June.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Some very good questions
I am saying this as loudly as I can:
CHECK THIS BLOG DAILY: www.heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com
if you would like some real news. I could copy and paste practically everything, or I could send you there to read and watch video for yourself. Please do!
I will copy and paste a "teaser" here from today's posts.
We have several members of the press, suddenly fans of sahmotherhood, asking if Sarah can really be a good mother and Veep at the same time. They do not ask if Obama can really be a good father when he's home ten days a year. They did not ask that question of Edwards when his wife's cancer recurred and their sons were 10 and 8 at the time and he continued to run for office.
We have HOward Kurtz uttering this remarkable, and previously unknown, standard for covering the children of candidates:
It is perfectly fine to showcase your family as you introduce yourself to America. But then you can't turn around and slam the press for writing about your family in a less flattering light than you would prefer to present them.
Obama's children, of course, were much in evidence when he spoke at the Democratic convention, and they are equally adorable and deserve to be with their father on that historic night. That does not give the press the right to write about the children in any unflattering light, and when it comes to their candidate, they understood that perfectly well.
Kurtz also says:
Have we Fourth Estate types gone too far? Roger Simon weighs in:
"On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry. On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.
"We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked. We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?
"We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?
"Bad questions. Bad media. Bad."
Those are not the questions you asked. You asked about whether or not Trig was her child, and why was he out in public, anyway, and how could a mother of five be a vice-president, and did she take proper prenatal care, and did she have an affair, and who is the father of Bristol's baby and you made false and sly insinuations and accusations about the vetting process, reporting as facts things that weren't true (no vetting, only met once, member of a secessionist party) and when you report on taser-gate, you neglect to mention that the person she is accused of firing because he would not dismiss the ex-brother in law has plainly told the press before that nobody pressured him to fire the guy, and you almost never mention that this brother-in-law is the sort of cop who tasered his stepson, threatened to murder his father-in-law, and drank from an open container in his patrol car, among other unsavory things, and nobody in their right mind would want him holding a badge and a gun.
Meanwhile, there is a long list of questions regarding Obama about which I can't tell that the press has ever displayed much interest.
Did Obama keep any sort of schedule or calendar during his seven years in the Illinois general assembly that the press (or anybody) has looked at, vetted?
What legislation did he write during that time? Write- as in author, not co-sign or simply sign as author, but legislation he truly authored himself.
During his time as a civil rights lawyer, what cases did he litigate?
What is his paper trail during the time he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago? Did he publish anything- a pamphlet, a letter to the editor, an article for a scholarly journal, anything?
Has he released his academic records from college? What do they show?
Do we have any papers or articles he wrote while in college?
What did Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour have to do with getting Obama into Harvard, and why?
What happened with the funds he was in charge of with the Annenberg challenge? Why did he get away with saying that terrorist Bill Ayers is just some guy in his neighborhood? Why did he choose to launch his political career from the home of an unrepentant terrorist?
Since the press has clearly decided families are off limits, would somebody in the press ask Obama why he says he is his brother's keeper and yet his brother lives in a cardboard box?
What does he mean by being his 'brother's keeper?'
These two lists could go on and on- the one a list of nonjournalistic questions and actions against Sarah Palin, and the record of journalistic omissions in favor of Obama.
But the press is not that stupid. They know this. They just hope that you don't.
CHECK THIS BLOG DAILY: www.heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com
if you would like some real news. I could copy and paste practically everything, or I could send you there to read and watch video for yourself. Please do!
I will copy and paste a "teaser" here from today's posts.
We have several members of the press, suddenly fans of sahmotherhood, asking if Sarah can really be a good mother and Veep at the same time. They do not ask if Obama can really be a good father when he's home ten days a year. They did not ask that question of Edwards when his wife's cancer recurred and their sons were 10 and 8 at the time and he continued to run for office.
We have HOward Kurtz uttering this remarkable, and previously unknown, standard for covering the children of candidates:
It is perfectly fine to showcase your family as you introduce yourself to America. But then you can't turn around and slam the press for writing about your family in a less flattering light than you would prefer to present them.
Obama's children, of course, were much in evidence when he spoke at the Democratic convention, and they are equally adorable and deserve to be with their father on that historic night. That does not give the press the right to write about the children in any unflattering light, and when it comes to their candidate, they understood that perfectly well.
Kurtz also says:
Have we Fourth Estate types gone too far? Roger Simon weighs in:
"On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry. On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.
"We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked. We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?
