News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
President Obama has rather humiliatingly apologized to Afghanistan for burning some books that had been used by suspected terrorists to pass coded messages while in a detention facility.
This woman apologizes for the rest of us.
Thank you Cathy Craddock for the link.
State Rep. Eugene DePasquale, a Democrat representing the 95th District, which is in York County, told the Pennsylvania Independent that he will not vote for funding for the “state-related” universities of Penn State, Pittsburgh, Temple and Lincoln unless those institutions are unambiguously made subject to the state open records law.
The four universities together get about a half-billion dollar in state money but are run by boards of trustees who have little public accountability since the majorities on them are not state appointees or officials.
Good for DePasquale.
Judy McGrane has submitted this interesting video called Woman and Sharks
If you’re looking for a special gift for your young former-Obama supporter perfect for hanging on a dorm-room wall look no further than this 2-by-3-foot poster detailing how our federal tax dollars are spent.
It costs just $27.99
If you don’t feel like buying it but still want the info, place your cursor over the image and turn your mouse wheel to magnify it.
Congrats to designer Jess Bachman.
And do you realize that the phrase place your cursor over the image and turn your mouse wheel would not make a bit of sense to someone living in 1980?
Courtesy of Cathy Craddock
Thought you might like to read this letter to the editor. Ever notice how some people just seem to know how to write a letter?
This one surely does!
This was written by a Canadian woman, but oh how it also applies to the U.S.A. , U.K. And Australia .
THIS ONE PACKS A FIRM PUNCH
Written by a housewife in New Brunswick , to her local newspaper. This is one ticked off lady…
“Are we fighting a war on terror or aren’t we? Was it or was it not, started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001and have continually threatened to do so since?
Were people from all over the world, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from the capitol of the USA and in a field in Pennsylvania ?
Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn’t they?
And I’m supposed to care that a few Taliban were claiming to be tortured by a justice system of a nation they are fighting against in a brutal Insurgency.
I’ll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East, start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere belief of which, is a crime punishable by beheading in Afghanistan.
I’ll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off Nick Berg’s head, while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.
I’ll care when the cowardly so-called ‘insurgents’ in Afghanistan , come out and fight like men, instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in Mosques and behind women and children.
I’ll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of Nirvana, care about the innocent children within range of their suicide Bombs.
I’ll care when the Canadian media stops pretending that their freedom of Speech on stories, is more important than the lives of the soldiers on the ground or their families waiting at home, to hear about them when something happens.
In the meantime, when I hear a story about a CANADIAN soldier roughing up an Insurgent terrorist to obtain information, know this:
I don’t care.
When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank:
I don’t care. Shoot him again.
When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed ‘special’ food, that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being ‘mishandled,’ you can absolutely believe, in your heart of hearts:
I don’t care.
And oh, by the way, I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s spelled ‘Koran’ and other times ‘Quran.’ Well, Jimmy Crack Corn you guessed it.
I don’t care!!
If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail Friends. Sooner or later, it’ll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior!
If you don’t agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don’t complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great Country! And may I add:
Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering, if during their life on earth, they made a difference in the world. But, the Soldiers don’t have that problem.
I have another quote that I would like to share AND…I hope you forward All this.
One last thought for the day:
Only five defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
1. Jesus Christ
2. The British Soldier.
3. The Canadian Soldier.
4. The US Soldier, and
5. The Australian Soldier
One died for your soul, the other four, for you and your children’s Freedom.
YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET!
AMEN! GOD BLESS CANADA AND AMERICA.
Best birthday wishes to Penn Delco School Board member Lisa Esler.
Courtesy Tom C
If you don’t know GOD, don’t make stupid remarks!
A United States Marine was taking some college courses
between assignments. He had completed 20 missions in Iraq
and Afghanistan . One of the courses had a professor who
was an avowed atheist, and a member of the ACLU.
One day the professor shocked the class when he came in.
He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, “GOD, if you are real, then
I want you to knock me off this platform… I’ll give you exactly 15 min.”
The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes
went by and the professor proclaimed, “Here I am GOD, I’m still waiting.”
It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got
out of his chair, went up to the professor, and hit him;
knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold.
