Rohrer Campaign Coming To Delco

Sam Rohrer is taking his campaign for the U.S. Senate to St. James Alumni Association Hall, 1499 E. 9th St., Eddystone. His town hall will be held 7 p.m., April 11.

Rohrer is leading a field of several candidates in the polls for the Republican primary.
The election is April 24.

A Week In The Life Of Delaware County, Pa.

By Kate Rainey

It is 3 p.m., Saturday, March 17, 2012 at Marple Presbyterian Church, Broomall, PA.

St. Patrick’s Day wouldn’t be complete without music.

 Suzuki Piano songs may not be considered traditional Irish tunes, but this is the day 17 pupils of Yuki Kremin perform their first recital. I am one of three adults who take the stage for a mostly Asian audience. James, who is nine years old, and I are the only ones who attempt duets: Lightly Row and Honeybee, German and Bohemian folk songs.

 “Have fun,” goes through my mind as I nervously prepare for this occasion. Hal McKay often said those words when I took lessons during the first five years of James’s life. During the last week of 2011, I called my former teacher to say I was “having fun” banging on the keys again. 

 Mr. McKay said to phone him in the New Year for a “tune up.” I was shocked when I read that he died on Jan. 13.

It is now almost three months after speaking to a man who taught me about music and life. I feel like a child before this performance. There are butterflies in my stomach, nerves pinching in my fingers and pounding in my head. I try to listen to kids, whose feet don’t reach the floor, but there is too much tension throughout my body to focus.

 According to Suzuki method, repeated listening brings about rapid progress in music. By listening to other performers and our own hearts, we can grow into a person with fine musical senses and strong personal relationships. Not a bad life skill to learn at any age.

Sunday

After attending the 10:45 a.m. service, March 18, at Calvary Chapel of Delaware County in Chadds Ford, my family is shopping at the new Whole Foods, Glen Mills. We are planning our own “Cupcake Wars.”

“This is like going to Disney World,” I think as we search for a parking place, smell grass fed burgers on the grill and greeted by a man selling organic bird food. The store is crammed, but somehow I manage to attain a “personal shopper.” 

I ask an associate where the baking aisle is. Laurent, who has a French accent, points his hand in the direction and proceeds to take me.  

“You can just show me the way,” I say. 

He shakes his head and walks to the sweet supplies. I grab flour, Vegan Sugar (whatever that is), cocoa bits and baking chocolate. He is watching. He doesn’t leave. 

“Macadamia nuts?” I ask. 

“Don’t know,” he replies in his accent, and asks the man stocking a shelf nearby.

That man says they are all gone. 

“No problem,” I say looking at the list. “They are in parenthesis.” 

They laugh. Last item, “Coconut shreds?” 

We walk to another part of the store, with the French man now pulling my cart. 

“You have a personal shopper!?” Mike, husband of 17 years on this day, finds me and exclaims.  

We leave Whole Foods with a cartful of sweets and rationalize it is healthy. We feel food shopping can be a mood booster. They know how to reach consumers inside their souls by creating a unique experience with friendly employees, taste tests and soothing music. 

Monday 

After eating “healthy” cupcakes which produces a sugar hangover, it is Monday morning and I’m at the Rocky Run YMCA. Before hopping on the elliptical, I check messages on iPhone. Our router is old and internet service is not working again. 

I receive this email from Jill, who is a Boeing engineer, and working in England for the next couple years: 

“I don’t know if you remember, but before I left for the UK, you gave me a sealed envelope with some of your stories in it for me to read when a need a dose of Kate.  I’ve been saving it for when I have a bad day, because I know it will lift my spirits.  A couple of times on my drive home from work I’ve thought about reading it, but I haven’t because I’m using it as a crutch … I know it’ll be there if I really need it, and just knowing I have it makes me happy.  I feel really lucky that I have a friend living 2500 miles away from me that can lift my spirits just by thinking about her.”

Jill and I met 15 years ago through a mutual friend. We walked hundreds of miles together before she started working oversees. We are born the same year, six days apart. Our lives are so different. She has worked for the same company for over 25 years, where I’ve had many (favorite was Press Newspapers). I admire her stability, where she says she admires those who are “less structured and takes life where it leads them.” She never gets bored of my stories. No matter how trivial they may seem, they become alive & fun with her. 