"We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?
"Bad questions. Bad media. Bad."
Those are not the questions you asked. You asked about whether or not Trig was her child, and why was he out in public, anyway, and how could a mother of five be a vice-president, and did she take proper prenatal care, and did she have an affair, and who is the father of Bristol's baby and you made false and sly insinuations and accusations about the vetting process, reporting as facts things that weren't true (no vetting, only met once, member of a secessionist party) and when you report on taser-gate, you neglect to mention that the person she is accused of firing because he would not dismiss the ex-brother in law has plainly told the press before that nobody pressured him to fire the guy, and you almost never mention that this brother-in-law is the sort of cop who tasered his stepson, threatened to murder his father-in-law, and drank from an open container in his patrol car, among other unsavory things, and nobody in their right mind would want him holding a badge and a gun.
Meanwhile, there is a long list of questions regarding Obama about which I can't tell that the press has ever displayed much interest.
Did Obama keep any sort of schedule or calendar during his seven years in the Illinois general assembly that the press (or anybody) has looked at, vetted?
What legislation did he write during that time? Write- as in author, not co-sign or simply sign as author, but legislation he truly authored himself.
During his time as a civil rights lawyer, what cases did he litigate?
What is his paper trail during the time he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago? Did he publish anything- a pamphlet, a letter to the editor, an article for a scholarly journal, anything?
Has he released his academic records from college? What do they show?
Do we have any papers or articles he wrote while in college?
What did Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour have to do with getting Obama into Harvard, and why?
What happened with the funds he was in charge of with the Annenberg challenge? Why did he get away with saying that terrorist Bill Ayers is just some guy in his neighborhood? Why did he choose to launch his political career from the home of an unrepentant terrorist?
Since the press has clearly decided families are off limits, would somebody in the press ask Obama why he says he is his brother's keeper and yet his brother lives in a cardboard box?
What does he mean by being his 'brother's keeper?'
These two lists could go on and on- the one a list of nonjournalistic questions and actions against Sarah Palin, and the record of journalistic omissions in favor of Obama.
But the press is not that stupid. They know this. They just hope that you don't.
Friday, September 5, 2008
From Pelosi's Archbishop of San Francisco
Pelosi's Archbishop got a LOT of mail. He says he regrets having to do this so publicly, but he invites Pelosi to meet with him so that they may come to understand Catholic teaching on life issues more clearly, and therefore avoid the next step, which he did not describe, but which would involve asking her to abstain from communion. This is something she has said would be a major blow to her, but she steadfastly continues to lead people astray from the power of her public office. The Archbishop's job is to guide and teach, that's why he has a shepherd's staff. I do not envy his position, but I'm very, very glad he has been so good as to offer the following, dated Sept. 5, 2008:
http://www.sfarchdiocese.org/about-us/news/?i=1308
http://www.sfarchdiocese.org/about-us/news/?i=1308
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Follow this link to see what the USCCB (United States Council of Catholic Bishops) has to say about Pelosi's position that the Catholic Church is still debating the idea of whether abortion is intrinsically evil. Up until 1930, all the other churches agreed.
There is also an article floating around which points out that a Planned Parenthood spokesperson "feels sorry" for Bristol Palin for being "forced" by her Christian mother to keep the baby and marry the father. I strongly doubt there was any forcing going on. However, that same person does not seem to understand that some girls are coerced into abortions by their pro-choice mothers, so please tell me which is worse??
I think the Palin's have handled things 10 times better than most parents, especially given the public eye on them at all times. I don't think I could be so gracious to my daughter, her boyfriend, or to the reporters. Cut the family a break!
Check Life Site News for more articles along those lines.
Meanwhile, this should straighten out Catholic teaching on the issue.
http://www.usccb.org/prolife/constantchurchteaching.shtml
There is also an article floating around which points out that a Planned Parenthood spokesperson "feels sorry" for Bristol Palin for being "forced" by her Christian mother to keep the baby and marry the father. I strongly doubt there was any forcing going on. However, that same person does not seem to understand that some girls are coerced into abortions by their pro-choice mothers, so please tell me which is worse??
I think the Palin's have handled things 10 times better than most parents, especially given the public eye on them at all times. I don't think I could be so gracious to my daughter, her boyfriend, or to the reporters. Cut the family a break!
Check Life Site News for more articles along those lines.
Meanwhile, this should straighten out Catholic teaching on the issue.
http://www.usccb.org/prolife/constantchurchteaching.shtml
Best blog at the moment to read...