The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently.
The other students were shocked and stunned, and sat there
looking on in silence. The professor eventually came to,
noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked,
“What in the world is the matter with you? Why did you do that?”
The Marine calmly replied,
“GOD was too busy today protecting
soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid
stuff and act like an idiot. So He sent me.”
The classroom erupted in cheers!
Small Business Not Hiring — Continuing to do the jobs that the official Bureau of Labor Statistics seem unwilling to take on, Gallup is reporting that 85 percent of small business owners are not hiring workers.
About half of those not hiring said the reasons are concern about future health cost and government regulations.
About a quarter said they weren’t sure they’d still be in business in 12 months.
“I don’t know Chief…this shark is either very smart, or very dumb…”
So was the famous line uttered by the legendary Quint in Jaws, as he was trying to figure out the intentions of the great white.
After
the recent roller coaster ride regarding Archdiocesan school closings –
and now the many reprieves – Catholics across the Philadelphia region
are wondering the same thing. Is the church hierarchy very smart (in a
conniving way), or very dumb?
Or are they, and the “Blue Ribbon” school commission deciding the fate of so many, just downright incompetent?
There isn’t a fourth option.
At
issue is that a whopping 75 percent of Catholic elementary schools that
appealed their closings were successful, meaning that their doors are
staying open, at least for now.
Last Friday, it was announced
that of the 24 appeals, 18 won. While it seemed like a “Good Friday” to
many, something tells me it may turn into a day of regret, closer in
fact to a Black Friday.
This is not meant to rain on anyone’s
parade, as there is obvious cause for celebration for many Catholic
families. After all, they had been told last month that their beloved
schools – 49 of them -were slated for permanent closure. While there was
an appeals process, based solely on factual errors committed by the
commission, virtually everyone figured there would be very few
successful appeals, if any.
And with good reason.
In
January, the chairman of the Commission, John Quindlen, former chief
financial officer of DuPont, made it crystal clear why schools were
closing and consolidating.
“A lot of this should have been
done 10 years ago…(but)… naivete and an unwillingness to face reality”
kept many pastors and archdiocesan leaders from halting long ago the
“death spiral” of declining population and rising tuition at so many
schools, he said, according to Philly.com.
“They would say, ‘I can make this work … But we had to come along and
finally say, ‘God bless you, but this has got to stop.’ ”
Fast
forward one month to the church’s about-face, and Quindlen’s comments
tell a starkly different story. “I celebrate the results and pray they
all survive in the long term … Neither the commission nor the
archdiocese was in a rush to close schools. Our focus was on how to
sustain them.”
What? Did he seriously say that with a straight face?
How
can you make the leap from a “death spiral” to “celebrating the
results” and talking about sustainability in less than one month?
Give
the archdiocese credit for one thing: if they are trying to anger as
many Catholics as possible in the most bumbling manner while ignoring
all rules of good communication and PR, they are succeeding beyond their
wildest dreams.
Let’s cut through the emotions tied to school
closings and look at this situation objectively. In doing do, one has to
ask: Why the games? Why did the Church say one thing – that in
retrospect now seems very suspect – and then almost completely reverse
itself, all the while talking in platitudes that didn’t remotely address
the questions and concerns of many?
It has left many scratching their heads, and even more seething.
So
here are the questions that absolutely must be addressed in order for
the archdiocese to have any credibility moving forward, and to prevent
the exodus of loyal, but very bitter, Catholics:
1) Is Catholic
education too expensive to sustain in most if not all of the 49 schools
that were originally slated for shuttering? If yes – which is what the
archdiocese has been telling us, and selling us, for quite some time –
then how can three out of four appeals have been successful? What
changed? Did a billionaire step up and write a big check to keep the
schools open? If so, we don’t need a name, because charity should be
anonymous, but we do have a right to know if that happened (extremely
unlikely as it is).
2) If the opposite is true – that those
schools are in fact affordable – then why have we been told something so
radically different for so long? It’s like being pregnant: you are or
you aren’t. Either the church can operate these schools efficiently, or
they can’t. There is no in-between. But that’s exactly where this
situation is – in no-man’s land, and their equivocation has just added
to the confusion.