Tuesday

This morning I attended the third “Focusing” class taught by Sister Mary at the Franciscan Spiritual Center at Neumann University. Every week when I ring the bell to enter the convent, I feel like Julie Andrews from “The Sound of Music.” It is an exhilarating, yet peaceful feeling walking through this building. 

Focusing is a technique that consists of six easy to master steps that identify and change the way thoughts and emotions may be held within the body. This tool is for tapping into greater self-awareness and inner wisdom. “What is unclear becomes clear,” and learning to be with anything that arises, as well as other advanced listening techniques. 

For the first time, we paired up in partners. We practiced the beginning stage of this powerful tool. My partner, Kay, is a woman in her late 60s. For five minutes, I listen to her describe the tightness in her throat, that feels like a knife going through, tightening up, there are long pauses in between, and then she feels softening, “like a flower flourishing.” When it is my turn to recount how a situation makes me feel, I go back to the piano concert. I re-live the butterflies in stomach, but this time they widen, go back in and become a sharp pain and then soften up with a white color. It goes on for five minutes, and reminds me of something that was done in the 1960s. My family would think I’m really losing it now. 

Wednesday 

While delivering the re-birth of Riddlewood-Sunnybrae Community Association’s newsletter on Man O War Drive, I heard three death stories. The first was more details of Hal McKay, from his wife Ann. I handed her a copy which included the piano man’s obituary. A retired English teacher, she was on her way to teach Reading at the community college. We had an interesting conversation and hoping she will write an essay about the streets named after horses for a future issue. 

As I walk down the road, Jenny H. stops her car to ask if I’ve heard about her neighbor, who fell on his front step on St. Patrick’s Day. A tragedy, as this man who grew up in Riddlewood died on his 42nd birthday.

Lastly, I stop to say hi to Gail F, who is getting her mail, and ask her how nursing school is. She has 3 girls and a migraine. I commend her for taking on so much at once. She proceeds to tell me of a mutual friend’s mom, who died last week —- and came back to tell the story. 

“Did she see Jesus?” I ask with excitement. 

“No, she didn’t see Jesus,” she said. “But she did see her husband who died years ago.” 

Wow. This is the fourth near death experience I’ve heard in four months. 

Thursday 

While cleaning up the kitchen sink late in the afternoon, I glance out the window and see a healthy red fox zoom across our front yard. Our two year old, black lab, Rita, was chasing after this four legged animal. My heart was beating quickly as I ran outside to make sure our pet didn’t catch it. 

Thankfully, the fox escaped into the woods and Rita did not break through the electric fence! Afterwards, Rita was running around in circles with excitement. She sniffed the line where the fox had stepped thru. There was a skunk-like odor leftover in the air. 

Friday 

Saw a turkey vulture eating a rabbit on War Admiral Lane. 

Stopping by new Chick-fil-A to get contact for advertising in June newsletter.  

Picking up James from school and going to see Rita’s foster mom, who is now caring for another dog.  Rita came up with this black lab mix from NC in June. They are from same shelter. 

Saturday

Mike and I are attending our first Bar Mitzvah – at a Messianic Synagogue.  A new week of writing with photos included. 

Rohrer Targeted By Soros Group After Topping Primary Poll

With the polls showing Sam Rohrer topping the GOP field for the U.S. Senate Primary Election on April 24, he is now taking flake from a group affiliated with anti-American billionaire and one-time Nazi collaborator George Soros.

ThinkProgress is saying Sam doesn’t understand the budget and thinks government should be limited.
Sam, who  was the  Republican chairman of the Finance Committee when he was in the State House, noted he has produced alternative budgets under several several administrations and didn’t raise taxes.
Regarding the charge that he thinks government should be limited, he said: “Well, duh. No sugar, Sherlock.”
OK, he didn’t say that literally. What he said was “yes, absolutely I do.”
For the record and for the historically challenged Democrat legislators, the Nazis did not believe that government should be limited.
Neither did the communists for the matter. 
Regarding the polling, Public Policy Polling had on March 14, Sam  at 16 percent; fellow conservatives Tom Smith at 12 percent; David Christian at 10 percent and Marc Scaringi at 8 percent; and party-endorsed former Obama voter Steve Welch  at 5 percent.

There was 48 percent undecided.

While Democrat  incumbent Bob Casey leds all Republican contenders by at least 15 points he only reaches 50 percent against  Christian.

Egypt Hates Israel Again And 0 Hearts Egypt

Reader Tom C submitted this link from FrontPageMag.Com which describes how the new “Arab Springers” who took over Egypt have designated Israel its enemy and expelled its ambassador.