I'd type and type and type about Palin and the press, but someone already did it for me, so you should read it there. Her whole speech is there, too. I know who I'm voting for. At last, for the first time in my life, I'm voting FOR someone instead of against someone else.
Yay!
www.heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com
May I point out that the author is not a standard republican or democrat. She was going to write in someone. She's having second thoughts.
Please check out all her stuff. It's really, really good.
Yay!
www.heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com
May I point out that the author is not a standard republican or democrat. She was going to write in someone. She's having second thoughts.
Please check out all her stuff. It's really, really good.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The Presidential Debate Schedule
Yay! Notice they will be airing the videos as soon as they can afterward, for those of us who decided there was nothing on cable worth paying for... :)
http://www.youdecide2008.com
Official 2008 Obama/McCain Presidential Debate Schedule
August 21st, 2008Posted: 8:06 pm by Nate
Official 2008 Obama/McCain Presidential Debate Schedule
The official Presidential debate schedule for John McCain and Barack Obama has been finalized and released in a joint statement from each campaign. There will also be a vice presidential debate as well.
Here is the full official debate schedule:
Forums:
August 16, 2008: Video: Saddleback Civil Forum with Rick Warren at Saddleback Church, Lake Forest California
(Not part of the official sanctioned schedule but both candidates attended)
Debates:
-2008-
September 26, 2008: Presidential debate with domestic policy focus, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS
October 2, 2008: Vice Presidential debate, Washington University, St. Louis, MO
October 7, 2008: Presidential debate in a town hall format, Belmont University, Nashville, TN
October 15, 2008: Presidential debate with foreign policy focus, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
Here is a break down of what each debate will consist of:
1. First Presidential Debate: – Date: September 26 – Site: University of Mississippi – Topic: Foreign Policy & National Security – Moderator: Jim Lehrer – Staging: Podium debate – Answer Format: The debate will be broken into nine, 9-minute segments. The moderator will introduce a topic and allow each candidate 2 minutes to comment. After these initial answers, the moderator will facilitate an open discussion of the topic for the remaining 5 minutes, ensuring that both candidates receive an equal amount of time to comment
2. Vice Presidential Debate – Date: October 2nd – Site: Washington University (St. Louis) – Moderator: Gwen Ifill – Staging/Answer Format: To be resolved after both parties’ Vice Presidential nominees are selected.
3. Second Presidential Debate – Date: October 7 – Site: Belmont University – Moderator: Tom Brokaw – Staging: Town Hall debate – Format: The moderator will call on members of the audience (and draw questions from the internet). Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond to each question. Following those initial answers, the moderator will invite the candidates to respond to the previous answers, for a total of 1 minute, ensuring that both candidates receive an equal amount of time to comment. In the spirit of the Town Hall, all questions will come from the audience (or internet), and not the moderator.
4. Third Presidential Debate – Date: October 15 – Site: Hofstra University – Topic: Domestic and Economic policy – Moderator: Bob Schieffer – Staging: Candidates will be seated at a table – Answer Format: Same as First Presidential Debate – Closing Statements: At the end of this debate (only) each candidate shall have the opportunity for a 90 second closing statement.
All four debates will begin at 9pm ET, and last for 90 minutes. Both campaigns also agreed to accept the CPD’s participation rules for third-party candidate participation.
All 4 debates will be broadcast on the major broadcast networks, including CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. They will also be aired on cable news channels such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN.
We will have full videos of each debate uploaded once they air.
http://www.youdecide2008.com
Official 2008 Obama/McCain Presidential Debate Schedule
August 21st, 2008Posted: 8:06 pm by Nate
Official 2008 Obama/McCain Presidential Debate Schedule
The official Presidential debate schedule for John McCain and Barack Obama has been finalized and released in a joint statement from each campaign. There will also be a vice presidential debate as well.
Here is the full official debate schedule:
Forums:
August 16, 2008: Video: Saddleback Civil Forum with Rick Warren at Saddleback Church, Lake Forest California
(Not part of the official sanctioned schedule but both candidates attended)
Debates:
-2008-
September 26, 2008: Presidential debate with domestic policy focus, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS
October 2, 2008: Vice Presidential debate, Washington University, St. Louis, MO
October 7, 2008: Presidential debate in a town hall format, Belmont University, Nashville, TN
October 15, 2008: Presidential debate with foreign policy focus, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
Here is a break down of what each debate will consist of:
1. First Presidential Debate: – Date: September 26 – Site: University of Mississippi – Topic: Foreign Policy & National Security – Moderator: Jim Lehrer – Staging: Podium debate – Answer Format: The debate will be broken into nine, 9-minute segments. The moderator will introduce a topic and allow each candidate 2 minutes to comment. After these initial answers, the moderator will facilitate an open discussion of the topic for the remaining 5 minutes, ensuring that both candidates receive an equal amount of time to comment
2. Vice Presidential Debate – Date: October 2nd – Site: Washington University (St. Louis) – Moderator: Gwen Ifill – Staging/Answer Format: To be resolved after both parties’ Vice Presidential nominees are selected.