3) Is incompetence to blame for the
contradictory messages? We were told that appeals would only be
considered if factual errors were made in determining which schools
closed. Well, by that logic, that’s a heck of a lot of errors. If a
student makes “factual errors” on 75 percent of a test, his grade is a
25. Which, unless you attend a public school in Philadelphia, is an F.
Not exactly a stellar track record.
4) Were we lied to from the
get-go? And if so, why? Was the threat of closings a grand conspiracy to
flush out big contributors as well as lighten the wallets of the
rank-and-file even more? Don’t scoff. The archdiocese has a history of
not being straightforward.
Just look at its red face regarding
its mishandling – and lack of truthfulness – involving one of its
schools in Philadelphia. According to a news report, a group starting a
public charter school stated that it was assured by the archdiocese that
it could rent Our Lady of Mount Carmel school for that purpose – two
months before the commission recommended closing the school! Mount
Carmel appealed its closing. Any guesses as to how that turned out? It
begs the questions as to why the archdiocese would even allow the school
to appeal when its fate had apparently already been determined.
Since
we are on the topic of education, perhaps a refresher is in order. The
8th Commandment tells us that we should not bear false witness against
our neighbor. In layman’s terms, playing loose with the truth – and
outright lying – doesn’t bode well for a Church preaching morality and
in desperate need of credibility and trust.
5) What about the
folks at all the other schools who wanted to appeal but were dissuaded
from doing so because the odds were so long for success? Common sense
tells us that if they had known such a large number of schools would win
their cases, many others would have appealed. Now, those parents and
students feel even more burned than they did a month ago – a remarkable
feat in itself.
6) The appeals have thrown schools that were
thought to be “safe” into chaos. Nativity BVM in Media, for example, was
originally intended to stay open, absorbing students from St. John
Chrysostom in Wallingford. St. John’s won their appeal though, and now,
in a stunning reversal, Nativity is shutting its doors and the new
school will be located at St. John’s.
Not only do parents and
teachers feel completely betrayed by this out-of-nowhere blindside, but
there’s an even more unjust twist: Nativity apparently does not have the
ability to appeal like all the other schools did. Talk about rubbing
salt in the wound.
And it’s exactly that type of move,
accompanied by virtually no communication, which drives fuming
parishoners to leave the Church. Hence the decline in church attendance
and school enrollment.
7) How can the church push for school
choice when it does not allow choice for its own members at the
elementary school level? So some families in Annunciation parish in
Havertown, for example, whose school closed because its pastor refused
to file the appeal that so many parents begged him to do, must send
their children all the way across town to St. Denis, when in fact they
live within walking distance to Sacred Heart? How ironic that the very
church fighting the image of hypocrisy born from the sex scandal now
engages in more hypocrisy: fighting for school choice as long as it
doesn’t apply to its own flock. When will they learn?
8) There
are no guarantees in life, but what assurances can the church give that,
in the next few years, those 24 schools, as well as any others, will
not close? Since it is impossible to believe that the problems of
declining enrollment, rising costs and overall unsustainability have all
been solved in the last 30 days, woe to those parents who take the
recent reprieves to be a sign of long-term viability, for they may well
be revisiting this exact situation in the near future. And that just
isn’t right.
•
The point of this column
is neither to agree with nor criticize the specific school closings and
successful appeals, but to implore the archdiocese to come clean with
all the facts.
Quint had to figure out what the shark was doing
and why. For all the blood, sweat and tears Catholics have shed for
their Church over the years, they should never have to question the
motivations of their Catholic leaders. They only seek the truth, and
deserve no less. It’s time to give it to them.
And that’s no fish story.
More GOP State Stupidity — Tea Party Activist Bob Guzzardi reports that the Republican State Committee is challenging the signatures on the nominating petitions of David Christian in the hopes of keeping him off the U.S. Senate ballot in the Republican Primary, April 24.
You would think it would have better things to do with its limited resources but one supposes no effort is too small to clear the path for its anointed one, Obama-supporter Steve Welch.
Guzzardi, btw, is a supporter of Tom Smith but this is not stopping him from defending Christian’s right to participate.