And that President Obama has decided to restore military aid.
The sooner he is gone the safer the world will be.

Boy Scouts Beat Bigots In Philly

A federal judge, March 21, ruled that Philadelphia must pay $877,000 to the Boy Scouts of America’s  Cradle of Liberty Council for its attempt to evict them from an historic building over the Scouts’ policy of discrimination against open homosexuals.

The Cradle of Liberty Council built the building  on city-owned land at 22nd and Winter streets in 1929 at the city’s request, 
The building, now called the Bruce S. Marks Scout Resource Center, is of the Beaux-Arts style and fits in well with the other notable structures on the nearby Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
It is the Council’s headquarters. The Council — as does many other socially beneficial non-profits — rents the land from the city for $1 per year.
In 2003, then Mayor John Street decided that BSA’s policy of prohibiting openly homosexual people from supervising boys in their early teens violated the city’s anti-discrimination law and ordered them to change it.
The Scouts wouldn’t and when the city realized the Supreme Court had upheld the organization’s right to discriminate on the matter, it took another tack — eviction.
In July 2006, Street ordered the Council to change its policy or leave within a year.

In May  2007,  Philadelphia City Council in an unannounced action voted 16-1 to pass Darrell L. Clarke’s bill to terminate the 1928 lease — which had been granted “in perpetuity” — and raise the rent to $200,000 annually.

The Scouts offered to buy the land for $500,000 but the city turned them down cold.
 

The Scouts sued in 2008 claiming the city was violating its civil rights and in November 2009 U.S. District Court ordered it to stop the eviction attempts being made in the state common pleas court as the new mayor, Michael Nutter, was every bit as in bed with the homosexual activists as Street.
The federal case continued, however,  and on June 15, 2010 it went to trial. On June 23, a jury of eight unanimously sided with the Scouts.
And yesterday, justice again prevailed as U.S. District Judge  Ronald Buckwalter ruled the city must pay the Scouts legal bills.

Just Say No To Crony Capitalism

A plan to build a 142,000 square foot shopping center on Springfield Road in Darby Borough that would have included a BJ’s Warehouse is dead
Gov. Tom Corbett had killed a request for $4 million in state funding but developer, Metro Development Co., says that wasn’t a factor as it was going to scrap the project anyway due to market conditions.
Kudos to Gov. Corbett for not throwing money down a rat hole.
Hat tip Tom C.