3. Second Presidential Debate – Date: October 7 – Site: Belmont University – Moderator: Tom Brokaw – Staging: Town Hall debate – Format: The moderator will call on members of the audience (and draw questions from the internet). Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond to each question. Following those initial answers, the moderator will invite the candidates to respond to the previous answers, for a total of 1 minute, ensuring that both candidates receive an equal amount of time to comment. In the spirit of the Town Hall, all questions will come from the audience (or internet), and not the moderator.
4. Third Presidential Debate – Date: October 15 – Site: Hofstra University – Topic: Domestic and Economic policy – Moderator: Bob Schieffer – Staging: Candidates will be seated at a table – Answer Format: Same as First Presidential Debate – Closing Statements: At the end of this debate (only) each candidate shall have the opportunity for a 90 second closing statement.
All four debates will begin at 9pm ET, and last for 90 minutes. Both campaigns also agreed to accept the CPD’s participation rules for third-party candidate participation.
All 4 debates will be broadcast on the major broadcast networks, including CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. They will also be aired on cable news channels such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN.
We will have full videos of each debate uploaded once they air.
A little Sanity
Hi Everyone,
Someone had a link to this blog, so I'm sharing it with you. It goes into what kinds of hysterics people are going into about Sarah Palin. As I heard on my neighbor's radio the other day, "there is nothing but nothing liberals hate more than a conservative woman". It's like they think we are traitors or something. I think it's crazy that these "feminists" think the measure of feminism is how you think on abortion alone. What about other rights? Since when is abortion THE right anyway? It's just nuts. There are other issues out there, and if we want to see women in politics, then we should not be discouraging the ones we don't agree with 100%! Right?
Oh, I guess I'm not THAT kind of woman. My bad.
Check it out:
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2008/09/lefts-firestorm-of-projection-about.html
Someone had a link to this blog, so I'm sharing it with you. It goes into what kinds of hysterics people are going into about Sarah Palin. As I heard on my neighbor's radio the other day, "there is nothing but nothing liberals hate more than a conservative woman". It's like they think we are traitors or something. I think it's crazy that these "feminists" think the measure of feminism is how you think on abortion alone. What about other rights? Since when is abortion THE right anyway? It's just nuts. There are other issues out there, and if we want to see women in politics, then we should not be discouraging the ones we don't agree with 100%! Right?
Oh, I guess I'm not THAT kind of woman. My bad.
Check it out:
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2008/09/lefts-firestorm-of-projection-about.html
Todd Palin, First Dude
Since people might not be looking as much for what her husband does, I thought I'd put Sarah's husband's info up here. I found this at a blog called "The Dust of Time". Sounds like a stand up guy.
ep 1, 2008
Todd Palin--American Manhood at its Best
What's the story behind the Alaska governor with an approval rating of 89 to 93 percent? A good part of it has to be her husband, Todd Palin, who is discussed in ALASKA magazine of February 2008. Here are a few quotes from the cover story, "Palin's Way," by Melissa DeVaughn on "America's Hottest Governor."
It's her favorite room [kitchen] in the large but unpretentious home her husband, Todd, designed and built five years ago.... Todd's floatplane is docked just a hundred yards away [on Lake Lucille] at the edge of the neatly mown lawn....Having such a high-powered wife does not faze Todd, who refers to himself jokingly as the "First Dude."
While Sarah does the work of governor, Todd remains the quintessential Alaska man. He stays busy with his week-on, week-off job with British Petroleum on the North Slope. He's also one of the state's best snowmachiners, and has won the grueling 2,000-mile Tesoro Iron Dog race four times. In the summer, Todd fishes a commercial site in Bristol Bay and spends time flying his airplane, a hobby he has enjoyed for 20 years.
Having his wife become governor changed the Palin household, he said, but not in a monumental way. "Her schedule dictates my schedule, but with her being mayor for so many years, we were already used to it," he said. "The kids are very adaptable. There are thousands of Alaska families that adapt, whether you're a contract guy who's gone for the summer season, a sloper or in the military, we have a lot of families who don't have the 9-to-5 schedule."
On this day, Todd Palin is preparing to change into work clothes and help oversee construction of a community playground in Juneau. As First Dude, he is a champion of vocational education for Alaska students. "I'm a product of on-the-job training that was offered to me in 1989. And growing up in the high schools that I attended, we had great shops, mechanic shops and carpenter shops. In recent years, that has not been a high priority, but that is coming back. So I've told the commissioner of labor, 'Wherever you can use me in that role, I am there for you'."
"My slope job has provided for my family," he said. "when an opportunity is given to an individual, it is what that person does with it that matters. As I travel the state, that's a big concern, getting kids motivated. I am meeting kids that can't read a tape measure or just don't want to work, so it's the same message wherever we go. Step out. Once you step out and are given an opportunity, you can change a life"
Todd's family is spread from Bristol Bay to Homer.... when [daughter] Bristol revealed she spent $20 on leg waxing--'That was supposed to be gas money,' Todd Palin said disapprovingly [and Sarah Palin concurred!]
So what I learned about Todd Palin is that he is at least as good an individual as Sarah Palin--likely even better as he is a very strong and loving husband and father! The governor of Alaska seems to know that too, as she introduced Todd to the country as "the man she admires the most in this world."
Here are some other things I've found out about Todd Mitchell Palin in searching the web:
* One-eighth Native Alaskan (born 1965 in Dillingham, Alaska)
* Grandmother grew up in a traditional Yup'ik Eskimo house in Bristol Bay
* Graduated Wasilla High School, followed by college work
* Commercial salmon fisherman on the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay
* Coach of kids' hockey and basketball teams
* Member of the United Steelworkers Union
* Rugged individual who works at blue-collar job on the North Slope
* Avoids conflict of interest, including resigning as oil production supervisor when his wife was elected governor [later resumed non-conflicting labor in oil field)
* Four-time winner of the Iron Dog, the 2,000-mile snowmachine race (longest in the world) from Big Lake to Nome along the Iditarod Trail and then on to Fairbanks
* Prefers to vote as an independent
* Is reliable and trusted ["I have to trust my life in his hands, and I do, because he can still think when he's dehydrated and tired," says his partner in the Iron Dog]
* Has a lot of willpower and doesn't quit [During 2008 Iron Dog snowmachine race, was thrown 70 feet and broke his arm, yet finished to end up in fourth place]
* Committed to loving new life [When he found wife's recent pregnancy would result in a baby with Down Syndrome, commented “We shouldn’t be asking, ‘Why us?’ We should be saying, ‘Well, why not us?’”]
* Helps others even when seriously inconvenienced [In last year's Iron Dog, Palin and his teammate helped a racer with broken ribs reach the next checkpoint before heading on to victory]
* Won't spend money he doesn't have [Eloped with Sarah because her family had a bad fishing year and a $35 marriage was all that could be afforded]
* Rock and pillar of his family ["He can go on just an hour or two of sleep a night. He says, 'I can sleep when I die,' " said Sarah Palin. "There is no way I could have done this job [as governor] without his tremendous contributions to the home life. He's able to keep it organized, like a well-oiled machine."]
* Takes his family's safety and welfare seriously: "In 2005, before Palin ran for office, the Palin family accused Wooten [Sarah Palin's brother-in-law] of drinking a beer while in his patrol car, illegal hunting and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson. The Palins also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father.... More recently, Todd Palin said, he took his concerns over the governor's safety directly to Monegan. But he said he never told anyone to fire Wooten." Another site adds, "At one point, Todd Palin brought information prepared by himself and a private investigator to Monegan."
Personally I applaud Todd Palin for being the best example of American manhood that I can imagine.
ep 1, 2008
Todd Palin--American Manhood at its Best
What's the story behind the Alaska governor with an approval rating of 89 to 93 percent? A good part of it has to be her husband, Todd Palin, who is discussed in ALASKA magazine of February 2008. Here are a few quotes from the cover story, "Palin's Way," by Melissa DeVaughn on "America's Hottest Governor."
It's her favorite room [kitchen] in the large but unpretentious home her husband, Todd, designed and built five years ago.... Todd's floatplane is docked just a hundred yards away [on Lake Lucille] at the edge of the neatly mown lawn....Having such a high-powered wife does not faze Todd, who refers to himself jokingly as the "First Dude."