Blame Congress – and yourself – for rising gas prices

Americans don’t have enough holidays.
Unlike our Euro brethren, who take off all of August to refresh themselves after their grueling 25-hour work weeks, those in the U.S. can’t catch a break. Sure, we have Arbor Day and Wildflower Week, but we need to celebrate more. So it’s only appropriate to propose a holiday to which we can all relate, one that stays with us for more than just a day.
National Colonic Month.
No, not the colonic used to flush the body of evil red meat. That would be pointless since, according to a new study, just looking at a hamburger increases the likelihood of death by 900 percent.
National Colonic Month would be the collective feeling of having a gas pump forcefully inserted where the sun doesn’t shine by the United States Congress each time we refuel our cars, buy groceries, heat our homes, lay people off, lose our jobs, pull out our hair and contemplate “crimes of opportunity” (aka siphoning your neighbor’s gas tank), all in the name of making Arab sheiks the world’s first trillionaires.
Since America has perfected its current position of being bent over a barrel, its posterior wide open and ready to receive whatever comes, what better time for a national colonic of Middle Eastern petroleum? And here’s the best part. Given America’s insatiable appetite, National Colonic Month would just roll from month to month. So whether gas is $4 now, $5 in the summer, or $9 when the Washington braintrust strikes Iran, we will never have to worry about a shortage of colonic activity.
Of course, as with any procedure, there are side effects. In our case, it hurts a lot more as the price goes up, hemorrhaging can occur, and decay and disease may soon set in. And since we are the only doctor in town, yet remain impotent to solve, let alone diagnose, the problem, the prognosis for recovery isn’t good.
Kind of reminds you of Fletch’s most famous line, “Using the whole fist, Doc?”
In America’s case, it’s a lot more than a fist.
It’s really tough to figure out who is dumber: Congress or the people who elect them.
Are people up in arms about skyrocketing gas prices? You bet. My answer? Shut up and take your colonic. It’s no one’s fault but your own, so deal with it.
Oh sure, there are renewed calls for drilling now that gas is $4/gallon – just like in 2008 when it hit $4.50. But then the economy tanked, oil prices collapsed, and gas returned to “normal” (under $3). Result? Back to complacency. The only thing that got drilled was the people, but they were too ignorant to know better.
Now that prices have spiked again, we are looking for a scapegoat. Obama is a convenient target, and while he is partially responsible, so are his blamers, namely the Republicans. Consider:
1) It was George H.W. Bush who implemented the moratorium on offshore drilling. And it was Junior Bush who, rather than being proactive by opening up ANWR and reversing Dad’s mistake while he had significant majorities in Congress (and let’s face it — after 9/11, he could have had anything he wanted in the name of security), waited until gas spiraled out of control to call for drilling. Too late, as the Democrats slammed the door in his face.
2) A local Republican congressman told me during a 2010 interview that he couldn’t introduce a drilling bill while in the minority. Uh, sorry, but Civics 101 says differently. The bill may not make it out of a Democratically controlled committee, but it absolutely could have been introduced. And, by the way, that would have been a coup, since Obama made offshore drilling and nuclear power a cornerstone of his 2010 State of the Union address. But the GOP response? He didn’t really believe that.
Remember, this is the same president who just green-lighted the first new nuclear power plants since 1978. A Democrat doing that is akin to Ronald Reagan calling for a ban of all handguns. But rather than work with the President on a (yes – Republican!) issue, the result was bitter, partisan attacks. Hence, no offshore drilling.
3) But Mr. Obama doesn’t get a free pass. He recently ridiculed those who advocate “drill, drill, drill” to lower energy prices. Well, not to be a stickler, but if you produce more of something, the price will, in fact, drop. Yes, we should all be more energy-conscious. That’s common sense. And alternative energy resources should be developed so long as they are market-feasible. But let’s be real. Oil is the unrivaled king of the energy world. Since that will not change for decades, if ever, it’s time to remove our heads from the colonic area and do what we all know has to be done: drill domestically.
Obama delayed the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was a mistake. But what damn near everybody is missing is that, save for a relatively small amount of product from North Dakota, the oil is all Canadian. Granted, getting oil from our Canuck friends is certainly better than relying on Middle Eastern nations, but it misses the point entirely. Why are we not responsibly drilling on our own turf, keeping the jobs and revenue stateside?
4) Natural gas just hit a 10-year low, while oil (and gasoline) are soaring. Go figure. So the wells that should be tapping the unlimited, clean-burning natural resource literally beneath our feet are being capped, killing jobs and entire industries. Well, except for colonics.
5) Most disturbing is that our local congressional representatives are spending their time holding hearings on the closings of the Sunoco and ConocoPhillips refineries. No, that’s not a joke. Congressman Pat Meehan and Sen. Bob Casey are looking for answers as to how the closings will affect oil prices and impact national security. (This should be no surprise, as Congress routinely holds hearings on weighty matters such as how the College Football Bowl Championship should be decided).
Perhaps I could save a boatload of taxpayer cash by releasing the results of a poll conducted of a sixth-grade class I teach. The closings will be bad. Very bad. Prices will continue to rise, since if there is less of something, its cost will increase. And we will be less secure. Next hearing?
When did we start prioritizing national security anyway? Congress cares infinitely more about the national security of Middle Eastern sheikdoms than it does America, despite some of those nations funding anti-American terrorist groups with our petro dollars. And all for one reason: their oil.
Here’s the bottom line: as long as we refuse to domestically drill, American soldiers will continue to die in Muslim lands. And no amount of hearings, protests, or political rhetoric will change that. And let’s be honest. Our men and women are not “fighting for our freedom,” nor are they “keeping the war over there.” They are simply doing the bidding of a Congress – and the people who elect them — who are too complacent, or worse, impotent – to do the responsible thing: protect America by harnessing our vast and unparalleled domestic energy resources.
And there’s no colonic to cleanse the soul from the blood we all have on our hands.
So to be crude, stick it in and fill ‘er up, Sheik.

Was It Over When The Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?

Bluto, played by John Belushi in the comedy classic National Lampoon’s Animal House, famously attempted to arouse from despair his brothers at Delta Tau Chi by asking “Was It Over When The Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?”

It was funny because, well, who would be so stupid as to think that it was the Germans that bombed Pearl Harbor?
If the realization that it is people like Ellison who write our laws puts you in a funk, just remember that it’s not over until we say it’s over.