While Sarah does the work of governor, Todd remains the quintessential Alaska man. He stays busy with his week-on, week-off job with British Petroleum on the North Slope. He's also one of the state's best snowmachiners, and has won the grueling 2,000-mile Tesoro Iron Dog race four times. In the summer, Todd fishes a commercial site in Bristol Bay and spends time flying his airplane, a hobby he has enjoyed for 20 years.
Having his wife become governor changed the Palin household, he said, but not in a monumental way. "Her schedule dictates my schedule, but with her being mayor for so many years, we were already used to it," he said. "The kids are very adaptable. There are thousands of Alaska families that adapt, whether you're a contract guy who's gone for the summer season, a sloper or in the military, we have a lot of families who don't have the 9-to-5 schedule."
On this day, Todd Palin is preparing to change into work clothes and help oversee construction of a community playground in Juneau. As First Dude, he is a champion of vocational education for Alaska students. "I'm a product of on-the-job training that was offered to me in 1989. And growing up in the high schools that I attended, we had great shops, mechanic shops and carpenter shops. In recent years, that has not been a high priority, but that is coming back. So I've told the commissioner of labor, 'Wherever you can use me in that role, I am there for you'."
"My slope job has provided for my family," he said. "when an opportunity is given to an individual, it is what that person does with it that matters. As I travel the state, that's a big concern, getting kids motivated. I am meeting kids that can't read a tape measure or just don't want to work, so it's the same message wherever we go. Step out. Once you step out and are given an opportunity, you can change a life"
Todd's family is spread from Bristol Bay to Homer.... when [daughter] Bristol revealed she spent $20 on leg waxing--'That was supposed to be gas money,' Todd Palin said disapprovingly [and Sarah Palin concurred!]
So what I learned about Todd Palin is that he is at least as good an individual as Sarah Palin--likely even better as he is a very strong and loving husband and father! The governor of Alaska seems to know that too, as she introduced Todd to the country as "the man she admires the most in this world."
Here are some other things I've found out about Todd Mitchell Palin in searching the web:
* One-eighth Native Alaskan (born 1965 in Dillingham, Alaska)
* Grandmother grew up in a traditional Yup'ik Eskimo house in Bristol Bay
* Graduated Wasilla High School, followed by college work
* Commercial salmon fisherman on the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay
* Coach of kids' hockey and basketball teams
* Member of the United Steelworkers Union
* Rugged individual who works at blue-collar job on the North Slope
* Avoids conflict of interest, including resigning as oil production supervisor when his wife was elected governor [later resumed non-conflicting labor in oil field)
* Four-time winner of the Iron Dog, the 2,000-mile snowmachine race (longest in the world) from Big Lake to Nome along the Iditarod Trail and then on to Fairbanks
* Prefers to vote as an independent
* Is reliable and trusted ["I have to trust my life in his hands, and I do, because he can still think when he's dehydrated and tired," says his partner in the Iron Dog]
* Has a lot of willpower and doesn't quit [During 2008 Iron Dog snowmachine race, was thrown 70 feet and broke his arm, yet finished to end up in fourth place]
* Committed to loving new life [When he found wife's recent pregnancy would result in a baby with Down Syndrome, commented “We shouldn’t be asking, ‘Why us?’ We should be saying, ‘Well, why not us?’”]
* Helps others even when seriously inconvenienced [In last year's Iron Dog, Palin and his teammate helped a racer with broken ribs reach the next checkpoint before heading on to victory]
* Won't spend money he doesn't have [Eloped with Sarah because her family had a bad fishing year and a $35 marriage was all that could be afforded]
* Rock and pillar of his family ["He can go on just an hour or two of sleep a night. He says, 'I can sleep when I die,' " said Sarah Palin. "There is no way I could have done this job [as governor] without his tremendous contributions to the home life. He's able to keep it organized, like a well-oiled machine."]
* Takes his family's safety and welfare seriously: "In 2005, before Palin ran for office, the Palin family accused Wooten [Sarah Palin's brother-in-law] of drinking a beer while in his patrol car, illegal hunting and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson. The Palins also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father.... More recently, Todd Palin said, he took his concerns over the governor's safety directly to Monegan. But he said he never told anyone to fire Wooten." Another site adds, "At one point, Todd Palin brought information prepared by himself and a private investigator to Monegan."
Personally I applaud Todd Palin for being the best example of American manhood that I can imagine.
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